Riot police in Bangladesh fired tear gas shells yesterday to disperse thousands of Islamist activists trying to enforce an anti-government general strike, leaving at least 70 people injured, news reports said.
The violence erupted at three towns outside the capital, Dhaka, after police tried to stop the protesters from blocking roads and smashing vehicles that defied the shutdown, private television stations ATN News and Boishakhi TV reported.
Footage showed protesters, many of them wearing Islamic prayer caps, throwing stones at police. Police responded with batons and tear gas.
Photo: AFP
The 30-hour nationwide strike has been called by a coalition of 12 Islamic parties to protest the removal of a clause from the country’s Constitution that expressed “absolute faith and trust in Allah.” The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party backed the protest.
The amendment also restored secularism as a state principle of Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
In a recent constitutional amendment, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s coalition government tried to appease both the Islamists and the liberals.
It has retained Islam as the state religion, but included secularism to replace the phrase “absolute faith and trust in Allah.” The Islamists want the government to reinstate the phrase in the charter’s preamble.
The Islamists have no representatives in Bangladesh’s 345-member parliament, but they draw support from the country’s hundreds of Islamic schools.
During yesterday’s strike several thousand protesters, many of them armed with sticks and stones, tried to block a road outside Dhaka, TV coverage showed.
The footage also showed police using batons and stones to break up the protesters at Kanchpur, 16km southeast of the capital.
Similar clashes occurred in Keraniganj, another small town on the southern outskirts of Dhaka and in Fatullah.
At least 70 people were injured in the violence, the reports said.
Police officials were not immediately available for comment.
A general strike is a common opposition tactic to embarrass the government in Bangladesh. Such strikes often turn violent in a nation which although a -parliamentary democracy has a history of two successful and 19 failed military coups since 1971, when the country won independence from Pakistan.
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