Bangladesh authorities yesterday cut the power to opposition leader Khaleda Zia’s home in an apparent bid to force her to call off a crippling anti-government transport blockade.
Local television showed footage of a technician from a state-run power utility climbing a ladder and cutting the line outside Zia’s house, where she also has her office and where she has been holed up since the protests began early last month.
“We got permission from police to cut the power line,” the technician told reporters as he cut the line.
Private Channel 24 television said that Internet and satellite television connections to her office were also severed.
Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) spokesman Shamsuddin Dider said that the 69-year-old leader was “shocked and surprised” by the “loathsome” move.
The power line was cut just hours after a government minister reportedly threatened to sever the connection and force her to starve to death if she did not call off the nationwide transport blockade.
“Even the food provided to you by your party officials will not reach your room. You’ll have to die there without food,” Bangladeshi Minister of Shipping Shahjahan Khan told a rally on Friday, according to the local Daily Star newspaper.
Zia has been confined in her office in Dhaka’s upmarket Gulshan district for weeks after threatening to rally her supporters against the government of bitter rival Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Jan. 5, the first anniversary of a disputed general election.
While in confinement, she called a nationwide blockade of roads, railways and waterways, triggering deadly unrest that has left at least 40 people dead and nearly 800 vehicles firebombed or damaged.
She wants Hasina to call fresh polls after last year’s controversial polls, which opposition parties boycotted on the grounds they would be rigged.
The boycott meant most members of the 300-seat parliament were returned unopposed, handing Hasina another five years in power. Zia denies the BNP and its Islamic allies were responsible for firebombings and has demanded the release of opposition officials and leaders detained over the violence.
Hasina has accused Zia of trying to trigger “anarchy” and ordered the security agencies to hunt down the protesters.
Yesterday, an elite security force arrested senior BNP leader and key party spokesman Rizvi Ahmed in Dhaka after he was accused of ordering firebombing of vehicles from a hideout.
The EU, the nation’s biggest export destination, has urged Hasina’s government and the opposition to hold talks to resolve the crisis.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in