Bangladeshi security forces arrested dozens of protest-leading activists yesterday as the main opposition party led a dawn-to-dusk general strike across the country.
Activists in the ruling Awami League’s student wing clashed with opposition supporters near a university in the capital Dhaka and several people were injured, state-run ATN Bangla television reported.
Authorities deployed some 10,000 security forces in Dhaka and schools and businesses were closed, witnesses said. ATN Bangla reported one of former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia’s advisers was among those arrested during the protest.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Zia, called the strike accusing the Awami League of misrule.
Zia blasted the government for its alleged failure to control prices of commodities and improve law and order and accused it of suppressing the opposition.
The strike was also to protest recent deals with India by the administration of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Zia said. Those agreements — including India using Bangladesh’s ports and Bangladesh importing power — ignored national interests, she said.
Authorities erected barbed-wire fences in parts of the capital, and Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner A.K.M. Shahidul Haque said police would not allow any rallies to clog major thoroughfares.
The Nationalist Party’s headquarters in central Dhaka was put under tight security.
In Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second-largest city, the transportation of goods from the country’s main port was disrupted, said Osman Gani Mansoor, a local journalist.
Yesterday’s daylong strike was the first in three-and-a-half years by any political group. The country has experienced two years of interim rule backed by the influential military.
Bangladesh returned to democracy and Hasina led her political alliance to a landslide victory at December 2008 elections. Zia ruled the country until October 2006.
General strikes are a common opposition tactic to put pressure on the government in Bangladesh, a fragile parliamentary democracy since 1991, after nine years of military rule.
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