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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS