A massive coronavirus prayer session with tens of thousands of devotees sparked an outcry in Bangladesh on Wednesday as the South Asian nation reported its first death from the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 10,000 Muslims gathered in an open field in Raipur to pray “healing verses” from the Koran to rid the country of the coronavirus, Raipur Police Chief Tota Miah said.
“They held the Khatme Shifa prayers after dawn to free the country from the coronavirus,” Miah said.
Photo: AFP
Organizers claimed that the number of worshipers was 25,000.
Organizers did not get permission from authorities to hold the session, Miah said.
Photographs of the gathering were widely shared on social media, with commenters slamming the massive rally.
Bangladeshi authorities have already shut schools and asked locals to avoid large gatherings in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
“Unbelievable how they even have done it without notifying the police? They will be held responsible if anything happens to the people in the region,” Abdur Rahman wrote on Facebook.
Despite the authorities’ appeal to avoid crowded public areas, many took the opportunity to head to tourism sites.
Police said that they had to close two beaches, including one at Cox’s Bazar, which is home to nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.
Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader said a lockdown might be required to contain the virus.
“If necessary, Bangladesh will be shut down. It’ll be enforced where necessary. People must be saved first. We’ll do everything for that,” he told reporters.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS