Bangladesh hit by strike

Security forces in Bangladesh arrested more than 300 people as the first nationwide general strike was marred by violence.

Security forces in Bangladesh arrested more than 300 people Sunday as the first nationwide general strike since elections in 2008 was marred by violence, police said.

In the capital Dhaka, security forces fired tear gas and used batons to disperse hundreds of opposition activists as they tried to hold marches along major roads, police said.

An opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) lawmaker was hurt when supporters and opponents of the strike clashed at Dhaka University, police spokesman Walid Hossain said, adding the man was later arrested.

At least 12,000 policemen and the elite Rapid Action Battalion were deployed in Dhaka to try to avert violence as the shutdown brought much of the capital of 13 million people and the country to a standstill.

Police said the strike had halted transport throughout the country and disrupted business operations. In Dhaka, most private offices, shops, schools and colleges were closed.

The BNP called the strike to protest against what it says is the Awami League government’s failure to provide basic services such as power, water and gas and against “arbitrary” arrests and harassment of opposition supporters.

The Awami League swept to power in January 2009 after a landslide election win the previous month. The BNP, which ruled the country twice after democracy was restored in 1990, was reduced to a small opposition.

Those strikes came to a halt in 2007 when the country came under emergency rule as an army-backed government sought to bring stability.

Police on Sunday used batons to disperse opposition activists, private television channel Bangla Vision showed. The channel reported several people were injured.

At least 167 people including two former BNP ministers and an ex-foreign secretary were arrested in the capital during the strike and 120 activists were taken into custody hours before it began, the police spokesman said.

“We arrested former public works minister Mirza Abbas this morning on charges of torching vehicles,” said the police chief of Dhaka’s main commercial district, Toffazzal Hossain.

Others were arrested for damaging vehicles and unruly behaviour, deputy home minister Shamsul Haque Tuku said. “The arrests were made because there was reason to do so,” he told reporters.

Thousands of BNP activists demonstrated in Dhaka in small groups. Police cordoned off the party’s main office with barbed wire and banned marches in roads linking government offices and ministers’ homes to the airport.

BNP secretary-general Khandaker Delwar Hossain said the party had staged a “successful nationwide strike”.

“People joined the protests spontaneously and gave a thumping verdict against the government,” he said.

Several smaller parties, including the main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, supported the strike.

The southeastern city of Chittagong, the country’s main port and home to five million people, was cut off by lack of transport and at least 16 people were arrested for smashing the windows of a bus, police and officials said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2010.