10 injured in bomb attack during hartal in Chittagong
Bangladesh hit by fifth opposition-led general strike in month
A countrywide hartal passed off rather peacefully Saturday at the call of main opposition Awami League and six left-leaning political parties in protest against the assassination attempt on Prof Humayun Azad and on their demand for resignation of the government.
The strike, fifth in less than a month, forced the closure of shops, schools, colleges and most private banks and offices in Dhaka. All modes of transport, bar rickshaws and a few three wheelers and buses, were off the road during the daylong shutdown.
Around eight thousand riot police and paramilitary BDR guards fanned out across the congested capital’s strategic points to maintain order.
“Police and other law-enforcers were seen in a calm mood while there was a plenty of leaders on the street, but with a lack of workers in Dhaka,” said a spot account of the afternoon scenes of Bangabandhu Avenue, where the AL is headquartered.
In Chittagong, a band of boys roving around by auto-rickshaw hurled bombs twice at an Awami League rally in the city during today’s countrywide hartal, injuring 10 people.
Awami League, Workers Party, CPB, JSD (Inu), Samyabadi Dal, Ganatantri Party and Gana Azadi League simultaneously called for the 6am-6pm shutdown also to protest widespread terrorism, corruption, price hike of essentials, fertilizers and diesel, and termination of workers.
This is for the first time major opposition parties and groups gave the simultaneous hartal call against the coalition government since it assumed office in October 2001.
Witnesses said police put barbed-wire fences at both ends of the Bangabandhu Avenue early in the morning to contain street picketing for the hartal. But, the Awami League leaders, including Abdur Razzak MP, Amir Hossain Amu, Tofail Ahmed, Asaduzzaman Noor MP, Akhteruzzaman, Mahmudur Rahman Manna and Sultan M Mansur Ahmed, staged a protest rally at Muktangon in the morning.
Leftist protestors carried a red flag embossed with the communist hammer-and-sickle symbol and cried "Strike, strike" downtown Dhaka.
Leaders of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, Workers Party and JSD (Inu) also staged separate rallies.
Led by Deputy leader of the Opposition Advocate Abdul Hamid, a group of opposition AL lawmakers took out a procession from Parliament and joined demonstrations at Russel Square in Dhanmondi area where former Home Minister Mohammad Nasima and other leaders and workers were agitating.
Addressing the hartal rallies, Awami League and JSD (Inu) called for removing the BNP-Jamaat alliance government for a midterm election to what they said salvage the people and the nation from the prevailing suffocating situation.
They claimed all classes of people observed the hartal showing their “no-confidence” in the government.
UNB correspondent from Chittagong adds: Awami League sources and witnesses said four youths riding a baby-taxi set off one bomb in front of the gathering at about 12:30pm and another at 1:10pm, as they said police looked on.
Former minister Mosharraf Hossain and Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury were respectively addressing the rally at the times of the blasts, the sources claimed. Two of the injured–Shahalam and Shahjahan--were treated at Chittagong Medical College Hospital.
As the Awami League activists tried to take out a procession in protest, police clubbed them off the street, witnesses said.
Also, the law-enforces, armed with strict orders from the administration, contained picketing in all other areas of the port city. They warned the opposition activists against bringing out processions and chanting any anti-government slogan.
Police snatched away mikes from eight points – Nimtala, Alankar crossing, Dewanhut crossing, Muradpur, Baddarhut, New Market crossing, Oxygen crossing, Sholoshahar station crossing -- wherever the opposition wanted to hold rallies.
The CPB and the Workers Party of Bangladesh were prevented from holding rally in front of the New Market crossing and their mike was snatched as they tried to rally in front of the rail-station crossing.
On the other hand, ruling BNP student front Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and youth front Jubo Dal held rallies at outer Stadium, Andarkilla and Zila Parishad crossing under police protection.
There was no delivery of cargo from the seaport for disruption of haulage by the hartal, five in the latest series since Feb 12 when Awami League alone kicked off an anti-government movement through a dawn-to-dusk strike.
Wheels of mills and factories also came to a halt. Production in the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) was reportedly hampered. Attendance in government offices was thin, while shutters of all other offices and commercial establishments were down.
Bar some baby-taxis, tempos and rickshaws, other modes of transport were off the roads. “Inter-district buses did not ply, but trains and planes operated as on other days,” says a firsthand account of the public life and business in city.
Meanwhile, Mayor Mohiuddin Chowdhury blamed the police for guarding the miscreants who hurled bombs and warned of “serious consequences”. He declared that programmes would be announced tomorrow (Sunday) from a Laldighi Maidan meeting to protest today’s bomb attacks.
UNB Correspondent from Khulna reported that the dawn-to-dusk hartal passed off peacefully in the southern industrial city, where hardly any day passes by without any trouble in normal times.
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