Dhaka: Authorities issued “shoot at sight” orders today as the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and partners in the 18-party alliance enforced a nationwide 36-hour strike to demand the release of over 150 activists detained earlier this month.
Suspected opposition supporters exploded homemade bombs in Dhaka during the general strike. No one was injured in the blasts.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police official Abul Bashar said at least three crude bombs exploded Wednesday near a railway station in the city. Footage from several TV stations showed blast incidents in other parts of the city.
The Jamaat-e-Islami wants to halt trials of opposition politicians accused of crimes stemming from the country’s 1971 independence war against Pakistan.
“Orders have been issued to shoot at sight the saboteurs who will be seen setting on fire the trains or buses or carrying out sabotages of different other types” as home minister Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir met with senior officers of police and other law enforcement agencies ahead of the strike, the mass circulation Prothom Alo newspaper reported.
Alamgir or police chief Hassan Mahmoud Khandaker were not available immediately for comment but officials familiar with the “emergency meeting” said the law enforcement agencies were asked to take stern actions against the “troublemakers”.
“We have asked the law enforcement agencies to take appropriate actions considering the situation at the scenes,” state minister Shamsul Haque Tuku told a newspaper without elaboration.
Suspected opposition activists torched at least nine vehicles and damaged several others yesterday when the country celebrated Independence Day.
Schools and big shopping malls were closed and fewer vehicles were seen on the streets.
“We are announcing a 36-hour strike to wage an all-out movement against the government to realise our demands, which include the government’s resignation, restoration of the caretaker government system (for election oversight) and release of our party men,” BNP’s acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told a press conference earlier.
The BNP was yet to issue a statement on the government’s “shoot at sight” decision but chairman of the statutory National Human Rights Commission Professor Mizanur Rahman, criticised the order saying other options were there to prevent the saboteurs.
“If it is the decision (shoot at sight) I don’t agree with that,” he told newsmen.
BNP was waging a campaign over electoral system demanding restoration of a caretaker government system for election oversight as the national election was due next year but ongoing trials of several stalwarts of its crucial extreme rightwing ally Jamaat for 1971 war crimes visibly shifted their issue.
After an initial dilemma BNP eventually put its weight towards their ally calling the trial a witch-hunt as two of its own leaders out of the 12 accused were exposed to trial on identical charges of “crimes against humanity” siding with Pakistani troops.
The violence over the war crimes trial claimed over 70 lives six of them being policemen as the Jamaat in particular appeared desperate to thwart the trial though most of the incidents violence were reported from areas considered strongholds of the extreme rightwing party.
