The Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led 18-party Opposition alliance will enforce yet another daylong hartal across the country from 6:00am on Wednesday in protest against the issuance of a warrant of arrest against the BNP’s senior vice president, Tarique Rahman. The fresh hartal call has spawned apprehensions and uncertainty among the common people. Pre-hartal violence on Tuesday took a severe turn in the city and elsewhere in the country, as elements supporting the hartal vandalised and set fire to a number of vehicles in the city. They also engaged in violent clashes with law enforcement personnel.
BNP standing committee member Dr Abdul Moeen Khan announced the programme at a press briefing on Tuesday following a meeting of the BNP-led 18-Party Alliance at BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia’s Gulshan office.
This will be the second hartal in the week. Earlier, on Sunday, the Opposition alliance enforced another daylong hartal protesting the ban on holding rallies and public meetings for the next one month.
Meanwhile, the BNP chairperson’s adviser Shamsuzzaman Dudu, while addressing a regular press conference at the party’s headquarters at Naya Paltan on Tuesday, called upon the alliance leaders and activists to make Wednesday’s hartal a success.
Sources in the ruling Grand Alliance, however, said they were ready to deal with any anarchy that occurs under the pretext of organising the hartal. The government has taken strict security measures in the city and elsewhere in the country to maintain law and order during the hartal. Additional police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel have been deployed at different strategic points in the city to maintain law and order during the daylong hartal, according to Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) sources.
Hospitals, food and medicine shops, ambulances, fire services and vehicles transporting newspapers and hearses carrying dead bodies will remain outside the purview of the hartal.
Meanwhile, the Dhaka Transport Owners’ Association announced that they would ply their buses in the city, taking into consideration the sufferings of city residents.
Briefing reporters, Shamsuzzaman Dudu, who is also the BNP spokesperson, called upon the government to withdraw false cases filed against Tarique Rahman and stop the campaign against him. Otherwise, he warned, Wednesday’s hartal will not be the last hartal.
He described Tarique Rahman as the most oppressed leader in the country and said he has close links with frontal organisations of the party. So, no direction needs to be issued to party activists to go to the streets for him, he added.
Replying to a question about arson on vehicles and bursting of Molotov cocktails near the party’s central office on the eve of the hartal, he said activists of the Opposition alliance have been directed to observe the hartal in their respective areas peacefully.
“If anyone explodes bombs or sets fire to vehicles, it is the responsibility of the government to nab them,” he said.
On behalf of Tarique Rahman, his counsel Kaiser Kamal has served two separate legal notices against environment minister Hasan Mahmud and state minister for law Qamrul Islam for their derogatory remarks on Rahman, he added.
The BNP leader alleged that on the eve of the hartal, at least 111 Opposition leaders were arrested in different parts of the country on Tuesday, while 201 leaders and activists were injured in the attacks carried out by police personnel and cadres of the ruling party. He demanded the immediate release of senior BNP leaders, including MK Anwar, Aman Ullah Aman, Barkat Ullah Bulu, Dr Zahid Hossain, Md Shajahan and Amar Desh’s editor Mahmudur Rahman.
Abdul Latif Jony and Shamimur Rahman Shamim, among others, were present at the press conference.
-With The Independent input
