Bangladesh opposition challenges PM Hasina to quit

Rafiqul Islam joined tens of thousands of opposition supporters in the capital Dhaka after travelling nearly 200km (124 miles) from the southern coastal district of Noakhali. But he had to fake his identity to evade detention ahead of the anti-government rally on Saturday.

The police in the South Asian nation had arrested hundreds of supporters from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which had called for the rally to protest against price rises and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

“I had deleted my messenger and logged into a second Facebook account in my phone. We were told by the central command of our party to do so to reach Dhaka without getting arrested or harassed,” Islam, a grassroots-level activist of BNP, told Al Jazeera,
“It apparently worked,” Islam said as he was standing amid a sea of people at Golapbagh field in central Dhaka on Saturday morning. It was BNP’s last of a series of rallies organised across the country in the past weeks to demand new elections under a neutral caretaker government.

From the Dhaka rally, BNP’s top leadership renewed that call along with the demands for withdrawals of cases against its party chief Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman — both of whom were charged and convicted in what the party says are “politically motivated cases”.
All seven BNP legislators announced their resignations from the current parliament in protest against what they said was the “illegal” government led by the ruling Awami League (AL) party.

Hasina, in power since 2009, is accused of having two national elections stained by opposition boycotts and electoral malpractices under her watch. Her government’s heavy-handed approaches to suppress political opposition and dissenters have also attracted severe criticism from human rights activists and independent observers.

The BNP claims more than 180,000 legal cases have been filed against four million of its members in the last decade. At the same time, at least 600 party members have been abducted, and about 3,000 were victims of extrajudicial killings at the hands of authorities, the party says.

The opposition leaders also accused the government of cracking down on its supporters to impede mass turnouts in their recent rallies.

At least 2,000 party activists and leaders were arrested just days before the Dhaka rally, the BNP said. Two of its top leaders, including the party’s de facto chief and general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, were also arrested and sent to jail on Friday.

The police said 500 people were arrested in the wake of opposition-led protests on Wednesday that turned deadly. Security forces in the capital Dhaka also fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd of thousands of BNP supporters preparing for the December 10 rally.

Fight for survival

The government on Saturday deployed more than 30,000 law enforcement personnel in the capital while ruling party leaders and AL activists took to the streets and different entry points in Dhaka, with the apparent aim of preventing the movement of BNP supporters, Al Jazeera has learned.

Additional Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Hafiz Akter told Al Jazeera that police had strengthened surveillance to thwart potential chaos in the city.

“Our interest is to protect common people from any harm,” he said. Asked about the presence of AL activists alongside the police, Akter said: “Any political party can have people on the street as long as it doesn’t cause a public nuisance.”
These actions, however, did not deter tens of thousands like Islam from reaching Dhaka to protest against what they call “an autocratic and repressive regime” that has been in power “without people’s mandate”.

As well as deleting his Messenger account and altering his Facebook profile, Islam said he was able to pass the police checkpoints and enter Dhaka by presenting himself as an everyday person going about their business.

Monsur Jilani came to Saturday’s rally from the southeastern district of Cumilla. A BNP district-level leader, Jilani has served nearly seven months in jail in two stints in the past three years.

“My only fault was that I supported the BNP. The local police raided my house and brought false charges against me. Many BNP other activists in my area have been charged in a similar manner,” Jilani told Al Jazeera, “It’s our fight for survival now. This fascist Hasina regime has to go.”

(Aljazeera)