Bangladesh Citizens Protest Failing Government

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Schools and businesses across Dhaka and other major cities shut down, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) aims to exploit the government’s ability to run the country effectively.

Continued protest of government inability to run the government
Continued protest of government inability to run the government

Bangladesh is one of Asia’s poorest nations; 150 million people populate the nation and nearly 40 percent of who live below the poverty line.

The BNPs nationwide strike has disrupted transport services as thousands of riot police were patrolling the streets of the capital and schools and businesses were shut on Monday.

The BNP, led by former prime minister and Hasina’s arch rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, is one of the two biggest political parties in Bangladesh along with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

Power has rotated between the two women for decades, and the BNP is expected to be a major contender in the next election, due by the end of 2013.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took office in early 2009 and general elections are due in 2013. The BNP campaign piles pressure on a government struggling with discontent over high prices, high unemployment and lacking public services.

A homemade bomb reportedly exploded on the campus of a Dhaka university, injuring two people.

These recent actions are an attempt to destabilize the country according to the government of Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, whom denies the allegations.

The BNP hopes to exploit discontent over food inflation rising to double digits in recent months, and the crash in the stock market.

Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dhaka, said 10,000 police officers were deployed across the country to deal with strikers who “want a total shut-down of the entire country”.

Monday’s strike counts as the third that the BNP has called since it suffered defeat in the December 2008 elections.

Small protests and marches were held across Dhaka chanting antigovernment slogans.

In the northwestern city of Rajshahi, opposition supporters threw stones at police, and officers responded with tear gas.

The riot police were armed with water cannons surrounding the governments head office.

Hasina’s government was widely applauded for its initial success in bringing down food and other commodity prices, and reducing diesel and fertilizer prices to help farmers, the mainstay of the country’s agrarian economy.

But soaring prices in global markets and corruption have partly driven costs higher, with food inflation hitting 11 percent in December; its highest level in three years, with the central bank warning it could go up further. The government does supply cheap rice to the poor, but this fails to meet demand.

Most of Hasina’s cabinet ministers are untainted by charges of personal corruption; they are blamed for supporting graft by junior officials.

Bangladesh ranks as one of the world’s most corrupt nations.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Strike cripples Bangladesh cities -7 February 2011

Reuters – What next for impoverished Bangladesh’s rotating PM? – 8 February 2011

Winnipeg Free Press – Bangladesh police raid opposition headquarters, fire tear gas after protests turn unruly – 6 February 2011


Author: Impunity Watch Archive