DHAKA, 27 March 2004 — Bangladesh heralded the 33rd anniversary of its independence, won in a bloody war against Pakistan, with a 21-gun salute at dawn yesterday.
The military later showed off its might at a parade through Dhaka witnessed by President Iajuddin Ahmed and Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
The parade featured Chinese-made tanks, fighter jets and elite commandos, cheered on by thousands of people.
Thousands more took off their shoes to throng the National Martyrs’ Memorial just outside the capital where they placed wreaths in memory of the estimated three million killed in the nine-month war in 1971.
Bangladesh had originally been part of Pakistan in the 1947 division of the subcontinent between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan.
“The supreme sacrifices and unmatched valor of our freedomfighters, armed forces, political leaders and activists, teachers, students and professionals, and organizers of the liberation war are written in the golden letters of history,” Ahmed said in a statement. The government declared Saturday an extra day off as the celebrations coincided with the Friday weekly holiday.
Meanwhile, main opposition leader Hasina Wajed marked the independence by leading thousands of supporters in a march calling for the government to quit.
“The bell for the government to fall has started ringing,” Hasina told her slogan-chanting supporters before they marched from the headquarters of her Awami League in central Dhaka.
“We will, God willing, free the nation from the hands of this failed government which has no right to stay in power,” she said.
Hasina has demanded that the government of Khaleda Zia, her longstanding rival, quit by April 30 or face more heated protests.
But Zia’s Islamist-allied government enjoys a two-thirds parliamentary majority and has vowed to serve out its term which ends in 2006.
Western diplomats were puzzled at how the opposition could unseat the government by April 30. “None of our calculations or reasoning have given a clue to this opposition plan,” one diplomat told AFP.
Hasina and Khaleda have a bitter, personal rivalry which analysts blame for setting back development of the cash-strapped country.
Bangladeshi Commerce Minister Resigns Over Taiwan Office Issue
Bangladeshi Commerce Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury stepped down from the Cabinet amid heavy criticism over his role in permitting Taiwan to open a representative office in Dhaka, official sources said yesterday.
Chowdhury’s resignation triggered a minor Cabinet reshuffle in which former air force chief and Interior Minister Altaf Hussain Chowdhury was replaced by his deputy Lutfuzzaman Babar. Diplomats said the establishment of the Taiwanese office in the country’s capital, Dhaka, angered Beijing which considers Bangladesh as one of its most dependable allies in Asia.
