DHAKA, 29 January 2005 — Bangladesh’s opposition Awami League yesterday called for a 72-hour nationwide strike from today to protest the killings of a top party leader and former Finance Minister A.M.S. Kibria and four other party workers in a bomb attack on Thursday.
While three were killed on the spot at Habiganj, Kibria and another party worker succumbed to their injuries later.
Awami League acting Joint Secretary Obaidul Qader announcing the shutdown said the opposition would take further action “if the government does not resign by this time.”
The Awami League gave the call as thousands of mourners attended funeral prayers for Kibria. The attack came just over a week before Dhaka hosts a summit of South Asian leaders.
Kibria’s widow Asma told reporters she did not expect to get justice for her slain husband.
Asked about the perpetrators of the attack, she replied, “Better ask the alliance government,” the private UNB agency quoted her as saying.
Bangladesh’s government is a four-party Islamist-allied coalition led by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Scores of police baton charged Awami League activists and used tear gas in Dhaka’s university area yesterday, witnesses told AFP. The violence broke out as party members filed past Kibria’s coffin which was placed at a monument marking Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, the witnesses said.
“Four buses and a motorcycle have been set alight by Awami League demonstrators but the violence has been contained so far,” police officer-in-charge Mahbubur Rahman told AFP.
Saber Chowdhury, political secretary to League leader Hasina Wajed, said the killings were part of a pattern of violence against the party. “It’s not an isolated incident, it’s part of an organized and coordinated design to eliminate the secular democratic and progressive forces in this country,” he said. “The theater of terrorism has moved to Bangladesh.”
Last August, a grenade attack on an Awami League rally killed more than 20 people. The opposition branded it an assassination attempt against Hasina, a former prime minister.
In May, lawmaker Ahsanullah Master was gunned down at a League rally near Dhaka.
“This is the second (Awami League) member of parliament to have been assassinated within a year ... the country is being held hostage to violent extremism and radicalism,” Chowdhury said.
Chowdhury accused the government of failing to act to stop violence against the Awami League, saying it “will merely encourage the killers to continue with the killings.”
Police are investigating the attack in which officers said a grenade was thrown at the close of the rally.
A US Embassy spokesman in Dhaka called on the Bangladeshi government to “vigorously investigate” the attack.
Kibria’s nephew also was killed and at least 70 people were admitted to hospital after the blast. About a dozen were in serious condition yesterday, police said.
