To disperse stone-throwing mobs blocking major roadways in the nation’s capital, Dhaka, during a
protest calling for the resignation of the prime minister, Bangladeshi police have used rubber bullets and
tear gas.
Since last year, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies have protested
repeatedly, calling on Sheikh Hasina to resign and give way to a caretaker administration that would
oversee the elections that are slated to take place in January 2019.
When police intervened to clear throngs of people who had collected in the morning to obstruct traffic on
major thoroughfares in the city, clashes broke out in a number of spots on Saturday.
At least four areas in the city, according to Ahmed, saw skirmishes between police and demonstrators.
Journalists from Agence France-Presse witnessed protesters reply by throwing rocks at riot police and
their cars at one of the demonstration locations in Dholaikhal, a former neighborhood that is now a center
for auto repair shops.
Six demonstrators had been admitted to the hospital with injuries, according to Bacchu Mia, a police
officer at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Trucks and buses were trapped in traffic, severely disrupting transportation ties between the capital and
other regions of the nation.
Since 2009, Hasina’s Awami League has been in power in Bangladesh. It has been charged with
violating human rights, being corrupt, and edging closer to totalitarianism.
Since the beginning of the year, BNP-led demonstrations have been more frequent, attracting tens of
thousands of people to the streets for protests this month.
Before this week’s gathering in front of the party headquarters, police detained at least 500 opposition
activists.
In Bangladesh, where the ruling party dominates the legislature and effectively operates it as a rubber-
stamp body, the political climate has drawn concern from Western governments.
Thousands of opposition activists have allegedly been detained by the government’s security forces,
hundreds have allegedly been killed extrajudicially, and hundreds more have vanished.
As a result of the alleged violations of human rights, the US imposed sanctions on the elite Rapid Action
Battalion security team and seven of its senior officers.
After being found guilty of corruption, the BNP leader and former adversary of Hasina, Khaleda Zia, is
currently under house imprisonment.
