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Two Killed Ahead Of Bangladesh General Strike
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, April 8 (News Agencies) - A ruling Awami League leader and a supporter were killed Sunday when masked gunmen opened fire in southeastern Bangladesh ahead of an anti-government general strike.
Police said Golam Hossain, a leader of the League chapter of Satkania town, near Chittagong, died instantly when several gunmen wearing women's veils opened fire in a market. The other man died of his injuries in a hospital.
The Jamaat-e-Islami, which has a stronghold in the area, was blamed by police for the killings. Jamaat could not be contacted immediately for comment.
The killings came two days after Jamaat activists fought pitched battles with police in the capital Dhaka on Thursday and Friday to protest the arrest of one of its senior leaders under the controversial Public Safety Act.
Tension gripped Satkania and also Chittagong following the killings and ahead of a 72-hour shutdown from Monday called by former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led opposition alliance. The strike aims to increase pressure on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government to resign and bring forward general elections.
Home Minister Mohammad Nasim Sunday said that Jamaat's "fanatic gang" with the help of their allies were trying to foil the coming general elections.
"The government has arrested some persons recently on the basis of specific information about their involvement in planning and implementing destructive and subversive activities across the country," the official BSS news agency quoted him as saying.
Zia on Sunday rejected Nasim's charges on elections, and said, "We want elections, not them."
"The government has resorted to undemocratic and fascist actions by harassing opposition activists as they know they will lose in the elections," she said at a rare press conference at her official residence in Dhaka flanked by alliance leaders.
The BNP chief reasoned that they had called the anti-government action as the caretaker government would have only 55 days to organize polls after Sheikh Hasina stepped down, which she claimed would have given the Awami League a leverage with its influence still remaining in the administration.
Elections for 300 parliamentary seats are not scheduled before mid-July, when the government's five-year tenure expires and constitutionally will have to be held within three months from that time under a caretaker government.
She indicated that polls could not be held by June as offered by her archrival Sheikh Hasina and that the opposition campaign would continue.
Asked when the campaign would succeed, she only said "we are very hopeful the government will fall."
Asked about Bangladeshi President Shahabuddin Ahmed's request that the opposition enter into talks with the government, instead of going for strikes, Zia said his request was "unconstitutional" as the opposition campaign was "constitutional and peaceful."
Opposition activists staged pro-strike marches and torched a vehicle in Dhaka, witnesses said.
Last week's three-day nationwide general strike left six people killed and some 600 injured in clashes between rival groups as well as police.
The BNP-led alliance includes the Jamaat, the right-wing Islami Oikkya Jote and a Jatiya Party faction.
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