Strike paralyzes Bangladesh's port of Chittagong

Strike paralyzes Bangladesh's port of Chittagong

DHAKA (Reuters): Bangladesh's main port of Chittagong was paralyzed on Sunday by a day-long strike called by opposition parties demanding the resignation of the prime minister, only two days after it resumed operations following a similar stoppage.

Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad slammed the opposition, saying they were trying to establish "Taleban-style" government in Bangladesh -- a reference to the strict Islamic regime in Afghanistan.

Port officials said 55 ships were stranded by Sunday's strike, which also disrupted transport services and shut businesses, offices and schools in the port city. Chittagong port handles 80 percent of Bangladesh's exports and imports.

Witnesses said paramilitary forces were called in to help maintain order in the city following a number of incidents last Saturday.

Police said pro-strike activists set off crude bombs and damaged several cars on the streets of Chittagong last Saturday night.

"It was rather peaceful on Sunday with only one man injured by a bomb explosion and three activists being detained," one Chittagong police officer said.

The strikes were called by a four-party opposition alliance to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the overturning of a court ruling banning certain Islamic edicts involving women's rights.

Opposition parties have organized at least 75 days of country- wide stoppages since Hasina took power in June 1996, costing the impoverished country billions of dollars in lost production and exports. Chittagong port has been routinely closed during the stoppages.

The alliance, headed by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), wants the release of detained opposition leaders and activists, including those held by police during violent protests over the edicts last week.

The protests saw at least 15 people killed, including nine shot by police in the eastern town of Brahmanbaria last Tuesday. Two men died when a bomb exploded on a rickshaw in the capital Dhaka on February 3 and one policeman was killed by Islamic militants in the city on the same day.

At least three people were killed and scores injured when two trains derailed in southeastern Bangladesh in the past four days. Railway officials and police said the incidents were the result of sabotage by Islamic militants.

Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad briefed foreign diplomats in Dhaka on the unrest and vowed to bring the culprits to book.

"The perpetrators of recent violence have proclaimed to set up a Taleban-style government in Bangladesh," state BSS news agency quoted Azad as telling the diplomats.

"Forces (pursuing the Talebani goal) are not only defying the law of this land but are also constantly jeopardizing peace and security," he said. "We shall not allow any intolerance... nor shall we allow anyone to interfere with people's religious rights according to their whims."

The High Court banned in December certain fatwas, or Islamic edicts, which could have subjected women to torture for breaking Islamic laws and prevented them from mixing and working with men.

The protests against the ruling were launched by the radical Islami Oikyo Jote group, which belongs to the Khaleda-led alliance, and were later joined by the other alliance partners and the Islamic Constitution Movement, another radical group.

The strike in Chittagong on Sunday, a working day in Muslim Bangladesh, would be followed by a country-wide dawn-to-dusk shutdown next Tuesday, and a "siege" of the government secretariat in Dhaka on February 18, said BNP secretary-general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan.

"Our programs are intended to force the corrupt, inept and repressive government from power," Bhuiyan told Reuters on Sunday.

Khaleda on Sunday told an estimated 30,000 alliance supporters in Brahmanbaria that "the government had brutally taken nine lives in the town in a continuing orgy of killings to perpetrate its power.

"But nothing will stop its imminent fall," she said.

The alliance, which also groups the Jatiya Party of jailed former president Hossain Mohammad Ershad and the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, has demanded early parliamentary elections, which are not due before July 13, 2001.

Hasina has turned down the demand and warned that her political foes are trying to push the country into instability and chaos.