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.