Opposition Head under 'Virtual House Arrest' as Bangladesh Deploys Military in Poll Countdown
Bangladesh's main opposition party said Thursday its leader Khaleda Zia was being kept under virtual house arrest after she called for a mass march aimed at scuppering a January 5 election.
"Since yesterday she has been under virtual house arrest," Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) vice-president Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury told Agence France Presse.
"The police are not allowing anyone, including party leaders and activists, to meet her. It is part of a government move to foil the December 29 march for democracy," he said.
Zia has called on her followers to mass in the capital Dhaka this Sunday to derail what she has called a "farcical" election.
The BNP and 20 other opposition parties are boycotting the polls while the main Islamist party has been banned from standing.
Zia, a former premier, was allowed to host a Christmas Day reception for members of the minority Christian community on Wednesday, but Chowdhury said party officials were prevented from meeting her.
One current member of parliament and a former lawmaker were detained by police as they tried to meet her on Wednesday, said Chowdhury.
Deputy Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Lutful Kabir rejected the claim that Zia was detained, saying that offices had "enhanced her security" outside her home in Dhaka's upmarket Gulshan neighborhood.
He confirmed the arrests of the current and former BNP lawmakers.
Bangladesh deployed tens of thousands of troops in a bid to contain deadly political violence ahead of the elections next month.
With Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina determined that the January 5 general election goes ahead despite claims that it will be a farce, troops are being sent to nearly every corner of the country at the end of its deadliest year for political violence since independence.
The boycotts have highlighted the growing political polarization in the country of 153 million that won its independence from Pakistan in 1971.
While Bangladesh has had a deeply troubled history since independence, with more than a dozen coups, this year has been the bloodiest since it broke free from its former rulers in Islamabad.
Protests over the polls and over the death sentences handed down to Islamists convicted of war crime during the 1971 independence conflict have left at least 268 people dead since January.
A constable was burned to death in a petrol bomb attack on a police vehicle Tuesday night while two more people succumbed to their burn injuries Wednesday.
Much of the violence has been blamed on supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party which has been barred from fielding candidates on January 5.
Three rounds of U.N.-brokered last-minute talks between the government and opposition have failed to resolve the dispute between the Awami League and the BNP whose leaders despise each other.
The United States, European Union and the Commonwealth countries have announced they will not send observers to the election, seriously denting its credibility.
Strikes and blockades have crippled the economy, affecting millions of poor farmers and the urban middle class in what is the world's eighth most populous country and one of the poorest in Asia.
The strikes have done further damage to an economy already reeling from the impact on the crucial garment sector from a factory collapse in April which sparked widespread industrial unrest.
Source: Agence France Presse
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