Huge Bangladesh rally warns ousted PM’s allies plotting return

AFP | Dhaka                                                  

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Allies of ousted Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina were working to undermine the interim government that replaced her regime, two of her leading opponents warned yesterday at a huge rally in the capital Dhaka.

Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India in August as a student-led uprising saw protesters flood streets of the capital Dhaka, bringing a dramatic end to her iron-fisted tenure. Since then a caretaker government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has taken charge, tasked with implementing far-reaching democratic reforms and staging fresh elections.

Hundreds of thousands of people attended yesterday’s demonstration, one of the biggest since Hasina’s toppling, which was organised by her longtime opponents of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

“We have gathered here to protect the voting rights of the people and to prevent the re-emergence of fascists,” Tarique Rahman, the BNP’s exiled vice-chairman, told attendees via a videolink from his home in London. “We must be cautious.

Though the autocrats are gone, ill forces are still active. We cannot afford for the interim government to fail.” The BNP was subjected to repeated crackdowns under Hasina’s government, which rights groups say was behind the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.

“Sheikh Hasina has fled, but the conspiracy continues,” BNP general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told the rally. “Her associates are plotting to undermine the movement.

We must be very careful.” Rahman, the son of two-time Bangladeshi premier and Hasina’s chief rival Khaleda Zia, has lived in London since 2008 and was convicted in absentia of graft charges during Hasina’s government. Thousands of BNP members were arrested in the months before January elections that returned Hasina to power, staged in the absence of credible opposition parties.

The party has reasserted itself in the wake of Hasina’s ouster, and several members of Yunus’ interim government have served under prior BNP governments.