Supporters of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League poured onto the streets here on Wednesday to defy a two-day strike called by Jamaat-e-Islami party, which was protesting against the death sentence given to one of its leaders by the war crimes tribunal.
Police pickets were set up across the streets of Dhaka during the strike. However, people and supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League held marches, shouted slogans against former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for having allied with the Jamaat.
“I congratulate the people of Dhaka for not supporting the strike called by the Khaleda Zia-supported Jamaat-e-Islami and for thronging the streets for your leader Sheikh Hasina. I hope by 2015, the Jamaat camp will be ended. I thank you all for cancelling the strike. Long live Bangladesh, long live Bangabandhu (first president of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman),” said the country’s Minister of Relief and Disaster Management, Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina opened an inquiry into war crimes committed during the nine-month war for independence and liberation in 2010.
The tribunals have angered Islamists with their sentencing pattern, terming the decisions a politically-motivated attempt by Sheikh Hasina to persecute the leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami, a key part of the opposition coalition.
A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal sentenced A.T.M. Azharul Islam , 62, assistant secretary general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party Islamist party leader to death on Tuesday after convicting him of atrocities committed during a 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
He was found guilty of five out of six charges including the murder of hundreds of minority Hindus, rape, abduction and torture, prosecutors said. (ANI)