Parliamentary election in Bangladesh: Police fire shots at opposition protest

Parliamentary election in Bangladesh
Police fire shots at opposition protest

January 7, 2024, 10:37 a.m

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Bangladesh will elect a new parliament this Sunday. The opposition is boycotting the election. The authorities in the South Asian country are already taking massive action against demonstrations in advance. The police say they fire weapons during a protest.

In Bangladesh, police say they fired shots during clashes with the opposition during a protest against the ongoing general election. Officers fired weapons to disperse up to 60 opposition members who used burning tires to set up a roadblock, Mokhlesur Rahman, deputy police chief in the port city of Chittagong, told AFP. “No one is hurt.” The situation is now “under control”.

Parliamentary elections began in the South Asian country this morning. Around 120 million people are entitled to vote in the South Asian country with a population of 170 million. However, the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is boycotting the election. She also called on voters to boycott.

Huge presence of security forces

The BNP and human rights organizations accuse the increasingly autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of targeting the political opposition and having thousands of critics arrested. Observers expect the 76-year-old to win a fourth consecutive term and a fifth overall. The polling stations are scheduled to close at 5 p.m. (local time), and the first results were expected around midnight. The results are expected on Monday.

After casting her vote, 76-year-old Hasina used harsh words against the opposition party. This is a “terrorist organization,” Hasina told journalists in the capital Dhaka. She herself is trying her best to “ensure that democracy remains in this country.”

The deployment of security forces during the election is massive: around 175,000 police officers and more than 515,000 reservists are deployed across the country, according to the electoral authority. The authorities in the South Asian country had already taken action against the opposition in the months before the election.

Repression against opposition before the elections

The party and its allies held large demonstrations in the run-up to the election. They called on Hasina’s government to resign, dissolve parliament and hand power to an interim government to allow fair elections. Because the Prime Minister did not comply, the BNP is not putting forward any candidates for the 300 seats in Parliament. According to the BNP, its entire leadership and around 25,000 other politicians were arrested. Tens of thousands more went into hiding. There had previously been large demonstrations against Hasina.

The head of the election commission, Kazi Habibul Awal, spoke of violence in the run-up to the election in a televised speech. A train was set on fire on Friday. Four people died in the fire. There were arson attacks on several polling stations on Saturday. The police blamed the BNP for the incidents. They in turn blamed the government.

The Muslim-majority country has experienced an economic boom since 2009 during Hasina’s reign, with average income increasing significantly. Recently, however, high inflation has caused a lot of problems for many people. Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated along with his family in a military coup in 1975. Hasina survived because she was in Germany at the time.