Nationwide strike brings Bangladesh to a halt

DHAKA: Bangladesh was paralysed Sunday by a nationwide general strike called by the main opposition alliance to demand the removal of what they claimed were 'partisan' election commissioners, police said. Cars and buses were off the roads and schools, shops and private offices in major cities except the southern port of Chittagong were closed, police said.   

Passenger and freight transport was also severely disrupted as no inter-regional buses or trucks took to the roads on Sunday, which is normally a working day in the Muslim-majority country.   

The general strike was called by a 14-party alliance, led by the main opposition Awami League, to press for the removal of the newly-appointed chief election commissioner and two of his colleagues.   

The coalition said the appointment of the three commissioners had turned the independent body into a "wing of the ruling four-party alliance" and warned they would not take part in any polls run by the present election commission.   

The country's four-party Islamist allied government, which has a hefty majority in parliament and whose mandate runs out in late 2006, rejected the opposition charge.   

The strike followed clashes between police and opposition activists in Dhaka on Saturday in which at least 15 people were injured as police used batons and fired tear-gas shells on opposition supporters who hurled bricks.   

More than 8,500 police, paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles and the elite Rapid Action Battalion were on guard in the streets Sunday in the capital to prevent any violence, Dhaka police official Mahbubur Rashid said.   

"So far we have no report of violence anywhere in the city," he said.   

In the southern city of Khulna, home to some of the country's biggest state-owned jute and paper mills, there was little disruption.   

"The mills are open and train and ferry services have been uninterrupted. Only the main markets did not open and the inter-district bus and truck services have not moved," said Khulna metropolitan police commissioner Khan Sayeed Hassan.   

Chittagong was left out of the strike call as Sunday is the death centenary of a sufi saint who lived near the port city. The strike is the first this year called by opposition parties. Last year the Awami League and its allies called 18 nationwide shutdowns despite pleas from aid donors and business groups who say the strikes cost the  impoverished nation's economy tens of millions of dollars annually.