The Hindu : Awami League plans fresh agitation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004

International

International

Awami League plans fresh agitation

By Haroon Habib

DHAKA, FEB. 21. The Bangladesh Opposition leader and president of the Awami League, Sheikh Hasina, has demanded holding of immediate national elections and threatened to step up her party's anti-Government agitation.

Ms. Hasina ruled out any dialogue with the Khaleda Zia regime to resolve the prevailing political impasse in the country caused by the anti-Government programme and indiscriminate police action against the agitators. More than 400 Awami activists have been jailed, party sources claimed, stating that nearly 300 middle level leaders and workers had been detained in Dhaka alone.

Expressing her anger over the "police brutalities", Ms. Hasina announced a new set of anti-Government programmes including another countrywide shutdown on February 28.

The programmes include demonstrations in the capital and elsewhere next week. "People do not want us to sit with Khaleda Zia whose hands are stained with blood," Ms. Hasina told a news conference. In another hardline decision, the party decided not to return to the Jatiya Sangsad (Parliament) although a section of her party lawmakers wanted the anti-Government movement to be carried on both in and outside Parliament.

Ms. Hasina said her party legislators would resign from Parliament but did not specify when they would do so. Awami League leaders at a meeting, with Ms Hasina in the chair, held a lengthy discussion on their strategy for the agitation. Most lawmakers at the meeting preferred strengthening the street agitation as the Government had been "oppressing" Opposition activists.

"We are at a point of no return, and there is no alternative but to unseat the BNP-Jamaat Government," the deputy leader of Opposition, Abdul Hamid, told mediapersons after the meeting.

Ms. Hasina also hinted at an alliance with "like-minded" parties. "We are open to forming a government of consensus," she said.

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