Govt trying to bar BNP from holding mass rallies: Fakhrul

The government has been trying to foil all divisional rallies of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), said the party's Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir. 

BNP has been holding divisional rallies in protest of the price hike of daily necessities and in demand of democracy. However the law enforcement agencies have continued all efforts including killing, attacking, injuring and arresting opposition leaders and activists and ordinary people to foil these programmes, said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir during a press briefing at the BNP chairperson's office in the capital's Gulshan area on Thursday (17 November).

So far BNP has held six divisional rallies. People are attending the rallies to demand their basic rights of food, clothing, democratic rights and to protest against all the misdeeds of this government, said the BNP leader.

However, the transport owners are creating public unrest by going on strike on the rally days, upon the directions of the government, claim Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

He said, "I call upon the economists and civil society individuals to determine the amount of economic damage to the country caused by the strikes and reveal it to the public. The administration gives the excuse that if we hold a rally, it will cause public nuisance, and the movement of people will be obstructed, while the government is making all the people suffer by holding undeclared strikes all over the country."

"In some places they are shooting themselves and filing cases accusing opposition leaders and activists, in some places they are arresting them and sending them to jail in old cases, and in some places they are filing cases under the Explosives Act against opposition leaders and activists by planting bombs by themselves. This has already come up in the speeches of the ministers of the government."