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Two-day strike in Bangladesh begins to protest Islamist party chief's death sentence

Xinhua, May 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

A two-day nationwide shutdown called by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami began on Sunday morning in protest of an apex court verdict that upheld death penalty for the Islamist party's chief for 1971 war crimes.

Hours after the Appellate Division bench of Bangladesh Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday dismissed the final review petition of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party's Ameer (president) Motiur Rahman Nizami who is now behind the bar, the party called the 48-hour non-stop nationwide hartal for May 8 and 9.

Nizami, who is Jamaat chief since November 2000, now only has the option of seeking the president's mercy to stall his imminent execution.

On account of the strike, the traffic on short routes in and around Dhaka was almost regular as almost no activities of pro-hartal activists were visible. Man-paddled cycle rickshaws were dominating the city streets while presence of private cars was thin due to fear of possible vandalism and arson attack.

In other parts of the country, the shutdown also reportedly have almost no impact on people's routine life.

Academic activities also hampered to some extent to a number of educational institutions though attendance in the government and private offices was as usual. But businesses in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country opened as per schedule Sunday morning.

No major incidents have so far been reported.

Seventy-four year old Nizami served as the agriculture and industries minister in Khaleda Zia's 2001-2006 cabinet. Nizami's party says he was deprived of justice. But the government says the trail met proper standards.

Nizami is among the top Jamaat leaders who have been tried in two war crimes tribunals which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasian's Bangladesh Awami League-led government formed in 2010 to bring the perpetrators of 1971 to book.

Nizami was indicted in 2012 with 16 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people to Muslims during the 1971 war.

The indictment order said Nizami was a key organizer of the Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of then Pakistani army which planned and executed the killing of Bengali intellectuals at the end of the war. Endit