The BNP-led 20-party alliance on Saturday announced another 72-hour spell of nationwide hartal from 6am on Sunday, alongside its ongoing countrywide indefinite transport blockade, to push for its various demands, including a fresh national election under a non-party administration. The BNP alliance made the announcement through a press release signed by BNP joint secretary general Barkat Ullah Bulu. The alliance also called the hartal protesting the ‘arrest’ of BNP joint secretary general Salahuddin Ahmed. The shutdown will begin at 6:00 am on Sunday and end at 6:00am on Wednesday if it is not extended further as the alliance did earlier six times. The BNP alliance called the shutdown programme also to register its protest against extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, abductions, and crippling of the opposition men by the law enforcers and ruling party ‘cadres’, mass arrest of the 20-party men and common people, the government’s interference in the judiciary, undue control over the media, and demanding ‘restoration of democracy and people’s voting, basic and human rights’ and the release of its senior leaders and all political prisoners. BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia enforced the blockade for an indefinite period on January 5 after having failed to come out of her Gulshan office to join a planned rally of the 20-party alliance in the city to mark ‘Democracy Killing Day’. –UNB, Dhaka.
