As two more people were killed in the build-up to the January 5 poll, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said police were barring anyone from visiting their leader
Khaleda ZiaThree-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ...
at her home in Dhaka.
The move comes after Zia, a two-time former premier and arch rival of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums..
, called for supporters to stage a mass march on the capital this Sunday aimed at scuppering the polls. The BNP is one of 21 opposition parties which are boycotting the elections over Hasina's refusal to stand aside and allow a neutral caretaker government to organise the contest.
The country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami
...
The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka
The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an
independentbranch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
, has also been banned from taking part.
"Since yesterday she has been under virtual house arrest," BNP vice-president Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury told AFP.
"Police are not allowing anyone, including party leaders and activists, to meet her. It is part of a government move to foil the December 29 march for democracy."
Deputy commissioner of Dhaka police Lutful Kabir confirmed that extra officers had been deployed outside Zia's home in the upmarket Gulshan neighbourhood but said the move was designed to "enhance her security".
Police confirmed two senior BNP members, including a current politician, were tossed in the slammer
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
outside Zia's home on Wednesday night but denied the arrests were made because they wanted to meet her. Another BNP politician was jugged
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
separately in the capital on Thursday, police front man Masudur Rahman told AFP.
With Hasina and her Awami League party determined the election goes ahead, troops are being sent to nearly every corner of the country at the end of what has been an unprecedented year for political violence.
A total of 271 people have been killed since January, either in protests at the elections or by Islamists who have seen several of their leaders sentenced to death from crimes dating back to the 1971 independence war.