DHAKA, Bangladesh Dozens of people were injured in Bangladesh’s capital when baton-wielding riot police clashed with stone-throwing protesters marching on government offices to demand electoral reforms, witnesses and a news report said.
Police also used tear gas to scatter nearly 5,000 opposition demonstrators who tried to overrun barbed-wire barricades in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi residential district in efforts to march on election commission offices a few blocks away.
At least 60 people, including five policemen, were injured in the violence, the United News of Bangladesh news agency said. The protesters also burned tires and set fire to a van, it said.
The demonstration shut down businesses and disrupted traffic in the vicinity, residents said.
The protesters defied a police ban on rallies and meetings in the area.
Nearly 7,000 security forces were deployed around the election commission to enforce the ban and prevent protesters from laying siege to the office.
“It’s our democratic right to stage such protests. Police can’t stop us,” opposition spokesman Tofayel Ahmed told The Associated Press.
The protest was called by opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, who has threatened to boycott general elections scheduled for January unless reforms are undertaken.
Hasina’s Awami League party and its 13 smaller allies have planned a series of protests this month against Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s administration to press their demands, including a daylong nationwide strike on Sunday.
Zia’s five-year term expires next month, and a nonparty caretaker government is to take over to hold elections in 90 days.
The alliance accuses the chief election commissioner, M.A. Aziz, of favoring Zia’s government. It also says the election commission included fake voters in a recently compiled electoral roll. Aziz and the government have denied the allegations.
