DHAKA – Bangladesh has deployed border guards to help maintain order, a senior officer said today after deadly protests by hardline Islamists against a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rocked the Muslim majority nation.
The violence, which began yesterday at the main mosque in the capital Dhaka, spread to several key districts in the South Asian nation of 168 million, leaving five people dead and scores injured.
Facebook has been restricted in the country, a company spokesman said after users complained they could not access the site since late yesterday afternoon as images and reports of the violence were shared in social media.
A spokesman for the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), which also acts as a reserve paramilitary force to maintain law and order, said it had deployed troops since yesterday night.
“With the instructions of the Home Ministry and in aid of the civil administration, the required number of BGB has been deployed in different districts of the country,” lieutenant colonel Fayzur Rahman said, without disclosing the numbers involved.
Rahman, who is the operations director of the force, said there had been no reports of violence after their deployment.
“Situation is normal,” he said.
The disturbances came as Bangladesh marked 50 years of independence with rights groups calling for an end to growing authoritarianism including forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Police said four bodies of members of Hefazat-e-Islam, a hardline Islamist group, were brought to Chittagong Medical College Hospital after violence erupted at Hathazari, a rural town where the group’s main leaders are based.
A supporter of the group was also killed in clashes in the eastern border town of Brahmanbaria, another key bastion of Hefazat. – AFP, March 27, 2021
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