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Police Bangladesh used tear gas, stun grenades and batons to disperse protesters outside the National Parliament complex on Friday as tensions rose over the interim government’s new political charter.
Some protesters vandalized a police vehicle and makeshift tents, and others clashed with soldiers and security officials in the capital DhakaEyewitnesses said several people were injured.
Clashes followed after several hundred people, who described themselves as those whose protests had ousted the former prime minister Sheikh HasinaThe demonstration started on Friday. They expressed anger that their concerns were not addressed in the new charter despite the deaths of their loved ones during last year’s popular uprising against Hasina.
Interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunushad on Friday invited the country’s major political parties to sign a new political charter to pave the way for political reforms.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and sixteen other parties, including eight like-minded parties as well as smaller Islamic parties, signed the charter.
The country’s largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, was initially undecided, but later agreed to sign the charter. Four leftist parties and a newly formed student-led party, the National Citizen Party, did not participate.
Yunus told the audience gathered outside Parliament House that the signatures meant a new Bangladesh was taking shape.
“We have entered a civilized society from barbarism,” he said.
The “July National Charter”, named after the national uprising that began in July 2024, outlines a roadmap for constitutional amendments, legal changes and the enactment of new laws.
A National Consensus Commission formed by Yunus’ government prepared the charter after a series of negotiations with 30 political parties. Hasina’s Awami League party and its former allies were not part of the talks.
Hasina, who was ousted last August following massive protests, is in exile in India and is being tried in absentia on charges of crimes against humanity. The United Nations has said 1,400 people may have been killed in last year’s week-long rebellion.
Yunus has promised to hold the next national elections in February. But the question is whether the elections will be inclusive without Hasina’s party and its allies.