HUNDREDS of Bangladesh opposition activists have been arrested, police and party officials said today, ahead of a major rally where campaigners hope more than a million people take to the streets of Dhaka.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its leftist allies, along with several Islamist outfits, have been mounting protests demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit and let a neutral government oversee elections due by the end of January.

Hasina – daughter of the country’s founding leader – has been in power for 15 years and has overseen rapid economic growth with Bangladesh overtaking neighbouring India in gross domestic product per capita, but her government was accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

The BNP has called a “grand rally” for tomorrow, with party spokesman Zahir Uddin Swapan saying it expects “more than a million people” to turn out.

“A sea of people will join the protest,” he told AFP.

He said police arrested at least 1,500 people, including several senior BNP officials, in the past four days in an effort to disrupt preparations.

“They have raided door to door and arrested people while they were holding meetings indoors,” he said.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) spokesman Faruk Hossain confirmed there had been detentions but rejected the figure, saying some 400 BNP activists and supporters had been held in the past week.

“We are arresting only those people who face cases or arrest warrants,” he told AFP.

Police have set up checkposts at entry points to the capital, Dhaka police chief Mohammad Asaduzzaman told AFP, in what the opposition said was a tactic to prevent its activists entering the city.

Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also called a demonstration on Saturday, but DMP spokesman Faruk said authorities banned the party from holding any protests.

“We’ll defy the ban and hold our protests peacefully, holding protests is our constitutional right,” said party spokesman Hamidur Rahman Azad, adding police had arrested more than 140 Jamaat activists over the past three days.

Western governments have expressed concern over the political climate in Bangladesh, where Hasina’s ruling Awami League dominates the legislature and runs it virtually as a rubber stamp.

Her security forces were accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters and disappearing hundreds of leaders and supporters.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion security force and seven of its senior officers were sanctioned by Washington in 2021 in response to those alleged rights abuses.

The BNP’s ailing leader Khaleda Zia, a two-time prime minister and old foe of Hasina’s, was effectively under house arrest after a conviction on graft charges. – AFP, October 27, 2023.