72-hour hartal again from Sunday: 20-Party

The Bnp-led 20-Party Alliance has called another 72 hours of hartal from Sunday to protest abduction, killing, enforced disappearance, arrest of Bnp joint secretary general Salahuddin Ahmed and press the demand for his release.The fresh call of hartal was announced through a press release signed by Barkatullah Bulu another joint secretary general of the party on Friday. Bulu came with the statement three days after another party joint secretary general Salahuddin Ahmed ‘was taken away by armed law enforcers’ from his hideout in Uttara residential area.

Bnp programmes used to be announced by Joint secretary Ruhul Kabir Rizvi from the party central office at Naya Paltan which was closed following his first arrest on last January 03 night. Rizvi however did manage to flee from the captors when he was admitted to the Apollo Hospital and resumed his work from an undisclosed location.
Following Rizvi’s second arrest from a Baridhara house in early February, joint secretary general Salahuddin Ahmed started announcing party and alliance decisions and programmes from an undisclosed location.
After Salahuddin’s being picked up on Wednesday night Bnp chief Begum Khaleda Zia addressed a press conference on Friday explaining the logic behind the current blockade programme of her party and said the movement would continue till it reached logical conclusion.

Barkatullah Bulu said in his press release that the 20-Party Alliance has full support to the statement of Khaleda
Zia to continue the movement and urged workers of the alliance and the people to make it a success.

“We strongly demand initiatives to resolve the ongoing political crisis by accepting the guidelines given by Khaleda Zia,” said the statement.
The statement termed the reaction of Awami League leader Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif on Khaleda Zia’s press conference indecent and devoid political decorum and etiquate and condemned it.
It said that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at an election preparatory meeting on December 19 in 2013 had made the commitments to continue talks after the poll and bydissolve Parliament if a consensus is made.
The AL is refusing to sit for a dialogue for a consensus over a fresh poll and they have also forgotten the commitment of the prime minister, the statement added. – Staff Reporter