BackBangladesh PM fears more attacks after mutiny
Bangladesh PM fears more attacks after mutiny
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Dhaka: Bangladesh is at risk of more attacks “to foil the country’s democracy" after a savage mutiny in which at least 74 people were killed, prime minister Sheikh Hasina said in comments published Wednesday.
The premier said her own safety was also at risk, describing as “condemnable" last week’s mutiny by paramilitary troops of the Bangladesh Rifles border guards who killed more than 50 senior army personnel.
“Conspiracies against Bangladesh are not over yet. There is still a plot to foil the country’s democracy, independence and sovereignty," she said at a seminar in comments carried by the private online newspaper bdnews24.com.
Last week’s bloodshed has presented Hasina with a major crisis little more than two months after she won power in elections that ended two years of rule by an army-backed emergency government.
“Many did not like the incident to end so soon; the game is still on and the conspirators are not taking a break," Hasina said.
She has launched an investigation into the attacks but on Tuesday the army said it was conducting its own probe independent of the elected government.
Security forces arrested five BDR guards late Tuesday, including the man accused of being the revolt’s ringleader.
The incident stemmed from a dispute over pay and conditions for the troops, whose duties include guarding Bangladesh’s long border with India.
Bangladesh’s short history has been steeped in political bloodshed, coups and counter-coups since a brutal 1971 war brought independence from Pakistan.
Hasina’s own family was targeted in a 1975 coup, with her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first head of state, killed along with his wife and three sons. Hasina and her sister were out of the country at the time.
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