WORLD> Asia-Pacific
Bangladesh faces security challenge ahead of poll
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-05 16:40

DHAKA -- Ensuring the safety of candidates and voters ahead of this month's election could be a major challenge for Bangladesh's army-backed interim government, political parties and police said.

A plain clothes member of Bangladesh's special security force stands guard outside the home of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed in Dhaka, November 6. Bangladesh swung into election mode on Tuesday after the country's major political parties pledged to stand in a national poll on December 29 to restore democracy to the emergency-ruled country. [Agencies]

"Political leaders, especially those contesting the coming vote, are being increasingly exposed to threats to their lives," said Abdur Razzak, a senior leader of Awami League, one of the country's leading political parties.

"This is a major challenge the government needs to address quickly and firmly if the election is to be free, fair and peaceful," he told a party meeting late on Thursday.

He was speaking after another senior leader of the party, Begum Motia Chowdhury, a candidate in the polls, received a threatens from the Islamist Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen group.

The group warned that Motia, a former agriculture minister, would face the consequences unless she stopped talking tough against terrorism, especially about Islamists seeking to turn Muslim-majority Bangladesh into a sharia-based state.

The Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) was blamed for a series of bomb attacks in August 2005, killing dozens of people, including judges, lawyers and policemen across the country. Over 150 people were wounded in the attacks, some carried out by members of JMB's suicide squads.

Police said on Friday they were checking all security systems and would tighten them up ahead of the polls, which the interim authority has vowed to make peaceful, fair and credible.

"We shall leave no stone unturned to ensure maximum security in the run up to the vote. Candidates, voters and party leaders would be given the best possible protection," said a senior police officer, who asked not to be named.

The December 29 vote will cap nearly two years of emergency rule by the interim authority, which took over in January 2007 and launched a crackdown on political corruption.