BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi on Sunday alleged the government is destroying the readymade garments (RMG) sector in Bangladesh as part of a plot to shift the business to another country.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing, he also slammed the government for letting loose law enforcement in suppressing a justified movement of RMG workers and “killing four labourers.”
"The government is very cleverly implementing a blueprint of destroying the garment industry, the country’s largest sector for earning foreign currency. She (Sheikh Hasina) wants to create a famine again like the one in 1974 and wants to destroy the country's economy,” the BNP leader said.
He also alleged that 150 garment factories were indefinitely shut on Saturday by the owners at the instigation of the government.
The BNP leader bemoaned that police who attacked protesting RMG workers filed cases accusing 11,000 of them of staging demonstrations for their justified demands.
"People believe that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wants a guarantee to stay in power illegally by shifting the RMG business to another country,” Rizvi said.
He said not only the political leaders and workers of the opposition parties but also garment workers are not safe under the “current fascist regime.”
“Four garment workers have so far been killed by the police.”
The BNP leader said the government has once again started disappearing people through plainclothesmen to suppress the opposition’s movement.
He said the Detective Branch of police is moving around like the “Nazis” in microbuses with tinted windows and picking up pro-democracy people. “Even ordinary people are not being spared. They in the name of RAB-police are also picking up relatives, including parents, sons, children, brothers and sisters, of democratic forces and making them disappear.”
Rizvi called upon law enforcement not to oppose the people who are carrying out a movement to get back people’s right to vote.
He claimed that more than 365 BNP leaders and activists were arrested in different parts of the country in the last 24 hours as of 5pm on Sunday.
The BNP leader said over 10,770 opposition leaders and followers have been arrested in connection with the BNP’s October 28 rally and subsequent hartal and blockade programs.