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DHAKA: Three days of mass rallies began in Bangladesh on Thursday as political parties seek to drum up support ahead of the anticipated first vote since the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year.

The country’s interim government, headed by Nobel prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus, has been implementing a series of reforms. And preparing for elections since taking charge in August, after Hasina fled Dhaka amid student-led protests that called for her resignation.

Yunus has said that Bangladesh could hold elections by the end of 2025 or in the first half of 2026, provided that electoral reforms take place first.

As thousands of people gathered in Dhaka for a May Day rally organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Thursday, its leaders seek to highlight the rights of Bangladeshis to a free and fair election.

The BNP’s Vice Chairman Shamsuzzaman Dudu told Arab News: “People were deprived of their voting rights in the last three general elections due to a fraudulent environment.

“Considering the present context, people are optimistic that they would get the chance to exercise voting rights and eventually hand over power to their trusted political party.

“In this way, a democratic government will be reinstated in the country.”

He added: “These expectations and dreams of the countrymen will be represented through our mass demonstration today.”

“We want to see a Bangladesh, which is run through a democratic system, where people would be able to exercise and enjoy all of their due rights.”

The country’s largest Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also held a rally on Thursday.

They will be followed on Friday by a mass demonstration organized by the National Citizens Party, which was formed by the students who spearheaded the youth-led protests that overthrew Hasina.

On Saturday, Hefazat-e-Islam, a powerful Islamic organization in the country, is also expected to hold a “grand rally.”

The series of political rallies are taking place a little over a year since Bangladesh’s last elections in January 2024, when Hasina won a fourth term in polls that were boycotted by the main opposition parties.

Following 15 years of uninterrupted rule, Hasina and her Awami League party had allegedly politicized key government institutions, including the Election Commission.

Bangladesh is going through a “transitional moment,” said NCP Joint Member Secretary Saleh Uddin Sifat, highlighting that the interim government’s ongoing work is crucial to secure a better future for the country.

“If we can’t reform or overhaul the other machineries of the state, like (the) judiciary, police, constitution etc., before the election, then the next government might also be an authoritarian one because of the existence of the authoritarian elements within the state machineries,” Sifat told Arab News.

Sifat is expecting a good turnout at the NCP rally on Friday, which will urge for reforms in various state institutions and demand justice for alleged crimes committed by members of the Awami League.

“We believe our next general election will not simply serve as a medium of transferring power,” he said. “Rather, it will pave the way for a permanent and effective reformation of the structural issues of the country.”

NEW YORK CITY: The UN secretary-general has sounded the alarm over the “increasingly catastrophic” situation in Sudan amid deadly battles and civilian massacres in Al-Fasher, a strategic city in the country’s southwest.

It came as UN rights chief Volker Turk said that the “horror unfolding” in Sudan “knows no bounds.”

At least 542 civilians have been killed in North Darfur State, of which Al-Fasher is the capital, in the past three weeks, the UN said on Thursday, warning that the true death toll was probably “much higher.”

Darfur has become a flashpoint in the deadly war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary.

Last month, the latter withdrew from Khartoum, the country’s capital, after an offensive by government forces.

The civil war that broke out in 2023 has killed tens of thousands of people and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a statement on Wednesday, condemned the “appalling” situation in Sudan and highlighted deadly attacks on two refugee camps in Al-Fasher.
The massacres a fortnight ago at the famine-stricken Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps “reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, including humanitarian workers,” he said.

It comes as the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, seeks to capture the strategic city, the last major area in the region outside its control.

More than 400,000 people are believed to have fled the Zamzam camp in April, Guterres said.
The secretary-general highlighted his “deep concern” over reports of “harassment, intimidation and arbitrary detention” of displaced people at checkpoints in the city.

The UN and its partners “are doing what they can” to urgently boost emergency aid to the Tawila area of North Darfur, he added.

Many of the displaced who fled Zamzam camp in the wake of the attacks traveled to Tawila, a town west of Al-Fashir.

Yet the scale of needs required by the displaced is “overwhelming,” Guterres said, and that “desperate people,” mostly women and children, are crossing the Sudanese border into Chad to seek safety.

The response to the “relentless suffering and destruction” in Sudan requires safe and unhindered humanitarian access to all necessary routes in the country, he said.

The UN chief called on the warring parties to protect civilians in line with their obligations under international law.

Guterres renewed his appeal for an immediate end to hostilities and urged the international community to “act with urgency” to bring an end to the violence.

Turk, in his statement on Thursday, highlighted “the ominous warning by the RSF of ‘bloodshed’ ahead of imminent battles with the Sudanese Armed Forces and their associated armed movements.”

The UN rights chief described as “extremely disturbing” reports of extrajudicial executions in Khartoum State.

“Horrific videos circulating on social media show at least 30 men in civilian clothing being rounded up and executed by armed men in RSF uniforms in Al-Salha in southern Omdurman.”

Turk said he had “personally alerted” the leadership of both the RSF and SAF in a bid to highlight the “catastrophic human rights consequences” of the civil war.

“These harrowing consequences are a daily, lived reality for millions of Sudanese. It is well past time for this conflict to stop.”