DHAKA (AP): Muslims and student activists rallied in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka against the scheduled visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has introduced several anti-Muslim policies in his country.
Modi is due to arrive in Dhaka on March 26 to join the celebration of the country’s 50th anniversary of independence. It was the date in 1971 when Bangladesh declared itself independent from Pakistan.
Following Friday prayers, about 500 Muslims marched onto the streets outside the country’s main Baitul Mokarram Mosque in downtown Dhaka amid tight security. The protesters took their shoes in their hands to show disrespect to Modi. They chanted anti-India and anti-Modi slogans, asking him not to come to Dhaka.
The protesters criticised Modi for killing Muslims in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and other parts of India, for not signing the long-disputed Teesta river water-sharing deal, and killing Bangladeshi civilians at the border.
Separately, about 200 student activists marched through streets near Dhaka University campus where they called Modi “the butcher of Gujarat. Some protesters carried posters reading “Go Back Modi, Go Back India” and “Go Back Killer Modi.”
In a statement released before the protest, the Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, one of the organisers of the protest, said that incidents of cow vigilante violence against Muslims had increased in Modi’s India. Also, the Indian government is building a temple on the site of the historic Babri Mosque, it added.
Modi’s visit is the first foreign trip since the coronavirus pandemic began. He is scheduled to travel to a place outside Dhaka that is sacred to the Matua community of India’s West Bengal state.
