Left parties shut down schools, shops and roads across Bangladesh today as they enforced a dawn-to-dusk general strike against Islamist parties.
More than two dozen Islamic parties want Bangladesh to be governed by sharia law, but the leftists say they should be banned under a constitutional provision that law must be secular.
More than 10,000 police were deployed in Dhaka as protesters blocked roads and traffic.
But Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir commended the Communist Party of Bangladesh, which led the protests, for the peacefulness of the action. [Morning Star] Read more
