Dhaka, April 11:

Dozens were injured in the Bangladeshi capital today as police fired tear gas at thousands of Islamic activists protesting against the emergency government’s bid to ensure equal rights for women, police said.

The roads in front of Dhaka’s main mosque became a battleground as about 5,000 men armed with bamboo sticks and bricks clashed with police, who responded with tear gas and batons, deputy police commissioner Mazharul Islam said.

“They attacked the policemen with bricks and sticks immediately after the weekly Friday prayers. We shot tear gas shells and baton-charged the unruly activists,” Islam said, adding that dozens were injured in the clashes.

Witnesses said at least 100-150 were injured including three photo-journalists as police let off scores of tear gas canisters, some inside the country’s biggest mosque complex called Baitul Mukarram.

The activists belonging to the Committee to Resist Anti-Koran Laws, a coalition of Islamic parties, chased police with bamboo sticks and bricks, Islam said. Several policemen were among the casualties.

The protests were against a women’s development policy adopted in March by the government advocating equal property rights for women. Dozens were injured yesterday when more than 3,000 members of Islamic parties lobbed bricks and stones at police.

They torched two police motorcycles, smashed dozens of car windows and halted traffic on the capital’s main roads for hours, police said. Muslim clerics and parties have warned of nationwide demonstrations saying they will not tolerate any laws that contradict sharia, or the Islamic legal code. Soon after the new policy was announced, the government backed down, explaining it had not been passed into law. No legislation would be passed “that goes against the Koran and the traditions of Prophet Mohammed,” the government said.

Another report said Manoj Basnyat, the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) country director to Bangladesh, has quit before the end of his tenure due to a vote of no-confidence from his staff after many of them were laid off. “His departure comes hot on the heels of a vote of no confidence in him by his staff in a recent survey and several unofficial government complaints about his interference in development projects,” The Daily Star newspaper said today. The UNDP Global Staff Survey 2007 for Bangladesh obtained by the paper showed that “86 per cent of international staff and 62 percent of local staff at UNDP Bangladesh had no confidence in their country director”.

UN Resident Coordinator Renata Lok Dessallien said Basnyat was “simply being posted somewhere else because he is needed there”.