MUTINOUS MEMBERS of a paramilitary unit in the Bangladesh capital surrendered their weapons yesterday as tanks surrounded their headquarters after a second day of gunfire in a mutiny that has killed about 175 people.
Government officials and police said the mutiny in Dhaka was under control and urged members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border guards who had also mutinied and were still fighting elsewhere in the country to lay down their arms.
Private television news channels reported that nine tanks had taken up positions in a residential neighbourhood near BDR headquarters seized by the mutineers on Wednesday.
The crisis has threatened to engulf one of the world’s poorest countries with a turbulent history peppered with political assassinations, military coups and Islamist bombings and terror strikes.
“We don’t want to use force to break the stand-off. But don’t play with our patience,” prime minister Sheikh Hasina warned the BDR. “We will not hesitate to do whatever is needed to end the violence if peaceful means fails,” she cautioned.
According to local media reports at least 175 people died on Wednesday following clashes between BDR personnel and regular army troops deployed to quell the insurrection, but the mutiny had spread yesterday to towns outside Dhaka including the main southern port city of Chittagong.
There were reports of rank-and-file BDR soldiers seizing control of their barracks and camps in at least 12 different towns and cities.
In some cases, the BDR (with 70,000 personnel stationed at 42 camps across the country) had taken their officers hostage and in other instances forced them to leave their posts at gunpoint.
BDR personnel first mutinied at their Dhaka headquarters, turning their weapons on senior officers, seizing a nearby shopping centre and holding students in a school hostage.
The mutineers later agreed to surrender after the government said it would grant them amnesty and discuss their grievances.
The insurrection was ostensibly triggered by the low salaries the BDR are paid compared with the army’s pay in times of rising food and essentials prices in the chronically poor country.
BDR soldiers depend on government handouts of rice, flour and sugar to supplement their monthly income of about $100, but prices have spiralled over 30 per cent in recent months making existence difficult. BDR soldiers also receive these rations for just three months in 12 whilst their army counterparts get them for the entire year.
The standoff between the BDR and the army led to schools in Dhaka and other areas being closed for the day and mobile telephone services being suspended across the country in a move aimed at preventing the rebellion from spreading.
Analysts, however, maintain that Ms Hasina’s political rivals and extremist Islamist elements, all of whom were defeated in last December’s elections, were exploiting the BDR’s simmering discontent over low pay and service conditions to further their cynical political agenda.
The BDR is also believed to have been deeply infiltrated at the lower and middle ranks by supporters of Ms Hasina’s rival Khalida Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the extremist Jamait-e-Islami (JeI) which decrees that Islam is a complete system of politics, economics and culture, incompatible with secular democracy.
These disgruntled elements were also believed to be closely supported by discredited military officers and personnel from the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence who were aligned to the JeI and similar Islamist organisations.
Bangladesh spent 15 years under military rule and, though democracy was restored in 1990, the political scene has remained volatile even after Ms Hasina was elected in a landslide victory two months ago in elections overseen by a military-backed neutral caretaker president.