BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi. -- UNB photo

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and other opposition parties in the ongoing anti-government simultaneous movement will hold human chain programmes across the country, marking International Human Rights Day on Sunday.

Family members of the victims of enforced disappearance and the recently  arrested party leaders and activists will join the programme.

The party will hold the central programme in front of the National Press Club at 11:00am while city and district units will hold similar programmes in their respective areas, BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said at a virtual press conference.

‘This human chain programme would be made successful as a symbol of protest against injustice, resisting all obstacles of the ruling quarters,’ he said.

He asked the party leaders and activists to bring all the family members who have been persecuted, disappeared, murdered, and arrested, into this human chain.

The 48-hour countrywide blockade called by the opposition parties, which began last Wednesday, ended at 6:00am on Friday without making any serious impact on public life.

BNP has been observing strike and blockade programmes since October 29 following the party’s thwarted grand rally in Dhaka on October 28 amid attacks by police and the ruling Awami League supporters.

The party enforced 10 rounds of countrywide blockade and three rounds of hartal, demanding the resignation of the government, handing over power to an election-time party-neutral government, and cancellation of the January 7 national election.

Rizvi said that the Awami League had launched a dictatorship in the country to ruin all the progress of the nation.

‘They [AL] are undermining the sense of justice and trying to suppress it,’ he said.

Rizvi alleged that police arrested at least 215 leaders and activists of the party in the past 24 hours, adding that more than 850 leaders and activists had been made accused in seven fresh cases.