Chittagong city unit president of BNP Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury accused the government of ‘putting democracy under house arrest by turning the whole country into a jail’.
‘Wearing a mask of democracy the government has established the rule of terror that is even terrible than the 1/11,’ he said at a press conference in the Chittagong city on Saturday, referring to the reign of the caretaker government that took office in January 2007 with military backing.
Chittagong city unit with north and south district units of BNP jointly organised the press conference at the Chittagong Press Club with Amir Khosru, former commerce minister, in the chair. Former whip Syed Wahidul Alam, former MP Begum Roji Kabir, south district unit president Jafrul Islam Chowdhury and central BNP assistant labour secretary Nazim Uddin were also present, among others.
Khosru read out a speech, saying that people were passing days in trepidation as fear reigned the country with an appalling rise in the incidents of enforced disappearance, killing and abduction.
On the breaking out of violence on May 13 between the police and the BNP leaders and activists while the latter were holding programmes in the port city, Khosru said the law enforcers virtually turned the area around the party’s city office into a battlefield in which over 100 BNP activists and leaders were injured. 
‘We were carrying out our programmes peacefully. But some over-enthusiastic policemen embraced the role of party cadres and ruined our programmes,’ he said.
In the ‘heinous’ and ‘unprecedented’ attack the police fired incessant rubber bullets and teargas shells, Khosru alleged.
‘To save themselves the leaders at one stage took shelter in the party office but tear shells were fired even there. The senior leaders could have died of suffocation that day.’
Humayun Kabir, Panchlaish ward vice-president of Juba Dal, died on May 19 from the injuries he sustained that day.
‘The fact that even then the police have filed six cases against our leaders and activists in connection with the incidents that day really surprises us,’ Khosru remarked.