Violence in Bangladeshi capital

Last Modified: 23 Aug 2007
By: Channel 4 News

Bangladesh is the grip of martial law, chaos and division with growing discontent over the miltary-backed caretaker government.

Bangladesh is a heavily populated, strategically crucial and notoriously volatile country.

It's one of the biggest recipents of British aid, one of the biggest Muslim democracies in the world and the home country of one of Britain's biggest immigrant communities.

But so frequent are its bouts of instability that they rarely feature heavily in the western media. Now, however, the international community is starting to look with alarm at the situation there.

Growing discontent

A military-backed caretaker government has ruled Bangladesh since January. They have promised to hold elections before the end of next year, but discontent has been growing.

This week, it has broken into violence. The spark that set it off sounds innocuous - students in Dhaka, the country's capital, said they were manhandled by police ending a football match.

Watch our interview with the influential Labour peer Pola Uddin. We ask her if the price being paid by Bangladesh's citizens, for any apparent security, was now proving too high?