Amartya, Hasina honoured amidst protests in Dhaka

Amartya, Hasina honoured amidst protests in Dhaka
DEUTSCHE PRESS AGENTEUR

DHAKA, DEC 18: Nobel prize-winning economist Dr Amartya Sen was awarded an honorary doctorate of Science degree on Saturday by Dhaka University as Right-wing and radical Muslim students clashed with police outside the campus, witnesses said. Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, arrived in the capital Dhaka late Friday night to attend the University's first general convocation since Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its fundamentalist Muslim allies, the Jamaat-i-Islami, backed a strike call in Dhaka by the Opposition students protesting against the convocation. Violence erupted as police used force to disperse activists of BNP's student front and militant Islamic youths staging a protest rally near the University's sports complex.