Thousands of security forces were on the streets of major cities and towns in

Bangladesh
following a call by the main opposition party to protest over the alleged abduction of a senior politician.

Ilias Ali, a key organiser with the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP),
disappeared on Tuesday shortly after leaving his home in Dhaka, the
capital. His abandoned car and phone were found by police.

More than 20 people have gone missing in recent months, according to
local human rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra, almost half the
total for the whole of last year. Many are opposition political
activists. International campaign groups have blamed the paramilitary

Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)
and
local police.
The RAB have denied the charge, saying that many of those who have
turned up dead were involved in crime and killed by associates or
rivals.

The director of the RAB's legal wing, Commander Mohammed Sohail, said an
operation had been launched to recover Ali and a search was continuing.
Police officials contacted by The Guardian refused to comment on the
case.

Ali's wife, Tahsina Rushdir, said her husband had been campaigning for
the BNP in Sylhet, in the north-east of the country, before he
disappeared. "He told me that the government was making a list of people
who were being critical about them. He wouldn't be picked up this way
unless he had posed threat to the government," she said.

The disappearance comes amid renewed political tensions in the south
Asian state, home to 160 million people. More than 30 were injured in
clashes between opposition activists and the police on the streets of
Dhaka last week. Runaway inflation, rising inequality and recent
corruption charges against some ministers have all combined to undermine
the popularity of the government of Sheik Hasina, in power since
winning a landslide victory in 2008. Speaking in Dhaka last week, Hasina
said Ali might have been "hiding somewhere" on the orders of his party.
Politics in Bangladesh, which won independence from Pakistan after a
bloody conflict in 1971, has been marked for decades by the personal
rivalry of Sheikh Hasina, head of the Bangladesh Awami League, and
Khaleda Zia, leader of the BNP.

This has not however prevented economic growth rates that are among
south Asia's highest and some significant improvements in specific areas
such as education. But governance and the rule of law remain weak.
Adilur Rahman Khan, secretary of the Bangladeshi human rights group
Odhikar said the disappearances were "a result of the impunity granted
to the law enforcement [agencies] for the last 41 years". The RAB has
received training from the British police,

The Guardian revealed in 2010
.

Dr Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of the Bangladesh chapter of
Berlin-based Transparency International, blamed "growing partisan
political influence on key institutions of democratic accountability".
This, he said, was "undermining their professional skills and
competence, and thus eroding the capacity of the state to promote rule
of law, justice, equality and basic human rights of the people".

Among those recent missing are three student leaders from the BNP, while
the body of a trade union organiser, apparently tortured, was found
after he disappeared on 4 April. Two opposition activists, both members
of an Islamic student organisation, disappeared in February.

Shafiq Ahmed, minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs said
that a full investigation was under way to locate all those who have
disappeared and that allegations the government could be responsible in
any way for abductions were motivated by "an interest to gain public
attention".

The minister also rejected criticism of the government's economic
record. "The economy [in Bangladesh] is better than many countries in
the face of global economic depression," he said.