Bangladesh Students Vow to Resume Protests Unless Leaders Freed

A prominent Bangladeshi student group has vowed to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody by Sunday. Last week’s violence resulted in at least 205 deaths, including several police officers, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, marking one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after their imposition, with a police dragnet having scooped up thousands of protesters, including at least half a dozen student leaders. Members of Students Against Discrimination, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, have announced an end to their weeklong protest moratorium.

The group’s chief, Nahid Islam, and others “should be freed, and the cases against them must be withdrawn,” Abdul Hannan Masud told reporters in an online briefing late Saturday. Masud, who did not disclose his location due to fears of arrest, also demanded “visible actions” be taken against government ministers and police officers responsible for the deaths of protesters.

“Otherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests” from Monday, he said. Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were forcibly discharged from the hospital in the capital Dhaka on Friday and taken away by plainclothes detectives.

He told AFP last week that he was being treated at the hospital for injuries inflicted by police during an earlier round of detention and expressed fear for his life. “I haven’t seen him since he was picked up,” Islam’s mother, Momotaz Nahar, told reporters outside the national detective agency after unsuccessfully asking officers to allow a visit with her son. “We are worried about his life,” she said. “I want my son back.”

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan has stated that the trio were taken into custody for their own safety but did not confirm if they had been formally arrested. At least 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide since the unrest began, according to Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s largest daily newspaper.

Khan reported 147 deaths in clashes, providing the government’s first official toll, published a day after Students Against Discrimination gave its preliminary count of 266. Khan told reporters on Sunday that police had operated with restraint and only fired on demonstrators to protect government buildings.

“Despite the killing of their fellow officers, they showed extreme levels of patience,” he said. “But when they saw that the properties could not be protected, then police were forced to open fire.”

A curfew imposed last weekend remains in force but has been progressively eased through the week, signaling the Hasina government’s confidence that order is gradually being restored. One small street rally held in Dhaka on Sunday to demand Hasina’s resignation was quickly dispersed by police.

Bangladesh’s mobile internet network was restored on Sunday afternoon, 11 days after a nationwide blackout imposed at the height of the unrest. Fixed-line broadband connections were restored on Tuesday, but the vast majority of Bangladesh’s internet users rely on mobile devices to connect with the world.

Jobs Crisis

Protests began this month over the reintroduction of a quota scheme reserving more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis. Critics argue the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League.

The Supreme Court reduced the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely. Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition. Her government faces accusations from rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups last week. The situation in Bangladesh remains tense as the nation awaits the resolution of these critical issues.