Around 18 million young Bangladeshis are out of work, as per government figures.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Bangladeshi student group has vowed on July 28 to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody.

“Last week’s violence killed at least 205 people”, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

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Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination group, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end 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The group’s chief Nahid Islam and others “should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn”, Abdul Hannan Masud, one of the coordinators of the anti-discrimination group, said in an online briefing on July 27.

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Abdul, who did not disclose his location because he was in hiding from authorities, 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 July 29,” he added.

Nahid Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were forcibly discharged from hospital on July 26 in the capital Dhaka and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

Earlier in the week Nahid Islam told AFP he was being treated at the hospital for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention and said he was in fear for his life.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters on July 26 that the trio were taken into custody for their own safety but did not confirm if they had been formally arrested.

Police told AFP on July 28 that detectives had taken two others into custody, while a Students Against Discrimination activist told AFP that another person had been taken on July 28 morning.

“At least 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide since the unrest began,” according to Prothom Alo, a Bangladesh’s newspaper.

Telecommunications Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak told reporters the country’s mobile internet network would be restored later on July 28, eleven days after a nationwide blackout imposed at the height of the unrest.

“Fixed line broadband connections had already been restored on July 23 but the vast majority of Bangladesh’s 141 million internet users rely on their mobile devices to connect with the world,” according to the National telecoms regulator.

‘Job crisis’

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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 — as per the government figures — the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

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Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League. The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Dhaka:

Two Bangladeshi opposition activists were killed Tuesday after police clashed with hundreds of anti-government protesters launching a three-day strike blocking roads and railways after their top leaders were charged with murder.

Police said violence broke out in multiple cities and towns as members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist party, demanded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down from power ahead of elections due by the end of January.

The BNP said it launched its transport blockade after police broke up a rally on Saturday, when more than 100,000 supporters of the two major opposition parties demanded Hasina allow a free and fair vote under a neutral government.

On Sunday, police charged BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and more than 150 other top party members with the murder of a policeman during the demonstrations.

The violence has sparked international concern, with seven countries including the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and Japan urging both sides to “exercise restraint, eschew violence and work together” for a free and fair vote.

Al Amin, deputy police chief in the town of Kuliarchar, north of the capital Dhaka, said two BNP members were killed, but that details were not clear on how they died.

BNP official Shariful Alam said the two were “shot dead by the police” during a rally with more than 2,000 protesters.

“Police came and opened fire — one BNP activist died on the spot and another at a hospital,” he said, adding that “more than 100 were injured”.

– ‘Hacked with sharp weapons’ –

United States Ambassador Peter Haas called on all sides to hold talks in a bid to ensure “free, fair and peaceful elections”, the Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported. 

But PM Hasina rejected the call.

“The way they killed an innocent policeman, are they humans?” Hasina told reporters in Dhaka, referring to the death of an officer during Saturday’s clashes with BNP supporters.

“Why should we hold a meeting with the killers?” she added. “Why hold dialogue? The people of Bangladesh don’t want it. Does (US President Joe) Biden hold dialogue with (Donald) Trump?”

Protesters set fire to buses and clashed with security forces, hurling petrol bombs and pelting officers with rocks, police said.

“They hurled Molotov cocktails and attacked and vandalised transport vehicles,” police officer Mominul Islam said, adding at least 15 officers were injured. “Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the protesters.”

In the industrial city of Narayanganj, three police officers were “critically injured” by opposition protesters, said Amir Khasru, deputy district police chief.

“They were hacked with sharp weapons”, he said.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights also voiced “deep concern” at the violence.

“We are deeply concerned by a series of violent incidents during ongoing protests in Bangladesh,” said a statement.

Alamgir, 75, the BNP’s secretary-general, has led the party since BNP chairwoman and two-time former premier Khaleda Zia was arrested and jailed, and her son went into exile in Britain.

The resurgent opposition has been mounting protests against Hasina for months, despite ailing leader Zia being effectively under house arrest since her release from prison after a conviction on corruption charges.

Dhaka police said they have arrested at least 1,727 opposition activists and supporters over the last week. At least 1,544 opposition activists and leaders were also charged with violence on Saturday, police said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)