The protests in Bangladesh

LABOUR HUB EDITORS

There is more at stake than quotas for government jobs, explains Murad Qureshi

JULY 23, 2024

Many of us in the Bangladeshi diaspora have had a number of sleepless nights during the awful crackdown of student protests in Dhaka and other major cities of Bangladesh over the past week. For some of us, it brings back memories of what the people had to face in 1971 with the liberation of the country from the Pakistan army.

Firstly, it should be noted the student protests were not limited to just the public universities but also the private ones which is very rarely the case. Ironically the latter were set up to offer degree courses without the interference of student politics! They now also find themselves embroiled in student politics over the quota system which reserves a significant percentage of government posts for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971 and other categories.

Before the imposition of a news, social media and telecommunications blackout on the outside world and the instruction of ‘shoot on sight’ orders to the police, l managed to phone relatives in Dhaka and got a very clear message from my nephews and nieces studying at universities in Dhaka: “We don’t want the quotas of civil servant jobs.” They said this even though they could have benefited, being the descendants of freedom fighters themselves.                                                                        

These student protests are not just about these quotas for jobs in the civil service, which has  been an issue for a number of years and was actually withdrawn in 2018 by the present government, only to be brought up again by freedom fighters’ families. It was taken to the Supreme Court and reimposed only for the Court on Sunday to reduce the percentage of down to 5 per cent. So that should have been the end of the matter.

But it’s not just about the quotas for jobs but a lot else, including the incredible violence launched against the students, both from the authorities like the police and their Rapid Action Battalion, an anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh Police, as well as the student arm of the Prime Minister’s political party, the Chhatra League. This has led to over 100 deaths officially and many fear a lot more than this.

The students are demanding the resignation of both the Home Minister and Chief of the Police and for the Chhatra League, an arm of the ruling Awami League, to be closed down. Other issues the students are campaigning on include rigged election allegations, the cost of living and corruption. Other political parties are attempting to gain from the dire situation making it increasingly a movement against the Prime Minister herself, Sheikh Hasina.  Along with the fatalities have come some serious infrastructural destruction to the new metro train stations, something the PM and her ruling party are very proud of as part of developing the economy of the country.

Students have been at the vanguard of political protest in Bengali politics. They have a particular place and touch a nerve in the Bangladeshi psyche. They led the protests against the Bangla language being banned in the official business of Pakistan in East Bengal from 1947 onwards and were numerous among the February 21st 1952 language martyrs. They also played an active role during the 1971 Liberation from the Pakistan army. 

The attack on Bangladesh TV offices last week was very similar to the takeover of Chittagong Radio Station on March 26th 1971 for the famous historic declaration of independence. That night of March 26th also saw many killings in Dhaka as the Pakistan Army launched their Operation Searchlight to extinguish Bengali nationalists. That seems to have been exceeded last week by some who were there on both occasions.

Allegedly from some local papers in Dhaka, we hear that between July 15th and 21st last week over 800 people have been killed. This would be more than the sum total of all the people killed in popular agitations from 1972 to 2022. During the 1980s and 1990s, with the various anti-Ershad movements, and the caretaker governments in the 1990s, fewer than fifty people were killed.

The verdict is still out on whether this could be a rerun of the 1971 liberation struggle as some of my older cousins suggest, or just another rerun of political turmoil in Bangladesh that we had to endure during the 1980s and 1990s. But we will know soon enough which way things are heading for the country that desperately wants to move on developmentally and is on the front line of the global climate crisis – all this while 30,000 Bangladeshis left the country in five days last week.  

Murad Qureshi was a member of the London Assembly from 2004 to 2016 and from 2020 to 2021.

Image: Earlier student protests against the quota system in 2018. Author: Rahat Chowdhury, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.