Thursday, July 25, 2024

UN human rights chief calls on Bangladesh to disclose protest crackdown details


UN human rights chief Volker Turk Thursday demanded Bangladesh disclose details surrounding the crackdown on anti-job quota protests last week that killed 193 people. Turk also called on the government to restore internet connection, which was cut off Friday in response to the student-led demonstrations. Thousands of military personnel continue to patrol the country where protests have subsided after the Supreme Court scrapped most of the government-imposed quotas.

Issued on: 25/07/2024 - 

Charred vehicles are pictured at the state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, after students set it on fire during the anti-quota protest, in Dhaka on July 24, 2024. 
© Munir Uz Zaman, AFP

By: NEWS WIRES

The UN rights chief called Thursday on Bangladesh to urgently disclose the details of last week's crackdown on protests amid accounts of "horrific violence", calling for "an impartial, independent and transparent investigation".

"We understand that many people were subjected to violent attacks by groups reportedly affiliated with the Government, and no effort was made to protect them," Volker Turk said in a statement.

Last week's violence killed at least 193 people including several police officers, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in one of the biggest upheavals of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's 15-year tenure.

The unrest was sparked by protests against a public jobs quota scheme that critics say gives preference to allies of Hasina's ruling party.

Thousands of troops are still patrolling cities and a nationwide internet shutdown remains largely in effect, but clashes have subsided since protest leaders announced a temporary halt to new demonstrations.

Turk's statement lamented reports that some of the more than 1,000 injured in last week's crackdown were denied medical care, while many people remained missing.

"At least two journalists were reportedly killed and scores of others injured. Hundreds of people were also reportedly arrested, including opposition figures," the statement said.


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The government, it said, "must provide the details of those killed, injured, or detained for the benefit of their families".

The UN high commissioner for human rights also called on the government to restore full internet access to allow people, including journalists, to communicate freely.

"Blunt measures such as a blanket deliberate internet shutdown for a prolonged period contravene international law, affecting States' obligations to respect freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly," he said.

This also breached "a wide range of other rights, including freedom of association and of movement, the rights to health and education, and a number of economic rights," Turk said.

"Internet shutdowns can also reduce public scrutiny and knowledge of conduct of law enforcement agencies, and so risk heightening impunity for their actions," he warned.

(AFP)

Bangladesh PM surveys destruction as unrest recedes

By AFP
July 25, 2024

The remains of Bangladesh state broadcaster after students set it on fire during protests against government jobs quota system - Copyright AFP Munir UZ ZAMAN

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wept Thursday as she surveyed the destruction wrought by days of deadly unrest, as student leaders weighed the future of the protests that precipitated the disorder.

Last week’s violence killed at least 193 people including several police officers, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in one of the biggest upheavals of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

The unrest was sparked by protests against a public jobs quota scheme that critics say gives preference to allies of Hasina’s ruling party.

Thousands of troops are still patrolling cities and a nationwide internet shutdown remains largely in effect, but clashes have subsided since protest leaders announced a temporary halt to new demonstrations.

Hasina, 76, spent the morning surveying destruction in the capital Dhaka, where the commuter rail connecting the sprawling megacity of 20 million people was shut down after mob attacks on its network.

“Over 15 years, I’ve built this country,” she told reporters afterwards, in a condemnation of protesters for damaging city infrastructure. “What didn’t I do for the people?

“Who has benefitted from what we have done?” she added. “Do I ride on the metro? Does the government only ride? Do our ministers only ride? Or is it in fact the general public that rides?”

Pictures released by Hasina’s office showed the premier flanked by an entourage and weeping at the sight of a vandalised metro station in an outlying Dhaka suburb.

The station is among several government buildings and dozens of police posts torched or vandalised during the height of last week’s unrest.

With calm returning to cities around Bangladesh, Hasina’s government ordered another relaxation to the curfew it imposed on the weekend, allowing free movement for seven hours between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Streets in Dhaka were choked with commuter traffic in the morning, days after ferocious clashes between police and protesters had left them almost deserted.

Banks, government offices and the country’s economically vital garment factories had already reopened on Wednesday after all being shuttered last week.

Student leaders were meanwhile set to meet later Thursday to decide whether or not to again extend their protest moratorium, which is due to expire on Friday.

Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising this month’s rallies, said it expected the government to make some concessions.

“We demand an apology from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to the nation for the mass murder of students,” Asif Mahmud, one of the group’s coordinators, told AFP.

“We also want the sacking of the home minister and education minister.”

Mahmud added that the estimated toll in the unrest was understated, with his group working on its own list of confirmed deaths.

– Youth jobs crisis –

Police have arrested at least 2,500 people since the violence began last week, according to an AFP tally.

Protests began after the June reintroduction of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates, including nearly a third for descendants of veterans from Bangladesh’s independence war.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina’s Awami League.

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Burned TV station showcases anger at Bangladesh PM

By AFP
July 24, 2024

The charred remains of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television after students set it on fire during protests - Copyright AFP Munir UZ ZAMAN

Shafiqul ALAM

Torn portraits of Bangladesh’s independence hero litter a ransacked state television station — a pointed expression of public fury against his daughter, who just witnessed the worst unrest of her premiership.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressed the nation on Bangladesh Television (BTV) last week to appeal for calm, just as a police crackdown on student protests was poised to tip into violent disorder.

The next day a mob of hundreds stormed the state broadcaster and set fire to an office building, along with dozens of other government and police posts around the capital Dhaka.

They also attacked a gallery hosting around 150 portraits of the premier’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led the country after its devastating 1971 liberation war with Pakistan until his assassination four years later.

“This is a war zone,” Bangladeshi information minister Mohammad Ali Arafat told reporters invited by the government and BTV to survey the destruction on Wednesday.

He gestured to oil paintings of Rahman strewn on the ground, disfigured by knives used to stab through the leader’s face.

“Does this look like a peaceful protest to you?”

Mujib’s nationbuilding role has been both lauded and dismissed by successive Bangladesh governments, with memories of the war and famine that birthed the country still polarising its people more than half a century since independence.

But Hasina has foregrounded her father’s legacy to such an extent that critics accuse her of establishing a personality cult designed to entrench her rule.

Since she took office a second time in 2009, Mujib’s image has appeared on every banknote and in hundreds of public murals across the South Asian nation of 170 million people.

Portraits like those in BTV’s Dhaka headquarters are not only commonplace, but a legal requirement: Hasina’s government changed the constitution to require that they be hung in every school, government office and diplomatic mission.

During Hasina’s speech on BTV last week, given in a failed effort to quell the rising tensions soon to unleash mayhem across Bangladesh, several portraits of her father hung around her office appeared on the broadcast.

– ‘Secular blasphemy law’ –


The unrest began last week when the youth wing of Hasina’s ruling Awami League and police officers attempted to suppress running student demonstrations against job quotas for civil servant hires.

The scheme was introduced by Hasina’s father in 1972 and until Sunday reserved nearly a third of all government jobs for the families of veterans from the independence war with Pakistan.

Hasina, 76, inflamed by likening protesters to the Bangladeshis who had collaborated with Pakistan during that conflict.

The premier won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina’s father casts a long shadow over her own leadership: she refers to his assassination in a 1975 coup in almost every speech she gives, her voice often choking with emotion.

The military regime that followed did its best to sideline Mujib’s contribution to the country entirely, but even considered at a remove from Bangladesh’s deeply polarised politics, his legacy remains complex.

Towards the end of his life, Mujib abolished multi-party democracy and imposed media restrictions that shuttered all but four state-controlled newspapers.

Hasina’s critics often evoke autocratic parallels between Mujib and his daughter.

One senior human rights activist in Bangladesh said, on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, that the now-ubiquitous presence of Mujib’s portrait in public spaces made the country resemble “one-party states”.

“She has basically introduced a secular blasphemy law in the country for her father,” the activist told AFP in January.

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