Bangladesh wakes to torched government buildings, internet blackout
By AFP
July 19, 2024
Smoke rises from burning vehicles near Bangladesh's disaster management agency on Thursday - Copyright AFP -
Bangladesh woke Friday to survey destruction left by the deadliest day of ongoing student protests so far, which saw government buildings torched by demonstrators and a nationwide internet blackout put into effect.
This week’s unrest has killed at least 39 people including 32 on Thursday, with the toll expected to rise further after reports of clashes in nearly half of the country’s 64 districts.
A police statement issued after a near-total shutdown of the nation’s internet said protesters had torched, vandalised and carried out “destructive activities” on numerous police and government offices.
Among them was the Dhaka headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which remains offline after hundreds of incensed students stormed the premises and set fire to a building.
“About 100 policemen were injured in the clashes yesterday,” Faruk Hossain, a spokesman for the capital’s police force, told AFP. “Around 50 police booths were burnt”.
The police statement said that if the destruction continued, they would “be forced to make maximum use of law”.
Police fire was the cause of at least two-thirds of deaths reported so far, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital staff.
At least 26 districts around the country reported clashes on Thursday, broadcaster Independent Television reported.
The network said more than 700 had been wounded through the day including 104 police officers and 30 journalists.
Near-daily marches this month have called for an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
– ‘Apologise to us’ –
Hasina’s 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.
Her administration this week ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as police step up efforts to bring the deteriorating law and order situation under control.
Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh expert at the University of Oslo in Norway, told AFP Thursday that the protests had grown into a wider expression of discontent with Hasina’s autocratic rule.
“They are protesting against the repressive nature of the state,” he told AFP. “The students are in fact calling her a dictator.”
Students have vowed to continue their campaign despite Hasina giving a national address on the now-offline state broadcaster seeking to calm the situation.
“Our first demand is that the prime minister must apologise to us,” protester Bidisha Rimjhim, 18, told AFP on Thursday.
“Secondly, justice must be ensured for our killed brothers,” she added.
London-based watchdog Netblocks said Friday that a “nation-scale” internet shutdown remained in effect.
“The disruption prevents families from contacting each other and stifles efforts to document human rights violations,” it wrote in a social media post on X.
Civil unrest worsens in Bangladesh
2024.07.18
Dhaka
Smoke rises from vehicles set on fire near the Disaster Management Directorateoffice during the ongoing clashes over public service jobs quotas in Dhaka, July 18, 2024.Bangladesh burned and bled Thursday, with dozens killed in clashes between security forces, pro-government groups and student protesters, and buildings set ablaze by agitators – the deadliest civil unrest in the country in more than a decade.
Hospital authorities confirmed to BenarNews that 19 people were killed and hundreds more injured Thursday, the most violent day of a week in which seven people already lost their lives. Agence France-Presse reported a higher toll of 25 deaths.
Other than those out on the streets, the entire country shut down on Thursday, after students in favor of ending quotas for government jobs called for such a closure to protest what they alleged were unprovoked attacks by police and members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowds, with hospital sources confirming such injuries. Amid the clashes, unidentified people set several buildings on fire, including the state broadcaster, police posts and a train station.
Fire service officials reported at least 25 incidents of arson at government building complexes around the country over two days, with Dhaka being the worst hit.
Thursday’s violence claimed two journalists’ lives, and more than 100 members of the media were injured across the country, a group called Dhaka Reporters Unity said in a statement.
Hasan Mehedi, 25, a reporter at online news site Dhaka Times, was killed when a bullet struck his head Thursday evening, the site’s editor, Arifur Rahman Dolon, told BenarNews.
The second press victim was the Daily Bhorer Awaj’s Gazipur correspondent Shakil Hossain, a statement from the journalists group said.
NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet connectivity and democracy, said Bangladesh was seeing a “near-total national internet shutdown” on Thursday night.
“[T]he new measure follows earlier efforts to throttle social media and restrict mobile data services, and comes amid reports of rising deaths at student protests,” NetBlocks said in a post on X.
Authorities temporarily halted mobile internet services due to the unstable situation created by the protests, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, minister of posts, telecommunications, and information technology, said Thursday.
University students nationwide began protesting in early July after the High Court last month reinstated a quota that reserves 30% of civil service jobs for relatives of those who fought in the 1971 war that resulted in Bangladesh’s independence.
The reinstatement came at a time when Bangladesh’s economy is in the doldrums and employment opportunities are scarce.
At least 400,000 students graduate every year from Bangladesh universities. And according to official data from 2023, 39% of 15- to 24-year-olds, or 12.2 million youth, are without jobs and not at school or university either.
Students allege the quotas are discriminatory and favor those who support the administration of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party.
On July 11, a Supreme Court order suspended these quotas for a month. But that didn’t mollify the protesting students. Such a decision, they said, must be made by the government.
But what really made the students furious was when Hasina on Sunday likened those who are against quotas for war veterans’ families to people who collaborated with Pakistan during Bangladesh’s war of independence.
After violence earlier in the week claimed seven lives, Hasina addressed the nation on Wednesday, saying that the top court was dealing with the quota issue and Bangladeshis would “not be disappointed.”
She urged patience and accused groups with vested interests of stoking anger.
‘A new farce’
After a meeting with Hasina earlier in the day, Law Minister Anisul Huq on Thursday afternoon offered to hold talks with protesting students in an effort to suspend their agitation.
“The government has, in principle, agreed to reform the quota system. …We will sit with the protesters whenever they agree and, if they want, it may be today,” the minister said.
He also offered to advance to Sunday a Supreme Court hearing on the quota policy scheduled for Aug. 7.
Protesters rejected this offer, saying the government needed to deal with the consequences of unprovoked aggression against them.
“By resorting to violence against a peaceful movement, the government has created an unprecedented situation. It is the government’s responsibility,” Nahid Islam, one of the coordinators of the movement, said in a Facebook post.
Quota reform alone will not be enough to resolve the crisis now, he wrote.
“At first, using the judiciary, the government did not heed the demand, and law enforcers and party cadres tried to suppress the movement,” he said.
“[N]ow a new farce is being played out in the name of addressing [our] demands and in the name of dialogue.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
Uprising ‘claims 19’ in Bangladesh: 17-year-
old student, journalist dead
Even schoolchildren and their parents were spotted in protest marches across the country, a testimony to the widening sweep of a movement that had begun with a student demand for the withdrawal of the 30 per cent reservation in government jobs for relatives of freedom fighters
Devadeep Purohit
Anti-quota protesters clash with police and Awami League supporters in Dhaka on Thursday.(Reuters picture)
A 17-year-old student and a journalist were among at least 19 people reported killed in Bangladesh on Thursday as security forces and turbulent quota protesters clashed across the country after movement leaders spurned a dialogue with the Sheikh Hasina government.
As India’s most trusted neighbour teetered on the brink of crisis, its government and security establishment alleged that armed cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had taken over what had begun as a student movement and engineered the violence.
The protesters succeeded in enforcing a total nationwide shutdown — something Bangladesh had not witnessed in recent years — reflecting the enormity of the challenge facing Hasina, who returned to power for a fourth straight term earlier this year after a controversial election.
Even schoolchildren and their parents were spotted in protest marches across the country, a testimony to the widening sweep of a movement that had begun with a student demand for the withdrawal of the 30 per cent reservation in government jobs for relatives of freedom fighters.
Amid speculation on how the Awami League government would tackle the crisis, a source said Hasina had instructed all senior ministers and party leaders who were travelling in other regions to return to Dhaka by Thursday night.
“It is no longer a student protest for quota reforms…. It has metamorphosed into a rebellion against the government as Opposition forces have taken control of the movement, which was started by a few hundred students barely a fortnight ago,” a source said.
Mehedi Hasan, a reporter with news portal Dhakatimes24.com, died of a bullet injury during clashes in Jatrabari, Dhaka, on Thursday.PTI news
Reports said the government was considering legal remedies to tackle the situation at the earliest.
To try and scatter the protesters, the authorities had closed down all academic institutions indefinitely and cleared out hostels on Wednesday.
Riot police and the elite Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), a paramilitary force, were deployed across campuses over the last 24 hours.
But these measures could not stop tens of thousands of students from clashing with law enforcers across the country and vandalising private and public property.
“This scale of violence can be perpetrated only by the foot soldiers of the Jamaat-e-Islami…. The Jamaat and its ally BNP had been conspiring to destabilise the government, and they used the students to create a crisis,” a source in the security establishment said.
Foreign advisories
As horrific scenes from Dhaka swamped social media, showing public broadcaster Bangladesh Television’s office on fire, armoured personnel carriers patrolling the main thoroughfares, and a helicopter deployed to rescue policemen from a university, foreign missions issued alerts for their citizens currently in Bangladesh.
“There were scenes of a helicopter airlifting policemen from a campus where they had got stranded…. It was scary and I was expecting advisories from Western countries,” said a diplomat who had been in Dhaka till two years ago.
The Indian high commission issued an urgent advisory for Indian nationals, including students, in Bangladesh asking them to avoid travel and minimise movement outside their living premises.
The US embassy in Dhaka issued a similar advisory.
“Things seem to have completely spun out of control.... We are living in fear,” Dulal Chandrow Gain, a professor in the department of drawing and painting at Dhaka University, told this newspaper.
Epicentre Dhaka
While the whole of Bangladesh has been on the boil for the last 72 hours or so, the nucleus of the agitation on Thursday was the capital where at least 13 lives were lost in a single day.
Dhaka witnessed violence across some of its elite campuses such as Brac University, North South University, Northern University and the Dhaka Residential Model College. At least four people were killed and over 1,000 injured in the city’s Uttara locality alone during a clash between quota protesters and the police.
A 17-year-old student of the Dhaka Residential Model College was killed during a clash in the Dhanmondi locality.
Mehedi Hasan, a reporter with the news portal Dhakatimes24.com, died of a bullet injury in Dhaka’s Jatrabari area while covering the clashes.
Following the arson at BTV, which was attacked by hundreds of protesters in the afternoon, transmission was stopped. The Internet was down amid reports that the authorities had suspended services. Several BGB vehicles were torched; a police station in Uttara was under gherao; government offices were attacked across the country.
Dialogue proposal
Law minister Anisul Huq had appealed to the students to come to the talks table on Thursday morning, but the movement leaders rejected the proposal through multiple Facebook posts.
“When the roads are soaked in the blood of our fellow protesters, going on a dialogue with the government, which used its agencies to fire bullets on us, is not possible,” Nurul Haque Nur, a student leader who had led the quota reform movement of 2018 and is guiding the current agitation’s leaders, told this newspaper.
Communication
In the face of protests, the Hasina government had abolished the quotas in 2018, a move that was challenged in the high court. Earlier this month, the high court restored the 30 per cent quota, triggering the recent wave of protests.
In a televised address to the nation on Wednesday, Hasina had explained that the government had petitioned the Supreme Court against the high court order and urged the students to be patient till the hearing, scheduled on August 7.
“The protesters’ main demand is congruent with the official position of the government, which is also opposed to the quota…. But still we are facing this crisis, and it’s because of some of the MPs and ministers who made statements favouring the quota,” a legal expert said from Dhaka.
“This contradiction between the positions of the government and some of its members created the provocation for the students to launch the movement…. And then sinister elements took over its control.”
Some civil society groups are saying the government should have reached out to the protesters earlier and engaged them in a constructive dialogue. A security analyst said the entire episode had also revealed the deficiencies in the country’s intelligence network.
“There are reports that Jamaat spent over 100 crore takas over the last month to prepare its foot soldiers for a movement against the government…. The agencies should have alerted the government,” the source said.
SEE
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