Within the context of brutal police action and widespread unrest in the country, a Bangladeshi student organization declares its readiness to resume activities and new protests if several of its leaders are not released from custody by Sunday.
The recent violence has killed at least 205 people, an AFP tally from police and medical sources, making it one of the biggest upheavals of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule.
Even when the army patrols have remained active, and there is an imposed national curfew after more than a week of its implementation, the students have not bowed out of the protest. A police roundup has netted thousands of demonstrators and at least half a dozen student leaders at that.
Practically all the demonstrators who clashed over a week now demanding that the civil service job quotas be abolished are members of the Students Against Discrimination grouping. Their key leaders seek to know the whereabouts of their leader, Nahid Islam, and ask for other leaders to be released, with all cases against them dropped.
“Islamic groups urge that Nahid Islam and others ‘should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn’,” Abdul Hannan Masud, a spokesperson of the State and Development Policy, disclosed during an online briefing on Saturday.
Masud also demanded that “tangible measures” be taken against officials and policemen to account for the loss of protesters’ lives, as he himself resides in hiding nowadays. Otherwise, said Bakhrom, Students Against Discrimination will have to hold abrasive actions from Monday.
The government’s reaction was mild. The home minister explained that the detained student leaders were ‘escorted’ for their security. However, he did not affirm whether or not they had been arrested.
The continued conflict has been compounded by the existence of employment, which has reached a critical level in Bangladesh. It is estimated that as many as 18 million young Bangladeshis are currently unemployed.
The introduction of a quota scheme that has given more than fifty percent of government jobs to certain groups has angered graduates with little chance of securing employment.
While the nation is yet to recover from the aftermath, the Hasina-led government is being accused by rights organizations of using state power to consolidate the government and eliminate voices of opposition.
