It has been more than 10 days since protests began against a government job quota system. Students and young people across the country have demonstrated against what they consider an unfair policy that favors a certain group – children of “freedom fighters” in Bangladesh’s war of independence. But after the government unleashed unprecedented violence, the protests went beyond demanding the quota system be scrapped.
A list of student demands was released in a clandestine press release.
1) The Prime Minister must accept responsibility for the mass murders of students and publicly apologize.
2) The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Roads, Transport and Bridges [the latter is also the secretary general of the Awami League]must renounce their [cabinet] positions and the party.
3) The police officers present at the places where the students were killed should be fired.
4) Vice-chancellors of Dhaka, Jahangirnagar and Rajshahi universities should resign.
5) The police officers and thugs who attacked the students and those who instigated the attacks must be arrested.
6) The families of the dead and injured must be compensated.
7) Bangladesh Chhatra League [BCL, the pro-government student wing, which is, effectively, the government’s vigilante force] it should be banned from student politics and a student union established.
8) All educational institutions and university residences must be reopened.
9) Guarantees must be provided that no academic or administrative harassment will occur to protesters.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina publicly apologizing for her derogatory comments about protesters may seem like a minor issue, but it will certainly be the point of contention.
This Prime Minister is not the type to apologize, no matter what she does. Regardless of the allegations that she rigged elections, regardless of the fact that corruption reached an all-time high during her tenure, regardless of the fact that more than 100 students and other protesters were murdered by her henchmen and security forces, regardless the fact that she considered all those who opposed her views as “razakars” (collaborators of the Pakistani occupation army in 1971).
There is certainly no one in the negotiating field who would have the temerity to suggest such a course to the Prime Minister. There is a Bangla saying: “You only have one head on your neck.”
Ministers do the heavy lifting. They control the muscles on the streets and “manage” things when resistance arises. Ministers are party leaders and, in addition to the difficulty of finding suitable replacements, dismissing them would send the wrong message within the party.
Vice chancellors and prosecutors having to resign is easy. These are expendable minions. The perks are attractive and there are plenty to fill the ranks. Eliminating the police is not so easy, as they provide part of the force, but “friendly fire” happens.
Compensation is not an issue. State coffers exist to be looted and the distribution of public funds at the behest of the party is a very common practice.
The demand to ban the BCL and associated student organizations in Dhaka, Jahangirnagar and Rajshahi universities is a point of contention as they are the ones who keep the student body in check and are the party cadres called in when there is any sign of rebellion. It is a group of vigilantes that can kill, kidnap or disappear under the party’s command. For a government that lacks legitimacy, these are the foot soldiers that terrorize and are essential parts of the coercive machine.
Reopening educational institutions is a problem. Students have traditionally been the initiators of protests. With such latent discontent, this would be dangerous, especially if local muscular strength were reduced. The return of independent thought is something all tyrants fear. Cessation of harassment is easy to implement on paper. It is difficult to prove and can be done on several levels. Removing official charges will leave all unofficial modes intact.
Of all these demands, the apology is the least innocuous, but perhaps the most meaningful. This will undermine the aura of invincibility that the tyrant exudes. She never apologized for anything.
Not because his father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, created Rakkhi Bahini, the paramilitary force that rained terror on the country. Not his creation of Baksal, the one-party system where all other parties and all newspapers, except the four approved ones, were banned. Nor the numerous extrajudicial murders and disappearances and the liturgy of corruption by people under his patronage during his own term.
An apology to the protesting students, however simple, would be a chink in her armor that she would be loathe to reveal.
Ironically, your father and the Awami League led the resistance against the Pakistani army during the 1971 genocide. The revolutionaries have now become our new occupiers. They insist that Bangladesh is still a “democracy”.
So far, the body count is impossible to verify. I try to piece together from as many first-hand reports as I can. Many of the bodies have a single, precisely aimed bullet hole. The pellets are aimed at the eyes.
International news, out of reach because the Internet has been shut down and mobile connectivity severely throttled, says the deaths are over 100. Those monitoring feel these numbers are a significant undercount of the dead and missing. Government news reports even less.
Officials at city hospitals are less forthcoming and can provide reasonably accurate numbers, but not all bodies end up in hospital morgues. An old hospital in Dhaka reported the arrival of more than 200 bodies. The injured who die on the way to the hospital are usually not admitted. Families prefer to take the body home instead of handing it over to the police. Bodies are also disappearing.
Police and post-mortem reports, when available, do not mention gunshot wounds. The body of my former student Priyo was among those missing, but we were finally able to locate him. A friend took him back to his home in Rangpur to be buried. Constant monitoring and checking by activists resulted in the gunshot wound being mentioned in his case, although a deliberate error on his behalf in the police-supervised hospital release order attempted to complicate matters. Fortunately, this was fixed in the nick of time.
Getting the word out became extremely difficult. This piece is traveling a complicated path. I deleted all digital traces to protect intermediaries.
The entire internet network was taken down; a junior information technology minister said this was due to the “unstable situation”.
Helicopters fly low, directing searchlights downward. There were reports of shots being fired at people. Tear gas and stun grenades become lethal when dropped from a height.
A student talks about a body lying on the empty overpass being dragged by the police. A friend talks about an unmarked car shooting bullets into the crowd as it speeds by. She was lucky. The shooter was shooting from a window on the other side. A mother suffers from the senseless death of her three-year-old son.
A gory account of a human brain frozen on a track is a first for me. The curfew resulted in trash piling up on the streets. The brain will be there for people to see, perhaps deliberately.
The raid at 2:20 this morning on the apartment across the street also occurred on command. The video is blurred, but you can only see segments of the huge contingent of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), heavily armed police and others in plain clothes. They ended up going out with someone, perhaps an opposition leader.
Armored vehicles roam the streets. Orders to shoot on sight have not calmed the anger and people continue to take to the streets despite the curfew. There is another side to the story. Reports of police lynchings and burning offices are some of the violent responses to government-led brutality.
Then there is the impact of the protests on the average person, as most working-class Bangladeshis live day-to-day lives. Their daily earnings feed their families. As Prime Minister, who desperately clings to a position to which she is not legitimately entitled, and as the public, who has been tormented enough to fight back, it is they who starve.
Private television channels compete with the state-owned BTV and produce government propaganda. Watching the public complain about one of their own, I can’t forget all the ordinary people I spoke to – the rickshaw drivers and even the fruit sellers selling perishables – who expressed solidarity with the students. Their immediate suffering, although painful, is something they are willing to accept.
She has to go, they say.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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