(Dhaka) Bangladesh imposed a curfew on Friday and deployed the army to maintain order, after several days of deadly student protests, on 19e day of a protest movement which turned into a confrontation with the authorities, with a death toll of at least 105 according to an AFP count.
“The government has decided to impose a curfew and deploy the army,” Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s office told AFP.
This assessment, established from hospital sources, bears witness to the unprecedented violence of the unrest shaking this Muslim country of 170 million inhabitants against a backdrop of massive unemployment among graduates.
“The protests are huge and this is perhaps the most serious challenge” ever faced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in power since 2009, Pierre Prakash, director of Crisis Group Asia based in Bangkok, told AFP.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned the crackdown, calling the attacks “particularly shocking and unacceptable”.
He said he was “very concerned” by reports that authorities were deploying paramilitary units such as the Border Guard Bangladesh and the Rapid Action Battalion, “which have a long history of violations” of human rights.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Bangladesh is surveying the destruction left by the deadliest day of ongoing student protests so far, which saw government buildings torched by demonstrators and a nationwide internet blackout.
At least 52 people were killed in Dhaka on Friday, where protests continued despite a ban on all gatherings and public meetings in the capital, according to a list seen by AFP at Dhaka University Hospital.
Since the beginning of the week, police shootings have been responsible for more than two-thirds of the deaths, according to descriptions given by hospitals.
After closing schools and universities earlier this week, authorities have also cut off the internet since Thursday and on Friday one of the main opponents, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was arrested, according to police.
On Thursday, official buildings were “set on fire and vandalised”, according to the police, including the headquarters of the public television station Bangladesh Television (BTV) where more than 700 people were injured, including 104 police officers and 30 journalists, according to the private channel Independent Television.
Police confirmed that around 100 officers were injured and around 50 police stations were set on fire, and as of Friday, BTV had not resumed broadcasting.
PHOTO MUNIR UZ ZAMAN, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People walk past vehicles set on fire by students during the protest.
On Friday, a prison in the central district of Narsingdi was attacked by protesters. “The prisoners fled the prison and the protesters set fire to it,” a police officer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity and estimating the number of prisoners released at “hundreds.”
Demonstrations have been almost daily since the beginning of July.
End of quotas
They aim to end public sector hiring quotas that reserve more than half of posts for specific groups, including children of veterans of the country’s liberation war against Pakistan in 1971, and favor those close to power.
The social crisis has turned into a political crisis for the prime minister, who has been booed during demonstrations in the streets of Dhaka, a megalopolis of 20 million inhabitants, with cries of “Down with the dictator!”
“Instead of addressing the protesters’ grievances, the government has made the situation worse,” said Mr. Prakash, who said that “the country seems in danger.” Bangladesh is home to a thriving textile industry that supplies the world’s leading ready-to-wear brands.
The situation today “is the eruption of latent discontent among young people that has been accumulating over the years, due to the deprivation of their economic and political rights,” commented Ali Riaz, professor of politics at the University of Illinois.
“Employment quotas have become the symbol of a system that is rigged,” he adds.
Sheikh Hasina added fuel to the fire last week by comparing the protesters to “collaborators” of Pakistan, in an insulting reference to the period of the 1971 liberation war, Mr Riaz said.
“Mocking them was an attack on their dignity. It was also a message saying how little the protesters matter to this regime that considers itself above the law,” he added.
Sheikh Hasina has been accused, along with her party, the Awami League, of trying to silence all opposition since she returned to power in 2009.
He is accused of unjustly imprisoning his main rival, limiting press freedom and seeking to eradicate all dissent, including through the extrajudicial assassination of opposition activists, according to his critics and rights activists.