(Dhaka) Bangladeshi authorities on Friday banned further protests in the capital Dhaka and said they had arrested a leading opposition leader, following days of unrest in the country and deadly clashes between police and students in the past 48 hours.
As the week progressed, the protests, which began in early July to demand an end to a quota system for public sector hiring, degenerated into violent clashes, leaving 39 dead, including 32 on Thursday.
The bustling streets of Dhaka were deserted at dawn on Friday, but bore the scars of the violence: government buildings set ablaze the day before, burned vehicles, bricks thrown onto the roads… And the Internet remained cut off.
In the morning, new clashes broke out in the capital. Hundreds of students blocked roads in the upscale commercial district of Banani, an AFP correspondent saw. According to witnesses, police fired tear gas grenades in several places in this megacity of 20 million inhabitants.
“To ensure public safety,” police then “banned all gatherings, processions and public meetings in Dhaka” on Friday, Habibur Rahman, the city’s police chief, told AFP.
Police also claimed to have arrested a leading opposition leader in Dhaka, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, a senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), without giving details on the reasons for his arrest.
The day before, she had accused “infidels” in a statement of having “set fire to, vandalized and carried out destructive activities” against official buildings, including that of state television BTV, after an “almost total” cut of the Internet across the country.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE (ARCHIVES)
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.
700 injured
“A hundred police officers were injured during the clashes” on Thursday and “fifty police stations were set on fire,” Faruk Hossain, spokesman for the Dhaka police, told AFP.
If these destructive actions continue, we will be “forced to make maximum use of the law,” the police warned.
The latter is the cause of more than two thirds of the deaths recorded, according to information obtained by AFP from hospital sources.
More than 700 people were injured Thursday in violent clashes between police and protesters, including 104 police officers and 30 journalists, according to private broadcaster Independent Television, which said 26 of the country’s 64 districts reported clashes.
The near-daily protests that began in early July are aimed at demanding an end to civil service hiring quotas that reserve more than half of the positions for specific groups, including children of veterans of the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
The students are demanding merit-based recruitment, saying the system favours the children of supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has ruled the country since 2009 and is accused by opponents of seeking to stamp out dissent in order to further entrench her power.
PHOTO MUNIR UZ ZAMAN, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People walk past vehicles set on fire by students during the protest.
Prevent all communication
The protests grew in intensity over the days, with clashes breaking out in several cities across Bangladesh as riot police charged at students who had set up human roadblocks.
This week, authorities ordered schools and universities to close indefinitely as the situation deteriorated.
The protesters are “protesting the repressive nature of the state,” Mubashar Hasan, an expert on the country at the University of Oslo, told AFP. They are “questioning Hasina’s leadership, accusing her of clinging to power by force.”
It is the eruption of latent discontent among young people that has been building up over the years, due to the deprivation of their economic and political rights.
Ali Riaz, professor of politics at the University of Illinois.
“Employment quotas have become the symbol of a system that is rigged,” he adds.
“We first demand that the prime minister apologize to us,” Bidisha Rimjhim, an 18-year-old protester, told AFP. “We need justice for our brothers who were killed.”
The internet remains cut off in the country, according to London-based advocacy organisation Netblocks.
“The disruptions prevent families from contacting each other and stifle efforts to document human rights violations,” the organization wrote in a social media post.