Bangladesh | Six student leaders released, police crackdown shocks online

(Dhaka) In Bangladesh, police on Thursday released six student leaders of the movement against public sector job quotas after clashes that left more than 200 dead, while the public is discovering, thanks to the end of the Internet blockade, the violence of police repression.

“The six coordinators of the anti-quota movement were handed over to their families this afternoon,” Deputy Commissioner Junaed Alam Sarkar said.

Last week, police arrested leading members of the Students Against Discrimination coalition, which called for protests that led to the deaths of 206 people in violent clashes with police, according to an AFP tally based on police and hospital data.

Among the arrested leaders was coalition leader Nahid Islam. On July 26, he and two other student movement leaders were forcibly removed from a hospital in the capital Dhaka, where they had been admitted, by plainclothes detectives and taken to an unknown location.

His father Badrul Islam told AFP that Nahid returned home on Thursday afternoon, without giving further details. Three other people were arrested in the days that followed, with the government saying at the time they were being held for their own safety.

On Thursday, Law Minister Anisul Huq told AFP that the six people had volunteered to be taken into custody. “They came here voluntarily and left voluntarily,” he said.

Two days earlier, the European Union, like human rights organisations, had deplored an “excessive use of force” against the demonstrators, after clashes that were among the deadliest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power 15 years ago. To restore order, her government imposed a curfew, deployed the army and cut off access to the Internet for 11 days.

Point blank shots

Once the internet was restored this week, millions of residents were shocked to discover the brutality of the police crackdown.

While passers-by and police officers were among the 206 victims recorded by AFP, most of them were killed by gunfire from security forces, hospitals told the global news agency.

According to Amnesty International, the study of photos, videos and eyewitness accounts has established that the police used “unlawful” force against the protesters on several occasions.

Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said security forces showed restraint but were “forced to open fire” on protesters trying to protect government buildings.

“How come the police kill our brothers and sisters like this?” asks one Internet user, in response to a short video showing a police officer shooting an injured young man, while another tries to pull him to safety.

AFP was able to establish that this video was taken in Jatrabari, a district of the capital Dhaka, and identify three eyewitnesses who corroborated it and agreed to testify on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals.

The incident occurred on July 20, at the height of the unrest, hours after M’s government^me Hasina announced a nationwide curfew and deployed troops to restore order.

A witness said the injured man in the video, Imam Hossain Taim, 18, who was accosted by police, denied taking part in the protests before being shot dead. The video of the young man being attacked has been viewed more than half a million times after being posted on Facebook, and the 60-second clip has been widely shared on WhatsApp and other social media.

AFP also verified another video showing police shooting at point-blank range a man who had taken refuge in a building under construction.

The protests began after the reintroduction in June of a system reserving more than half of civil service jobs for certain candidates, including nearly a third for descendants of veterans of Bangladesh’s independence war.

With an estimated 18 million young Bangladeshis unemployed, according to government figures, the move has deeply hurt graduates.

Critics of these quotas say they aim to reserve positions in the civil service for those close to the Awami League, the Prime Minister’s party.