International pressure is mounting on Bangladesh to end its violent crackdown on protesting students after scores of video clips and photos surfaced on social media over the past week showing police, army and paramilitary forces firing directly upon the protesters.
The United Nations, European Union and Amnesty International are among those that have called on the Dhaka government to ease up on the students, who have been demanding an end to quotas for government jobs that would limit their employment prospects.
University teachers have joined in the protests, which began after a July 1 High Court ruling re-establishing the quotas, and analysts say the students are enjoying broad support from ordinary citizens.
According to the quota system, 30% of civil service jobs – considered the steadiest job option for young Bangladeshis in a country facing high unemployment – would be reserved for the grandchildren of those who fought against Pakistan in Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.
The students are demanding a merit-based system of job allocation. However, what started as a nonviolent protest turned violent after police fired bullets, pellets and tear gas at unarmed students.
According to reports by police and hospitals, more than 200 people died in the violence between July 16 and 22. Many deaths remain unregistered with bodies not reaching hospitals and police stations. Unofficial figures have put the death toll between 300 and 500.
Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP], the largest opposition party in the country, for the unrest. She said that she had ordered the deployment of police, paramilitary and army “to protect the students” but called the protesters “militants.”
Hasina, in office since 2009, has been accused of authoritarianism and corruption. Her party has been accused of rigging the last three general elections, a charge that the party denies.
On July 21, the Supreme Court scrapped most of the quotas and ruled that 93% of government jobs would now be open to candidates on merit, meeting a key demand of the protesters.
However, members of Students Against Discrimination [SAD], whose campaign against job quotas precipitated the unrest, said that the protests would continue until their latest set of demands is met.
A statement from SAD said on Monday that four ministers, including the home and law ministers, must be removed from the Cabinet. They also demanded that the police and pro-ruling party “goons” who fired on the students be arrested and prosecuted for “murdering” unarmed protesters.
In response, the government began arresting student leaders and opposition political activists.
One Dhaka-based rights group, which asked not to be identified for fear of official retaliation, said more than 10,000 people, mostly students, have been arrested over the past few days.
The police have already detained at least 10 of the more than 50 SAD coordinators who are leading the protest. One of the coordinators, who was released from police custody briefly before being detained again, said they were tortured in custody and pressured to call off the protests.
Several student leaders and rights activists said on Tuesday that the police, with the help of the army and paramilitary force, were conducting raids across the country and detaining students. The government is trying its best to demoralize the students and sabotage their protest movement, they said.
"Every night they are conducting block raids and picking up students and young people who took part in the uprising,” said a Bangladesh-based rights activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal from the government.
“Many of them have become traceless, which means they have become victims of enforced disappearances,” the activist told VOA. “The detained activists are being tortured in custody in the name of remand. This is how the judiciary is collaborating in torturing the students and young activists by sending them in for remand and by denying them bail.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called attention Monday to the reported mass arrests of thousands of students and political opposition members. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Guterres was “deeply concerned about the situation in Bangladesh.”
“We continue to raise our concerns about the situation in the country with relevant authorities, both in the capital, Dhaka, and here in New York, and we count on Bangladesh to respect and uphold human rights, including as a top troop-contributing country to United Nations peacekeeping missions,” Dujarric said.
Smriti Singh, the regional director for South Asia at Amnesty International, said in a statement Monday that the mass arrest and arbitrary detention of student protesters was a “witch hunt by the authorities to silence anyone who dares to challenge the government.”
“Reports suggest that these arrests are entirely politically motivated, in retaliation for the exercise of human rights,” Singh said.
VOA reached out to the Home Ministry of Bangladesh for a response to the international criticism but has not yet received a response.
Ali Riaz, political analyst and professor of political science at Illinois State University, said the underlying cause of the upheaval is the “sense of disenfranchisement among people, both economic and political.”
“A large number of people are facing dire economic situation while those connected to the regime are plundering and siphoning off money to other countries. On the political front, three consecutive fraudulent elections have left no opportunity for them to participate in politics,” Riaz told VOA. “This is an outburst of these discontents which have transformed the movement.”
