If several of the leaders of a Bangladeshi student group are not freed from detention on Sunday, the group has threatened to reprise the protests that led to a deadly police crackdown and widespread unrest across the country.
According to an AFP calculation of police and hospital statistics, last week’s violence killed at least 205 people, making it one of the worst disturbances of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year reign.
More than a week after being implemented, army patrols and a statewide curfew are still in effect. Thousands of protestors, including at least six student leaders, have been gathered by a police dragnet.
The commotion was sparked by the campaign against civil service employment quotas by Students Against Discrimination, who announced that they would be lifting their week-long protest moratorium.
In an online briefing late on Saturday, Abdul Hannan Masud informed reporters that the group’s leader, Nahid Islam, and other members “should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn.”
Masud, who remained anonymous while he was evading law enforcement, also called for “visible actions” to be made against government ministers and police personnel who they believed were to blame for the murders of demonstrators.
He declared that starting on Monday, “Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests.”
On Friday, Islam and two other prominent protest group members were carried away by a squad of plainclothes detectives after being forcibly released from a hospital in the nation’s capital, Dhaka.
Islam told AFP earlier this week that he was being treated at the hospital for injuries he had sustained from police during a previous round of incarceration and that he was afraid for his life.
The three was placed in jail for their own safety, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan informed reporters on Friday. However, he did not clarify if they had been formally detained.
Two more people were placed under arrest by investigators, according to police, while a third was hauled into custody early on Sunday morning, according to an activist for Students Against Discrimination.
The leading daily newspaper in Bangladesh, Prothom Alo, claims that since the disturbance started, at least 9,000 people have been arrested statewide.
The curfew that was put in place over the weekend is still in effect, but it has been gradually loosened this week, indicating the Hasina government’s belief that order was returning bit by bit.
Eleven days after a statewide blackout was imposed during the height of the upheaval, the country’s mobile internet network will be restored, the minister of telecommunications, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, informed reporters.
According to the national telecoms authority, fixed line broadband connections were already restored on Tuesday, however the great majority of Bangladesh’s 141 million internet users use the internet via mobile devices.
crisis in jobs
This month saw the start of protests over the reinstatement of a quota system that reserved more than half of all government employment for particular groups.
According to government estimates, almost 18 million young Bangladeshis are unemployed, therefore the decision greatly infuriated graduates who are currently experiencing a severe job crisis.
Opponents claim the quota is employed to fill government positions with supporters of the ruling Awami League.
Last week, the Supreme Court reduced the amount of reserved positions, although it did not fully support the demands of protestors to do away with the quotas.
Since taking office in 2009, Hasina has ruled Bangladesh. In January, she won an election for the fourth time in a row with no real opposition.
Rights organizations accuse her government of abusing state institutions, including as the extrajudicial death of opposition activists, in order to strengthen its hold on power and quell dissent.
Up until last week, when police and student organizations supporting the government attacked protestors, the demonstrations had mostly been nonviolent.
