YOUNG BLOOD AND VIOLENT STREETS

Violence after Hasina's exit takes Bangladesh away from the liberal ethos advocated by its founders

- NILADRY SARKAR

This will be a new Bangladesh and it will be free of any fascist rule. The state will not fire on its students, and every citizen will have equal rights,” Bin Yamin Mollah, a student leader told THE WEEK from Dhaka. He is one of the coordinators of Students Against Discrimination (SAD), the anti-government movement which forced prime minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and escape to India.

The roots of the ongoing student movement lie in the protest against the quota system, which has been going on since 2018. The students rose in revolt against the system that reserved 56 per cent of government jobs for various groups, including 30 per cent for the families and descendants of veterans of the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. This forced the Hasina government to abolish the entire system. But, in June this year, the Bangladesh high court restored the quota, igniting a new wave of protests nationwide.

Starting from Dhaka University on July 1, students from across the country joined the protests. On July 15, the protests turned violent when members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of Hasina’s Awami League, allegedly attacked protesters on the Dhaka University campus.

As the situation escalated, the government responded brutally, resulting in the deaths of more than 200 people. Internet was blocked, curfew was imposed and protesters were allegedly shot by government forces and attacked by the ruling party cadres in broad daylight. Hasina, on the other hand, blamed the banned Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the main opposition party, for the clashes.