The father of an engineering student who was beaten to death at his university halls in Bangladesh has demanded justice for his son, as protests against politically motivated attacks on campuses continued.
Abrar Fahad, 22, who was allegedly targeted after he criticized the government on Facebook, was found dead at his university halls of residence in Dhaka on Monday.
It is claimed that he was attacked by students linked to the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), an influential student wing of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.
Photo: Reuters
Barkat Ullah, Fahad’s father, said his son had hoped to study a doctorate and wanted to serve his country.
“The university administration has to take strict measures to stop such incidents,” he said. “They should know what’s happening inside their dormitory. They have to hold them accountable. If they can do that, then maybe these kind of incidents will stop happening.”
Fahad’s death has caused outrage across the nation, prompting protests by students at universities in Dhaka, Chittagong and Rajshahi, and demands for authorities to clampdown on political violence on campuses.
Human rights groups have condemned groups such as the BCL, which have been accused of beating student protesters and stifling debate.
Last year, students who had launched a protest calling for greater road safety were beaten with sticks and machetes in attacks widely blamed on the Awami League and its youth wing.
Authorities took no action against those carrying out the violence, but instead detained the protesting students, Human Rights Watch said.
A first-year student from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka, where Fahad was studying, said students did not feel safe in the halls of residence.
“We never speak freely,” he said.
Fahad was in his second year at the most competitive university in the nation, where he was studying electrical and electronic engineering.
Friends said he was attacked because he had written a Facebook post criticizing deals signed during Hasina’s visit to India.
They included controversial deals on water sharing and on exporting petroleum gas to India, which many argued were not in the nation’s interests.
According to an autopsy report, he died of severe internal bleeding from beatings with blunt objects.
“Fahad was a very simple person. He had a naive mind. My son, he wanted to go abroad for higher study,” Ullah said.
Amnesty International described his murder as a “horrific crime that must be investigated immediately.”
“Abrar was only exercising his peaceful right to freedom of expression in his Facebook posts criticizing the government,” the human rights group said in a statement.
Hasina has promised justice to Fahad’s family. At least 11 students have reportedly been arrested in connection with his murder.
Hundreds of students and teachers on Wednesday took part in a silent procession at Fahad’s university in the capital.
A second student at the university, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that the humiliation and beatings of students had been repeatedly ignored.
“The ragging [bullying and beating] has always been a massive problem. For many past incidents, we reported them to authorities, but they never took any serious action, and this was a result of their negligence,” the student said. “The perpetrators never thought they’d face any consequences. It’s a shame that someone has to get killed to bring the issue under [the] spotlight.”
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS