A Bangladeshi student organization behind recent protests against government employment quotas yesterday said it was halting demonstrations for 48 hours.
“We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours,” Nahid Islam, the top leader of main protest organizer Students Against Discrimination, said from his hospital bed.
“We demand that during this period the government withdraws the curfew, restores the Internet and stops targeting the student protesters,” he said.
Photo: Reuters
What began as demonstrations against politicized admission quotas for sought-after government jobs has snowballed into some of the worst unrest of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, with at least 163 people killed in clashes, according to an Agence France-Presse tally.
On Sunday, the Bangladeshi Supreme Court pared back the hiring quotas for specific groups, including one for the children and grandchildren of “freedom fighters” from Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
“We started this movement for reforming the quota,” Islam said. “But we did not want quota reform at the expense of so much blood, so much killing, so much damage to life and property.”
Photo: AFP
Islam was hospitalized after being picked up by unidentified individuals he alleged were plainclothes police on Sunday night and beaten, he said.
He blamed the actions of the authorities for the escalation of the protests.
“We are not sure how many people were killed. The government is completely controlling the media,” he said. “People are expressing their anger at the government.”
More than 500 people, including some opposition leaders, have been arrested in Dhaka since the protests began, police said yesterday.
A curfew has been imposed and soldiers are patrolling cities across the South Asian country, while a nationwide Internet blackout since Thursday has drastically restricted the flow of information to the outside world.
“At least 532 people have been arrested over the violence” since the unrest began, Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain said.
“They include some BNP leaders,” he added, referring to the opposition Bangladesh National Party.
Diplomats in Dhaka questioned Bangladeshi authorities’ deadly response to the protests following a presentation by Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs Hasan Mahmud that blamed demonstrators for the violence, diplomatic officials said.
Mahmud summoned ambassadors for a briefing on Sunday and showed them a 15-minute video that sources said focused on damage caused by protesters.
However, a senior diplomatic official in Dhaka, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that US Ambassador Peter Haas said Mahmud was presenting a one-sided version of events.
“I am surprised you did not show the footage of police firing at unarmed protesters,” the source quoted Haas as telling Mahmud.
A US embassy official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the ambassador’s comments.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has handed prison sentences to 57 Bangladeshi expatriates for protesting against their government while in the Gulf country, where demonstrations are banned, state media reported yesterday.
Three were sentenced to life, 53 others to 10 years in prison and one to 11 years for organizing and participating in rallies across the UAE, the official Emirati news agency WAM said.
The diplomatic source added that Mahmud did not respond to a question from a UN representative about the alleged use of UN-marked armored personnel carriers and helicopters to suppress the protests.
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