By Emran Hossain
Draped in a Bangladeshi national flag, the coffin containing the body of Abu Sayed was kept longer than usual before burial to allow thousands of mourners to pay their last respects.
The 25-year-old English literature student at the state-run Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur, in northern Bangladesh, was shot at close range by two police officers on July 16.
He was among seven people, including six students, killed that day as tens of thousands of students held protests on university campuses and streets across the South Asian nation demanding an end to “unjust and discriminatory quotas” for government jobs.
The protests began a fortnight ago after a court order restored quotas for government jobs that were abolished in 2018. The reinstated quota system reserved 30 percent of government jobs to relatives of those who fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war.
Another 26 percent was allocated to a few other groups, with the general public having only 44 percent of the jobs.
This angered young people as many of the current political elite of Bangladesh claim to be relatives of freedom fighters and are poised to take the lion’s share of government jobs, that are the most secure and sought-after in a country with high unemployment, high inflation, and a crippled economy.
The furious students wanted job quotas slashed to five percent so that the public could get 95 percent of the jobs.
As protests spread nationwide, the Supreme Court rolled back its decision, on July 22. It allocated 93% of jobs for general people, 5% for freedom fighters and their kin, 1% for ethnic minorities, and 1% for third gender and the physically disabled.
But that decision could not bring peace to the nation as Sayed’s killing fueled student anger.
Video footage showing Sayed being shot by police went viral on social media.
The young man stood defiant, his arms outstretched as he faced the combined might of the police in full riot gear and armed cadres of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student front of the ruling Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
His body shudders after the first bullet, then another, yet another, and another. He crouches, and then he collapses to the ground.
He was rushed to a local hospital, but it was too late, according to eyewitness accounts.
But the unarmed Abu Sayed, with his outstretched arms as he faced the police and pro-government students, became a heroic martyr with some calling the incident a “Tiananmen Square moment in Bangladesh’s history.”
However, the televised murder has dealt a shocking blow to his impoverished family in Rangpur.
“Why did they kill our son? They could have arrested him or beaten him. But why did they have to kill him?” lamented Sayed’s aunt.
The aunt, who did not wish to be named told UCA News that their family of farmers had sold precious land to send him to the university.
“We thought Sayed would pull us out of poverty as soon as he got a job. Instead, he returned home dead, murdered for demanding better job opportunities for farmers’ children,” she cried.
The killings on July 16 also shocked the nation, turning a hitherto peaceful protest by university students into violent, deadly unrest that killed at least 190 people, mostly students, in the following week.
Suddenly, Bangladesh had plunged into one of its worst political crises in recent decades.
Anarchy and emergency
As street protests and clashes ensued across Bangladesh, arsonists also attacked state properties and infrastructure in the national capital Dhaka, and other parts of the country.
Mobs also destroyed more than 100 government vehicles.
An unprecedented attack on a jail in Nashingdi district saw 826 inmates flee after looting huge amounts of arms and ammunition and setting fire to the facility on July 17.
Government officials estimated the damage due to the mayhem to be around 10 billion taka (more than US$85 million)
Leaders of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, the coordinating body of the protests, condemned the anarchy and brushed off any student involvement in the attacks and looting of state properties.
The prime minister and her ministers accused the “armed terrorists of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP] and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami” with carrying out the mayhem.
Hasina vowed to hand down “exemplary punishments” to the culprits.
Internet blackout
Authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout on July 18. A nationwide curfew was imposed the following day, and the military was deployed to restore order.
The military was authorized to “shoot on sight” any suspected anarchists.
About 2,500 people, including leaders and supporters of the BNP and Jamaat, have been arrested for vandalism and arson attacks as of July 23, according to the Home Ministry.
The curfew and military patrols have restored stability for the moment.
However, the internet blackout caused suffering for tens of thousands of people. Many failed to recharge their digital devices or pay for electricity, cooking gas, and water meters.
Thousands of outbound travelers got struck at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka as their flights were canceled or delayed.
Local tourists were stranded for days as the curfew did not permit vehicular movement.
How peaceful protests slipped into violence
In 2018, a month-long anti-quota movement forced the government to abolish the quota system, designed shortly after independence in 1972.
It was an interim arrangement to acknowledge the contribution of freedom fighters who constituted less than 0.25 percent of the population.
Over the past 50 years, its beneficiaries have grown exponentially, cornering a 30 percent quota that ensures easy access to government jobs.
Shahriar Amin, a political science student at Dhaka College who joined the protests, said the discriminatory system must go.
“Any quota other than the ones set aside for people with disabilities and indigenous communities is unacceptable,” he told UCA News.
The situation got worse when the prime minister, during a press conference, said she would prefer giving jobs to descendants of war veterans rather than descendants of Razakars. The loaded term refers to collaborators that Pakistan used in attempts to crush the freedom movement.
On the other hand, the war veterans are hailed as heroes and considered loyalists of the he ruling Awami League.
Critics say the ruling party aims to consolidate its voter base by ensuring party loyalists corner positions in the powerful bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies.
Wider grievances
Observers also noted that the student protests also highlighted broader public grievances with the authoritarian rule of the Awami League, which has held on to power through three controversial and what many claim were rigged elections since 2014.
All this culminated in a worsening economic crisis, high youth unemployment, and massive corruption.
Bangladesh’s overall unemployment rate stood at 4.20 percent in 2023, and some 800,000 university graduates were unemployed, according to the state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
“A state of persistent insecurity, employment and lack of income led to social discontent, particularly among the university graduates,” Rashed Al Mahmud, who teaches Development Studies at Dhaka University, told UCA News.
Amid the protests, Chennel24, a private TV station, released an investigative report on how a syndicate of government officials leaked question papers of civil service examinations for over a decade and made millions of dollars.
This prompted the arrest of 17 alleged syndicate members and a probe.
source : ucanews