DHAKA: Student leaders rallied Bangladeshis on Saturday for a countrywide civil disobedience drive as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government weathered a worsening backlash over a deadly police crackdown on demonstrators.
Rallies and protest against civil service job quotas sparked days of chaos last month that killed over 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure, AFP reported.
Forces deployments briefly restored order but mobs hit the streets and roads in huge numbers following Friday prayers in the South Asian country, heeding a call by student leaders to press the government to accept their demands.
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for holding the initial protest demonstrations, asked their fellows to launch an all-out non-cooperation movement from Sunday. The group’s leader Asif Mahmud told AFP that they would not pay taxes and utility bills and the movement will also include strikes by government officials and a halt to overseas remittance payments via banks. Mahmud’s fellow student leaders said another round of countrywide rallies would be held on Saturday. Mahmud wrote on social media, “Please don’t stay at home. Join your nearest protest march.”
Students and protestors are demanding a public apology from PM Hasina for last month’s violence and the dismissal of several ministers. The students have also insisted that the government reopens universities and schools across the country, all of which were closed at the height of the political unrest in Bangladesh. Crowds on the street and roads have gone further, chanting demands for PM Hasina to quit.
Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive polls in January following a vote without genuine opposition party. Her government is alleged by rights groups of misusing state machinery to entrench its hold on authority and stamp out dissent voices, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition workers.
32 Children killed in Bangladesh: UN
Protests started in early July over the reintroduction of a quota scheme since scaled back by Bangladesh’s apex court — that reserved more than half of all government jobs for some groups. With about 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to officials, the move upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis in the South Asian country. The protest demonstrations had remained peaceful until attacks on protestors by pro-government student groups and police. The government eventually imposed a countrywide curfew, deployed forces and shut down the country’s mobile internet network for more than 11 days to restore order.
Foreign governments strongly condemned the clampdown, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week calling for an international investigation into the lethal and excessive force against peaceful protesters.
The United Nations said Friday that around 32 children were among those killed last month during unrest in Bangladesh.
