Photo: Agence France-Presse The Bangladeshi student protest movement turned into a confrontation with those in power, leaving at least 105 dead according to an AFP count.
France Media Agency to Dhaka
Published on July 19
- Asia
Bangladesh established a curfew on Friday and deployed the army to maintain order, after several days of deadly student demonstrations, on the 19th day of a protest movement which turned into a confrontation with the government, with a toll of at least 105 deaths according to an AFP count.
“The government has decided to impose a curfew and deploy the army”, declared to AFP the office of the Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina.
This assessment, established from hospital sources, testifies to the unprecedented violence of the unrest which is shaking this Muslim country of 170 million inhabitants against a backdrop of massive unemployment among graduates.
“The demonstrations are enormous and this is perhaps the most serious challenge” never faced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in power since 2009, told AFP Pierre Prakash, director of Crisis Group Asia, based in Bangkok.
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The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, condemned the repression, calling the attacks “particularly shocking and unacceptable”.
He said he was “very concerned” by reports that authorities are deploying paramilitary units such as the Bangladesh Border Guard and the Rapid Action Battalion, “which have a long history of violations » human rights.
Dozens of people killed by the police
At least 52 people were killed on Friday in Dhaka, where demonstrations continued despite a ban on all gatherings or public meetings in the capital, according to a list consulted by AFP at Dhaka University Hospital.< /p>
Since the start of the week, police shootings have been responsible for more than two-thirds of the deaths, according to descriptions given by hospitals.
After having closed the schools and universities at the start of the week, the authorities have also cut off the Internet since Thursday. And on Friday, one of the main opponents, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was arrested, according to police.
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Photo: Bikas Das Associated Press Almost daily, the demonstrations aim to obtain an end to hiring quotas in the public service which reserve more than half of the positions for specific groups.
On Thursday, government buildings were “set on fire and vandalized,” according to police, including the headquarters of state-run Bangladesh Television (BTV), where more than 700 people were injured, including 104 police officers and 30 journalists, according to private broadcaster Independent Television.
Police confirmed that about 100 police officers were injured and about 50 police stations were set on fire, and by Friday, BTV had not resumed broadcasting.
On Friday, protesters stormed a prison in central Narsingdi district. “The inmates fled the prison and the protesters set fires,” a police officer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity and estimating the number of freed inmates at “hundreds.”
A “rigged” system
The demonstrations have been almost daily since the beginning of July.
They aim to achieve an end hiring quotas in the civil service which reserve more than half of the positions for specific groups, notably for the children of veterans of the country's war of liberation against Pakistan in 1971 and favor those close to those in power.
The social crisis turned into a political crisis for the Prime Minister, booed during the demonstrations in the streets of Dhaka, a megalopolis of 20 million inhabitants, with cries of “ Down with the dictator! “.
“Instead of responding to the protesters' grievances, the government has made the situation worse,” said Mr. Prakash, for whom “the country seems in danger.” Bangladesh is home to a thriving textile industry supplying the world's biggest ready-to-wear brands.
The situation today, “is the eruption of discontent latent youth accumulated over the years, due to the deprivation of their economic and political rights,” commented Ali Riaz, professor of politics at the University of Illinois.
< p>“Employment quotas have become the symbol of a system that is rigged,” he adds.
Sheikh Hasina threw added fuel to the fire last week by comparing the demonstrators to “collaborators” of Pakistan, in an insulting reference to the period of the liberation war in 1971, believes Mr. Riaz.
“Mocking them was an attack on their dignity. It was also a message saying how much the demonstrators do not matter to this regime which considers itself above the law,” he adds.
With his party, the Awami League, Sheikh Hasina is accused of wanting to muzzle all opposition since she returned to power in 2009.
She is accused of having unfairly imprison its main rival, limit press freedom and seek to eradicate all dissent, notably through the extrajudicial assassination of opposition activists, according to its detractors and rights defenders.