[🇧🇩] In Bangladesh, A Violent 'Student Revolution' is on بنگلہ دیش میں انقلاب

[Old School]

This was what the security agency did to the leader of the student activist at the agency's safe house. He was released blind folded under international pressure.

 

[LeonBlack08]

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/2fo6jqpTAhCm14xf/

Social media images from last 5 days

Viewer discretion advised

 

[Bilal9]

@Saif Hasn't been here since the protests started. Is everything okay? Is he living in Bangladesh?

Not sure if he was, yeah no posts from him since this struggle started.

 

[Bilal9]

Death everywhere
Decades later, your story will be one of many, told in the form of songs remembering the dark day when the government murdered Bangladeshis.

Arafat Kazi
July 23rd 2024
Netranews

The first death is cinematic.

He stands alone, fearless, facing with his bare chest a dozen policemen, cowering though armed and armoured. The shot has to be a mistake. Recoil makes the shooter's helmet fall off. Then the second shot, the kill shot, goes home. Everybody knows the name of the martyred Abu Sayed. Nobody knows the name of his murderer.

The second death, in comparison, looks like a mobile game. It's a top-down view of a police van mowing through two rickshaw drivers. Nobody knows the name of the dead. Nobody knows the name of the killer. The third death to go viral is also vehicular. An armored truck patrols a road with a corpse lying on top. There's another video of that same truck, a bored policeman tossing the student's body aside.

These are the deaths you see. The dramatic moments that define this revolution, filmed, by a one-in-a-million chance, at the point of impact. There are other deaths you hear about; deaths that aren't filmed but no less poignant.

Students committing extraordinary acts of courage, sacrifice, and intelligence. But also, students being murdered in cold blood. Those are the deaths you read about, how they disappeared or what their dreams were, pictures of children smiling with their relatives; everyday moments that become meteors of a revolution.

Then there are deaths you hear about.

These are both mysterious and personally connected. Your friend's neighbour was shot in the head. Your neighbour's friend hasn't come home. You may already have encountered these people, so you perhaps have an idea of a shy smile, a brown t-shirt, a strong cologne, and you think, 'ah, that's who it is, inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un, I hope it was quick and painless.'

But most of these deaths don't go viral, so you don't have the same vivid picture of mothers weeping, potential nipped in the bud, a bright future now rotting in dirt. It's just one less person you'll see at dawats.

Reports and rumours fly like birds. There is a persistent one about how hospitals are overwhelmed, turning dying patients away because there is nowhere for them to wait. Everywhere you look, death. Every story you hear is tinged with death. You are individually and collectively unable to deal with so much death. So much disappearance. People have disappeared often enough. They disappeared in great numbers in 1990 and in 1971. But you at least didn't have to look upon their faces or confront their extinguished humanity so many times a day.

The last death you see is footage shot from a balcony. In the road below, a group of uniformed paramilitary men pull a living young man out of a gate. Shots are fired. The body is dragged off. A death both immediate and anonymous, visceral and mundane. You see a person die, witnessing the most intimate of human acts, but you know they will remain nameless, as nameless as the law enforcement officials executing them without consequence. The shot, and the subsequent slump, look like someone pressed a switch to shut off a toy.

Someone else presses a different switch. You are shut out of the Internet. A minute ago, you were part of the grand collective of humanity. At your fingertips was knowledge, entertainment, news, friendship, support. Now, you are as bereft as an outer planet in a remote orbit. No one can hear you scream.

Decades later, your story will be one of many, told in the form of songs remembering the dark day when the government murdered Bangladeshis. But for now, you cannot ask for help. You are the tiger's twitching paw. You are a fever dream. You are a statistic. You do not exist.

One of the infamous artefacts of Bangladesh's War of Liberation was the Pakistani general Rao Farman Ali's diary which contained a list of Bangladeshi intellectuals— the blueprint for the Dhaka University Massacre. On that same campus, today, law enforcement officials have tools to make much more advanced, detailed, specific lists. Tools the American government developed to fight urban wars in the Middle East, to eavesdrop on foreign governments. These same tools are used to target mobile phones that were present in a location and correlate those phones with social media posts and, often, successfully on to individuals and their addresses.

Illustration: Netra NewsI
You think of Abu Sayed, the first death.

The man died like a hero — alone and unarmed against a group of shaking riflemen. But would he have been a hero if you didn't see his chest shake on impact? If you didn't see him stand there with his shirt off and his arms wide open, inviting sticks and stones that may break his bones, not expecting the bullets that killed him? You think about all the other deaths. The colleges of social media posts pronouncing victims. The picture of the crying woman, beaten and bloodied.

That was in broad daylight. When the police officer says "ajke jodi ber hon, direct guli korbo (If you come out today, we'll shoot directly), he knows he's being filmed. He doesn't care, as he also knows there are no consequences.

The vehicles running over protesters, the policemen sniping at hiding students through BRAC University's closed gates, and the headshots in residential areas. During the day, the city sleeps like a tiger, in fitful silence punctuated by twitches of gunshots and screams. At night, the jungle is humid with the acrid smoke of poison being disseminated by helicopters. Shut off from the world and each other, in a city that's burning, being tear-gassed and shot at on the ground and poisoned from above, being picked up, tortured, spat out a shattered corpse. Without even the flimsy protection of the social posts you would see in the first couple of days—help us escape, donate blood, has someone seen my sister?

Death comes closer, moving in the shadows.

Last week, death was a vivid flare. Each death was shocking. Now it's everywhere, all around you, touching everybody you know. Everybody experiences it in whispers. You do not know where your family is. You do not know how your family is. You do not know if your family is alive. Your family, similarly, does not know where you are, how you are, or whether you are alive. Your friends and family who live abroad endlessly share tips on how to somehow get through to Bangladesh. Call directly. Use an app. Try dialing 01188 instead of +88. The silence remains.

You are told, you tell your family: do not open the door. It is never good news. But it's late. A young cousin hears the knock, and instinctively opens the door. Without thinking, you walk out to see what's going on. You bluff, asking what they want. But they can see the fear in your eyes, the dismay in your cousin's. They know.

Decades later, your story will be one of many, told in the form of songs remembering the dark day when the government murdered Bangladeshis. But for now, you cannot ask for help. You are the tiger's twitching paw. You are a fever dream. You are a statistic. You do not exist.

Arafat Kazi is a Bangladeshi musician.

 

[Bilal9]

ANALYSIS


Hasina puts on a brave face as anxiety grows
With her control under question, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attempts to reassert control

Netra News
July 23rd 2024

Military tanks, followed by police personnel, patrolled the ruins left by violence on the streets of Dhaka on Sunday, 22nd July. Photo: Netra News

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought to reassure her allies on Monday as she navigates the biggest political crisis in her 15 years of uninterrupted rule, one that critics say is of her own making.

She summoned a group of business tycoons to her office on Monday as unease grows in the export-dependent economy over a prolonged internet shutdown and nationwide transportation blackout.

"We have already managed to bring it under considerable control," she reassured the businessmen. "The situation will gradually improve further. As it gets better, the curfew will also be relaxed."

For her political opponents, whom she unmistakably blames for the latest crisis, Hasina promised "even more stringent actions."

"It won't be let go so easily this time," she added.

She described how her government demonstrated tolerance despite students at Dhaka University insulting female leaders of the Chhatra League on campus and ransacking the rooms of some male members, who were forced to escape their dormitories. However, she refrained from blaming students for the violence, a charge she reserves for the opposition instead.

DFID - UK Department for International Development, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In a sometimes slurring voice, the 76-year-old blamed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies squarely for the violence during the clashes, asserting that ordinary students "could not have committed such destruction," a talking point increasingly promoted by her surrogates.

As many as 174 people have died as a result of the government's ferocious crackdown on the student protests that escalated into civil unrest, according to a count by Daily Prothom Alo, a leading vernacular newspaper that notes the number could be much higher due to government restrictions. A Western diplomatic source estimates the number of injured at 10,000.

Hasina did not refer to any of the students killed during the protest in her first public remarks since her sombre primetime TV appearance last week, which proved insufficient to assuage tensions.

The foreign ministry in Dhaka, meanwhile, invited foreign diplomats to a briefing on Sunday, during which the US ambassador Peter Haas criticised authorities over the killings, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Haas spoke first as authorities opened the floor after playing a 10-minute clip made by Somoy TV, a pro-government TV station, according to a diplomatic source. "I am surprised you did not show the footage of police firing at unarmed protesters," he quipped, according to AFP.

The army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, inspected troops outside the National Parliament buildings on Monday, with our reporters on the ground noting an increased presence of soldiers.

General Waker-uz-Zaman, a relative of Hasina's, met the prime minister on Sunday. A day later, he boasted that his troops had improved the situation within 48 hours of their deployment.

In a first, video clips reviewed by a Netra News contributor showed troops shooting at protesters on Saturday in Dhaka, an escalation from their earlier strategy of restraint.

At Dhaka Medical College Hospital, a key barometer of Bangladesh's political violence, the arrival of injured and bullet-ridden people declined sharply on Monday. A reporter posted there saw only four bullet-ridden bodies on Monday.

A Bangladeshi army soldier aims his weapon at protesters on Sunday, 22nd July. Photo: Netra News

Rickshaws and auto-rickshaws, operated by the low-income working class, returned to the roads in the capital despite the curfew, but long-distance transport remains suspended.

What contributed to the apparent calm was the decision by a key student leader to pause their protests. Nahid Islam, who returned from a disappearance during which he suffered torture, suspended the students' "shutdown protests" for two days.

He demanded that during this period, the government withdraw the curfew, restore the internet, reopen universities, and stop targeting student protesters.

It is unlikely that the government will comply with this call, as officials say the curfew will likely continue for a few more days.

Police in the Bangladesh capital said at least 532 people, including senior leaders of the main opposition BNP and the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, were arrested.

At least 61,000 people have been charged with violence over the unrest, according to Prothom Alo. Most of those charged are unidentified, a prelude to a looming legal crackdown ahead.

 

[Bilal9]

NETRA LEADER

Time is up for Sheikh Hasina

In choosing violence, believing that to be the only option available, the authoritarian government of Bangladesh has run out of options to remain in power.

Netra News
July 19th 2024


It came down to two public pronouncements: the first, a thirteen-minute answer at a press conference, and the second, a seven-minute address to the nation, both delivered in front of a bookshelf that boasted little more than books on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, beneath a portrait of him.

Whatever happens to the Awami League now, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's time as the autocrat-in-chief is up.

Whether it was hubris or delusion, the self-belief derived from over fifteen years of uninterrupted authoritarian rule led her to needlessly denigrate and denounce the future of the nation.

In doing so, she unwittingly ensured that she could have no future in the nation. Through that first pronouncement, Hasina signalled her approval for the violent suppression of a peaceful protest by calling the protesters "progenies of Razakars".

Rather than quelling the protests, the sight of armed Chhatra League cadres standing shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement and bloodying young students coalesced a movement into a revolution.

When Hasina appeared in black and spoke to the nation a second time in a sombre tone, recounting the loss she suffered at being orphaned, the people neither had the patience to listen nor any sympathy to give. It was the moment when the Awami League's lies, lost their stranglehold on Bangladesh.

When a prime minister has taken the approach of ruling her people rather than serving them for a decade and a half, she may not realize that there is a limit to how much oppression the people will bear.

When a government and a party play the role of sycophants in court, they start believing the lies they tell the people a little too much, losing the ability to remind their leader of the truth from time to time. Hasina has been credited with being a successful autocrat where others before her failed, by defanging the military and civil society as political forces, bringing the deep pockets to heel, nullifying opposition parties, flooding the state machinery with loyalists, and having the unwavering support of India. None of that can save her premiership now.

Until Hasina spoke and until her courtiers echoed her command, all that existed was a fledgling peaceful anti-discrimination movement. By her decree, a country already crippled by corruption, crony capitalism, and the erosion of human rights, the rule of law, and basic civility, was set ablaze.

There is no way for Hasina to escape responsibility for the death and destruction that has brought a struggling Bangladesh to a standstill. There is no way that the people will not hold the Awami League accountable any longer for the shameless mismanagement of the country and a crisis of its own making. There is no way for the Chhatra League to avoid being designated a militant terrorist outfit. They have been cruel, they have been careless, they have been corrupt. Now, their heartless stupidity and incompetence have been laid bare too.

In choosing violence, believing that to be the only option available, the authoritarian government of Bangladesh has run out of options to remain in power. That unprecedented levels of state terror have not intimidated the citizens, let alone made them bow to their ruler, is a sign that the Awami League has thoroughly lost the mandate to govern.

What can be hoped for, albeit not expected from this vile coterie, is that there is a peaceful transition to a civilian government that has the mandate of the people so conclusively lost by the Awami League. No more blood needs to be spilt, and Hasina and her lackeys already have more than enough on their hands.

 

[Bilal9]

One of the many posters that says, "The freed country achieved with the blood of lakhs of shaheeds (martyrs) does not belong to anyone's Dad."

 

[Bilal9]

Latest post from Netra News Facebook Acct. says that the death toll has risen now by another 10 to at least 197 by Tuesday in Bangladesh's public struggle, said Prothom Alo. The printed edition of the magazine on Wednesday said the prior 8 people injured are now confirmed as killed. Also two people under treatment in hospital died yesterday.

 

[LeonBlack08]

Bangladesh curfews, internet blackout batter economy amid quota protests

The South Asian country is estimated to have lost $1.2bn in revenue over the past five days with garment exports hit.

www.aljazeera.com

 

[LeonBlack08]

Bangladeshi expats calling for stopping all remittance to Bangladesh through official channels in the next couple of months to put pressure on Bangladesh economy and force Hasina to step down.

 

[Bilal9]

Well @LeonBlack08 bhai, looks like the students will not stop the movement any time soon until Hasina steps down.

 

[Bilal9]

DHAKA: Garment factories and banks reopened in Bangladesh Wednesday after authorities eased a curfew imposed to contain deadly clashes sparked by student protests over civil service employment quotas.

Last week's violence killed at least 186 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, during some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

Thousands of troops are patrolling cities around the South Asian country to keep order, and most Bangladeshis remain without internet nearly a week after a nationwide shutdown was imposed.

But with calm returning to the streets after several days of unbridled mayhem, the country's economically vital textile factories resumed operations after government clearance.

"We were worried about the future of our company," 40-year-old factory worker Khatun, who gave only one name, told AFP.

Despite the disruption, Khatun said she supported the demands of student protesters to reform government hiring rules and was shocked by last week's violence.

"The government should implement all their demands," she said. "A lot of them were killed. They sacrificed for future generations."

The garment industry generates $50 billion in yearly export revenue for Bangladesh, employing millions of young women to sew clothes for H&M, Zara, Gap and other leading international brands.


Al JazeeraBangladesh's deadly protests explained
2:29

CNBCTV18Bangladesh curfew continues after widespread violence | N18G
3:19


Internet hasn't been restored in Bangladesh despite apparent calm following deadly protests

A spokesperson for the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association told AFP that garment factories had resumed business "across the country".

Hasina's home minister Asaduzzaman Khan agreed to exempt textile workers from an ongoing curfew to allow them to return to work, the peak body's spokesman said.

The curfew was eased Wednesday to allow some commerce to resume but remains in effect for most Bangladeshis for 19 hours each day.

Banks, the stock exchange in the capital Dhaka, and some government offices also opened between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm to match the daily break in the stay-home order, government spokesman Shibli Sadiq told AFP.

'So much blood'

The student group which led this month's protests has suspended demonstrations until at least Friday, with one leader saying they had not wanted reform "at the expense of so much blood".

Police have arrested at least 2,500 people since the violence began last week.

Hasina's government says the stay-home order will be relaxed further as the situation improves.

Broadband internet was being gradually restored on Tuesday evening but mobile internet -- a key communication method for protest organisers -- remained inoperative.

Internet connectivity across Bangladesh was still around 20 percent of normal levels, according to data published by US-based monitor Netblocks.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the June reintroduction of the quota scheme -- halted since 2018 -- deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

The Supreme Court on Sunday cut the number of reserved jobs but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina, 76, has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

 

[Bilal9]

 

[Bilal9]

 

[Bilal9]

News Headlines in Bangladesh both Bengali and English | 24 July 2024

TLDR, Curfew lifted in some areas. Broadband access is back but mobile Internet is still not available. Govt. going after "troublemakers" with 2700 arrested. Meanwhile Govt. is assuring security and safety for all students.