Bangladesh protests turn violent after students attacked by pro-government activists - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Global News wrote:tudent protests in Bangladesh turned violent over the weekend after pro-government youth activists attacked students with clubs, while police fired tear gas to break up the demonstrations.

Authorities suspended mobile internet services for 24 hours Saturday night in an effort to quell unrest on social media, as graphic photos and videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show a boy whose right eye had been gouged out, allegedly by a pro-government assailant.

Bangladesh’s anti-terrorism police even arrested popular actress and model Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed after she said on Facebook Live that pro-government assailants had killed two students and gouged out another’s eye, national daily Prothom Alo reported. Authorities accused her of spreading unfounded rumours at the behest of anti-government miscreants.
Students help a youth with an eye injury as pro-government activists threw stones and attacked them violently in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Aug. 4, 2018.

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Students help a youth with an eye injury as pro-government activists threw stones and attacked them violently in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Aug. 4, 2018.
Turjoy Chowdhury/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Protests began to break out July 29 after two college students were killed by speeding buses, with students — many of them teenagers in school uniforms — taking to the streets to demonstrate against the country’s transportation sector, widely seen as unregulated, corrupt and dangerous.

The roads of the capital city Dhaka are a web of gridlock and chaos. Unlicensed drivers, unregistered vehicles and speeding buses are commonplace, police corruption is rife and traffic enforcement often nonexistent.

The students’ wrath was inflamed further after MP and senior transportation official Shajahan Khan appeared to dismiss their concerns. According to the Daily Star, Khan remarked that the deaths of two people didn’t merit nationwide protests, given that the deaths of 33 people in an Indian bus accident last month didn’t prompt any unrest in that country.



Student protesters spilled out onto major roads in the capital Dhaka, setting up blockades and checking the licenses and registrations of vehicles, including those of top officials, before allowing them through.

In one case on Thursday, students stopped a police SUV carrying a deputy inspector general, only to find that the vehicle didn’t have a registration certification, and its driver didn’t have a licence to drive, the Daily Star reported.

The deputy inspector general admitted that the driver didn’t have a license and that the vehicle was unregistered, but reportedly said, “This is a government car and I do not know anything about it.”
Students blockade a road as they take part in a protest over recent traffic accidents that killed a boy and a girl, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 4, 2018.

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Students blockade a road as they take part in a protest over recent traffic accidents that killed a boy and a girl, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, August 4, 2018.
REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

On Saturday, pro-government activists — members of the ruling party’s youth wing — attacked student protesters and at least five journalists, including an Associated Press photographer who was hospitalized with a head injury.

Footage of the attack on social media showed the photographer surrounded and beaten by nearly a dozen men.

There were also reports that some female protesters were sexually assaulted in the youth activist group’s offices, a charge that it denied, the Daily Star reported.
A photographer is targeted during a student protest in Dhaka on August 5, 2018, following the deaths of two college students in a road accident.

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A photographer is targeted during a student protest in Dhaka on August 5, 2018, following the deaths of two college students in a road accident.
Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Social media users in Bangladesh told Global News that they had limited access to mobile internet, although wired and wireless networks appeared to be working.

One student said she was in hiding, amid fears that that pro-government activists were seeking out and attacking youth whose photos and videos of the protests went viral on social media.

Students have been using the hashtag #WeWantJustice to protest against the government and allied activists.


On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh released a statement condemning the violence against protesters.

“The peaceful demonstrations of the past week in favor of better vehicle and road safety, led by students and school children across Bangladesh, have united and captured the imagination of the whole country,” read the statement.

It added that “nothing can justify the brutal attacks and violence over the weekend against the thousands of young people who have been peacefully exercising their democratic rights in supporting a safer Bangladesh.”

The protests have become a serious embarrassment to the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ahead of a general election due in December. Her party is blaming the main opposition, led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, for using the student anger to create chaos for political gains. Political feuding between the two political leaders has dominated Bangladesh’s politics for more than a decade.

Zia’s party has formally extended its support to the protesters, but Hasina has also reached out to the demonstrators by pledging to improve road safety.

In response to the protests, the government launched a week-long drive to enforce vehicle registrations, but the country’s home affairs minister warned protesters that “if anyone crosses the limit, action will be taken.”

Bangladesh has among the world’s highest rates of fatal road accidents. At least 12,000 people die each year in road accidents in the country.


Also today armed men attacked an US convoy amidst the chaos. Source

So basically from what I understand, a normal student protest was met with ridiculous degree of heavy handedness, amongst these students are also school children, some of the unverified reports are just chilling for example the student wing of ruling party beating and molesting after identifying individual students as some sort of punishment, so now a simple protest has gone too big for government to handle.
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It is a mass movement.

The original accident of the buses hitting a group of school boys and girls was a typical black swan event, and due to mishandling of the protests it has grown larger and larger.

A lot of other factors are starting to play into it, we had a lot of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, financial scandals with banks, and so on. Even mentioning this on Facebook will get you arrested and placed on remand (tortured). Enough said...
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@Ter Yes, there is a complete information blackout, I have seen my share of disturbing images, government didn't only mishandled the situation, but made it much worse, I hope this brutal reprisals by this government will bite them in the ass but at the same time I don't want Khalid Zia and BNP to gain from this. :hmm:
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@fuser
The leader of the BNP is in jail, as are many of high-ranking BNP personalities.
Today they charged three of the few remaining BNP national politicians with sedition.

Case filed against Fakhrul, Rizvi and Khasru
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A case has been filed against BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi and its standing committee member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury on Monday for instigating violence during the ongoing student movement demanding safe road.


AB Siddique, president of Jananetri Parishad, a pro-Awami League organisation, filed the case with the court of Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate H M Toaha.

After hearing, the court ordered Tejgaon thana police to investigate the allegation.

Earlier, a reported audio clip of telephonic conversation between BNP leader Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury and an unknown boy over intensifying the ongoing student movement went viral on Facebook and YouTube on Saturday.

http://www.daily-sun.com/post/327584/Ca ... nd-Khasru-

There is no alternative at the moment, I do not wish to see BNP in government either.
We can only speculate that a cabinet of technocrats will take over and organise elections in a reasonable time, or, if all else fails, the army.

(the guy on the right is a friend of mine, he used to be Minister of Commerce when BNP was in power)

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