Bangladeshi student leaders said on Saturday they will continue a nationwide civil disobedience campaign until Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigns following a deadly police crackdown on protesters last month.
Rallies against civil service job reservations in July led to several days of chaos that left more than 200 people dead, the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.
The deployment of troops briefly restored order, but huge crowds returned to the streets this week ahead of a full-blown non-cooperation movement aimed at paralysing the government that begins on Sunday.
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising the initial protests, rejected an offer for talks with Hasina on the first day and announced that their campaign would continue until the prime minister and her government resigned.
“He must resign and face trial,” group leader Nahid Islam said, addressing a crowd of thousands at the National Heroes’ Memorial in the capital, Dhaka.
Students Against Discrimination have asked their countrymen to stop paying taxes and electricity bills from Sunday to put pressure on the government.
He has also asked government employees and workers of the country’s economically important textile factories to go on strike.
“He must go because we don’t need this dictatorial government,” Nijhum Yasmin, 20, told AFP at one of several protests held in Dhaka on Saturday.
“Did we liberate the country to see our brothers and sisters shot by this regime?”
The impending non-cooperation campaign is deliberately reminiscent of the historic civil disobedience campaign during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan.
That first movement was led by Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence leader, and Bangladeshis remember it as a glorious fight against tyranny.
“The situation has changed now,” Ali Riaz, a political science professor at Illinois State University, told AFP.
“The regime’s foundations have been shaken, the aura of invincibility has disappeared,” he said. “The question is whether Hasina is ready to bow out or is prepared to fight to the end.”
32 children were killed
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive term in January after voting without any real opposition.
Human rights groups have accused his government of abusing state institutions to consolidate its grip on power and suppress dissent, including through extrajudicial killings of opposition activists.
The protests began in early July against the reintroduction of a quota scheme – later withdrawn by Bangladesh’s top court – that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.
Nearly 18 million young Bangladeshis are unemployed, according to government data, and the move has upset graduates who are facing a severe employment crisis.
The protests were largely peaceful until police and pro-government student groups attacked protesters.
The Hasina government eventually imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed the army, and shut down the country’s mobile internet network for 11 days to restore order.
But this repressive policy led to severe criticism abroad and failed to calm the widespread resentment at home.
Huge crowds returned to the streets after Friday prayers across the Muslim-majority nation as student leaders pressed the government for more concessions.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week called for an international investigation into the “excessive and lethal use of force against protesters”.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters last week that security forces had acted with restraint but were “forced to open fire” to protect government buildings.
The United Nations said on Friday that at least 32 children were among those killed last month.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
