Thousands of Bangladeshi protesters, many wielding sticks, gathered at a central Dhaka square on Sunday to stage a massive protest demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina following a deadly police crackdown.
Asif Mahmood, one of the key protest leaders of the nationwide civil disobedience campaign, told supporters to be ready to fight.
“Get your bamboo sticks ready and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
Although the military had helped restore order in the wake of earlier protests, some former military officers have since joined the student movement, and former army chief Gen. Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red to show support.
Current Army Chief Waqar-uz-Zaman, while speaking to officers at the Army Headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday, said that “the Bangladesh Army is a symbol of the people’s faith.”
“This army has always stood with the people and will continue to do so for the sake of the people and for any need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement issued late Saturday night.
The statement did not provide further details or clearly state whether the military supported the protests.
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.
Troops restored order for a time, but this week huge crowds returned to the streets and launched a full-blown non-cooperation movement aimed at paralysing the government.
As hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka on Saturday, police largely remained mute spectators and observed the rallies.
‘live freely’
The protests have become a broad anti-government movement across the South Asian nation of about 170 million.
The mass movement involves people from all sections of Bangladeshi society, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs appealing for support have spread widely on social media.
“This is no longer about job quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester, as she scrawled a graffiti calling Hasina a “killer” on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka.
“We want our next generation to be able to live independently in the country.”
Counter protests in support of the government are also expected.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Hasina’s ruling Awami League, has called on party workers to gather in “all wards of Dhaka city” and “every district” across the country to show their support for the government.
“We do not want to get involved in any kind of confrontation,” Qaidar said.
The atmosphere in the capital, Dhaka, was tense on Sunday, with fewer cars and buses on the normally bustling streets of this metropolis of 20 million.
Millions of protesters are expected to gather in Dhaka and across the country.
‘Make all preparations’
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising the initial protests, called for rallies to be held across the country.
Protests will be held at entrances to Dhaka, with the main rallies held at Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered on Sunday morning.
“We will carry out our protests and rallies in a peaceful manner,” the group said in a statement late Saturday. “But if someone attacks us, we urge (everyone) to be fully prepared.”
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.
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.
Protests began in early July against the reintroduction of a quota scheme that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. Bangladesh’s top court has since withdrawn the scheme.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
