Bangladesh has arrested more than 10,000 people and banned a major opposition party as part of a crackdown on dissent after weeks of protests.
The country has been in turmoil since a mass student movement began against quotas for government jobs. It escalated into deadly clashes when protesters were attacked by pro-government groups and hit by police with teargas, rubber bullets and pellets.
According to human rights groups, at least 266 people were killed in the violence and more than 7,000 injured.
Activists have accused the government, led by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, of an authoritarian witch-hunt against student leaders and political opposition groups, who it has sought to blame for the violence.
At least 10,372 people, including many political opposition leaders, have been arrested since the protests began, and the authorities are accused of arbitrarily detaining many others without charge.
Families of those detained said students who had attended peaceful protests or expressed support for the movement on social media were being rounded up en masse by police in the middle of the night, with relatives denied any information on their whereabouts. More than 200,000 people have been named in cases filed by police this week.
Asif Nazrul, a Dhaka University professor, said: “Mass arrests through block raids, detaining individuals at night, enforced disappearances and not presenting them in court within 24 hours; these actions are unconstitutional and violate many international conventions. It seems this government has declared war against dissent.”
Hasina, who took office in 2009, has been accused of imposing an increasingly authoritarian and tyrannical rule on Bangladesh, where critics, political opponents and activists are routinely arrested or kidnapped by police units. Successive elections have been widely documented as being rigged in her favour and she has systematically crushed and imprisoned the political opposition.
In a further retaliatory move, on Thursday Hasina’s government announced it was banning the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, accusing them of stirring up violence.
Jamaat-e-Islami was already barred from contesting elections but the new order extended the prohibition, preventing the party from all activities and gatherings. The party chief, Shafiqur Rahman, called the decision “unconstitutional, undemocratic, and unjust”.
The protests began peacefully on university campuses in June against the re-introduction of quotas for all government jobs, which meant that 30% were to be reserved for the descendants of those who fought in the Bangladesh independence war in 1971, a system that students decried as discriminatory and unjust.
But as the protests became more widespread and took on a broader anti-government message, with calls for Hasina to resign, the state responded with increasingly heavy-handed violence.
Groups that supported Hasina’s ruling Awami League party were accused of attacking peaceful protesters with weapons. Police were authorised to use heavy force against demonstrators, and thousands were injured after teargas, rubber bullets, stun grenades and in some cases live ammunition was fired at them.
The protests briefly quietened last week after the supreme court reduced the controversial quotas. Student protest groups then presented Hasina with a list of demands, including justice for those killed in the clashes, stating they would resume their actions if she did not respond.
After Hasina ignored their demands and the state instead began arresting and surveilling student leaders, protests resumed and activists were hit with teargas and stun grenades by police. In the city of Barisal, at least 10 people were injured as police baton-charged protesters. In the capital, Dhaka, police detained at least seven students near the high court, where lawyers and university teachers had joined the demonstrators.
One protest leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they would continue their movement despite the government’s attempts to suppress them. “We have witnessed incredible support from the masses in this movement against repression, injustices, and a ruler who has failed to provide good governance. There is a wind of change and history tells us that authoritarian leaders resist change. The regime is scared and they’re trying to quell the uprising using unprecedented means and power,” he said.
“This is a people’s movement; they can’t stop us by keeping our leaders confined in custody. If I am picked up, my fellow brothers will take over. We are everywhere. How many of us can they lock up?”
