Student activists in Bangladesh have alleged they were abducted by police and tortured for their role in the protests that have swept the country over the past month, prompting a violent police crackdown and the arrest of thousands of political opponents and government critics.
Nahid Islam, a Dhaka University student and one of the main organisers of the protest movement, which has been fighting against “discriminatory” quotas for government jobs, said he was picked up by police late last week, tortured and left unconscious on the side of the road.
Islam alleged that over 20 officers who identified themselves as police arrived at 3am on Saturday and put him inside a car, where he was then blindfolded and handcuffed. He said several other student protest organisers were also picked up by police, with four still reported to be missing.
“They took me somewhere I couldn’t recognise and then put me in a room where they started to question me and later torture me, first mentally and then physically,” said Islam.
“They kept asking me: why are we protesting, who is behind this, what is our agenda, why we are not at talks with the government.”
The protests began on university campuses in early July, led by students who were outraged at the re-introduction of quotas for government jobs, which meant that 30% would be reserved for the descendants of those who fought in the Bangladesh independence war in 1971. With the country suffering through an economic downturn and sky-high youth unemployment, government jobs are widely seen as the most secure form of employment. However the quota system, widely deemed to “unfair”, meant they are rarely granted on merit.
While the demonstrations began peacefully across the country, they began to turn violent last week after pro-government groups were accused of attacking the protests with weapons and police began to use teargas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to break them up.
The police crackdown led to violence across the country as student protesters fought back against the riot police, often armed with only crude weapons, and university campuses became war zones. Police were accused by witnesses of firing live ammunition at protesters and have been blamed for large numbers of the deaths that took place. Unofficial figures have put the death toll at more than 150, while thousands are estimated to have been injured.
On Sunday, the supreme court overturned the ruling and scaled back the quotas, meaning only 5% will now go to freedom fighter descendants. It has led to a pause in the protests and violence, although the country is still enduring an internet and social media blackout and is under a strict curfew, with the military patrolling the streets and police granted “shoot on site” powers.
This week, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, sought to place the blame for the unrest – some of the worst the country has seen under her government – on the opposition Bangladesh National party (BNP), which has faced a long and oppressive crackdown under her rule.
In a meeting that was broadcast on Monday, Hasina claimed to have deployed police and paramilitary forces to “protect” the students and called the violence that took place “the attacks of the militants”.
Some 2,000 people have so far been arrested in the crackdown, mostly members and the top leadership of the BNP along with several student organisers, as Hasina’s government is accused of trying to shift the blame away for the violence and fatalities from state agencies. A spokesperson from the BNP said that about 1,500 of their party members had been detained.
Islam described how once he was in police detention, they began a game of mental torture, threatening to create fake charges against him, label him as a terrorist and “disappear” him so his family would not know his whereabouts.
Then, he alleged, the physical abuse began. “They used metal rods and started beating on my joints, on my shoulders and particularly on my left leg. That leg has the most severe injuries. At some point I fell unconscious to the unbearable pain.” He said that when he awoke he found h himself lying by the roadside in the capital, Dhaka.
Islam was disparaging of Hasina’s claims of trying to have a dialogue with the students, alleging that the authorities instead resorted to violence to try and shut them down in a widely documented tactic deployed by her government against critics over her 15 years in power.
He was among the organisers who said that the protests had not shut down after Monday’s supreme court verdict, but they were instead on pause as they waited for the government to respond to several of their demands, including for the new reduced quota to be affirmed by parliament and for compensation be given to families of those killed in the violence.
Speaking on Tuesday afternoon, Hasib Al-Islam, another student organiser, said they were extending their ultimatum to the government for another 48 hours, during which time they would hold off all further protest.
Al-Islam said: “In this time we demand the authorities restore the internet in the country, withdraw the curfew, reopen the universities and ensure the safety of the students and the protesters, including the safe return of the four protest coordinators who allegedly are missing.”
In a statement, the Bangladeshi Nobel peace rize laureate, Muhammad Yunus, urged “world leaders and the United Nations to do everything within their powers to end the violence” in Bangladesh, adding that “young people are being killed at random every day”.
