From Ang Bayan: Student Protestors In Bangladesh Demand Prime Minister’s Resignation Amid State Violence

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July 24, 2024

Calls for the resignation of Bangladesh prime minister Hasina and her cabinet mounted amid her government’s crackdown on student protests over the past weeks. Students said the Hasina government has shown its fascist fangs and wants to suppress all kinds of opposition to the current regime.

The protests began in late June but flared up from mid-July when the state began violently cracking down on the demonstrations. Latest reports said indiscriminate police firing on protesters killed as many as 174. The bloodiest massacre was on July 18, where 22 students were reported killed. As many as 2,400 individuals have been reported arrested. Apart from this, the Bangladesh state implemented a curfew and internet blackout. Freedom of the press was also suppressed, and only pro-state newspapers were allowed to report on the events.

Student protests in Bangladesh won an initial victory when the country’s Supreme Court changed the employment system for government positions. The students called the system “discriminatory” for allocating 30% of jobs to the relatives of veterans of the country’s independence struggle in 1971. The students insisted that employment in the bureaucracy should be based on merit. In the court’s decision, the quota was lowered to 5% for the veterans’ descendants and 2% for national minorities and the disabled. It opened the employment of almost the entire bureaucracy (93%) in accordance with the call of the students.

Amid intense repression, the students presented a 9-point demands to Hasina and her government.

They demand that Hasina accept responsibility for the mass killings and publicly apologize. Along with her, the ministers from the Awani party should also resign from the cabinet. The students also demanded the firing of the police who were at the protest sites, as well as the officials of the three universities where the violence against students started.

The police and goons who attacked the students and those who instigated the attacks must be arrested. They said that the families of the killed and injured must be compensated. The Bangladesh Chhatra League, the state’s student arm, must also be banned from universities, and instead the establishment of student unions must be allowed. All educational institutions and halls of residence must be reopened.

Finally, guarantees must be provided that no academic or administrative harassment of protesters will take place.