Dhaka: On Thursday, after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made an appearance on the network to try to defuse the increasingly violent clashes that have claimed the lives of at least 32 people, Bangladeshi students set fire to the nation’s state broadcaster.
Hundreds of demonstrators who were calling for changes to the hiring practices of the civil service retaliated by overwhelming the riot police who had been shooting rubber bullets at them.
The enraged mob pursued the fleeing policemen to BTV’s Dhaka headquarters, where they set fire to the network’s reception building as well as numerous cars parked outside.
The broadcaster claimed on Facebook that “many people” were trapped inside as the fire spread, but a station representative subsequently told The Ultimate News that everyone had safely evacuated the building.
The official declared, “The fire is still ongoing.” “The main gate is where we have arrived. We have temporarily stopped broadcasting.”
The government of Hasina has mandated the permanent closure of all schools and universities while law enforcement intensifies efforts to stabilize the nation’s rapidly deteriorating law and order situation.
The prime minister made an appearance on the channel on Wednesday night, denouncing the “murder” of demonstrators and promising that those accountable, irrespective of their political affiliation, would face consequences.
The official declared, “The fire is still ongoing.” “The main gate is where we have arrived. We have temporarily stopped broadcasting.”
The government of Hasina has mandated the permanent closure of all schools and universities while law enforcement intensifies efforts to stabilize the nation’s rapidly deteriorating law and order situation.
The prime minister made an appearance on the channel on Wednesday night, denouncing the “murder” of demonstrators and promising that those accountable, irrespective of their political affiliation, would face consequences.
Her call for calm was met with more violence on the streets as police tried to disperse protesters once more using tear gas and rubber bullets.
The prime minister must apologize to us, that is our first demand, 18-year-old protestor Bidisha Rimjhim told The Ultimate News.
“Secondly, justice must be ensured for our killed brothers,” she said.
According to an AFP tally of hospital casualty figures, at least 25 people died on Thursday, adding to the seven people who had died earlier in the week. Hundreds more people were injured.
According to descriptions provided to AFP by hospital officials, at least two-thirds of those deaths were the result of police weaponry.
“We’ve got seven dead here,” an AFP-quoting official at Dhaka’s Uttara Crescent Hospital said, requesting anonymity out of concern for retaliation.
“The first two were pupils who had been shot with rubber bullets. Five other people suffered gunshot wounds.”
The official said that nearly a thousand more people had received medical attention at the hospital for wounds received during skirmishes with the police, many of which included rubber bullets.
Mehedi Hasan was one of the reporters that Didar Malekin of the online news source Dhaka Times told AFP had died while covering fighting in Dhaka.
Violence broke out throughout the day in a number of Bangladeshi cities as riot police marched against demonstrators who had started a fresh round of human blockades on roads and highways.
The elite Rapid Action Battalion police force said in a statement that helicopters had rescued sixty police officers who were stuck on the roof of a campus building at Canadian University, the site of some of the bloodiest clashes in Dhaka on Thursday.
“Calling Her A Dictator”
Marches that have occurred almost every day this month have called for the removal of a quota system that reserves over half of civil service positions for particular groups, such as the offspring of veterans of the nation’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.
Critics claim that the program helps the offspring of pro-government organizations that support Hasina, 76, who has been in power since 2009. Hasina won her fourth straight election in January following a vote in which there was no real opposition.
Rights organizations accuse her administration of seizing control of state institutions and stifling dissent, including by killing opposition activists without cause or trial.
According to Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh specialist at the University of Oslo in Norway, the demonstrations have expanded to represent a broader expression of dissatisfaction with Hasina’s despotic rule.
“They are protesting against the repressive nature of the state,” he said to AFP.
“Protesters are questioning Hasina’s leadership, accusing her of clinging onto power by force,” he said. “The students are in fact calling her a dictator.”
Mobile Internet Down
On Thursday, two days after internet providers blocked access to Facebook, the main organizing platform for the protest campaign, Bangladeshis reported widespread mobile internet outages throughout the nation.
The government was forced to impose access restrictions after social media was “weaponized as a tool to spread rumours, lies, and disinformation,” according to the junior minister of telecommunications Zunaid Ahmed Palak, who made this statement to reporters.
Demonstrators and students supporting the premier’s ruling Awami League have engaged in street fighting with bricks and bamboo rods in addition to police crackdowns.
Video footage from this week’s clashes, according to rights group Amnesty International, demonstrated that Bangladeshi security forces had used unlawful force.