Bangladeshi student group warns of fresh protest if leaders not released

DHAKA: Fresh warning from a Bangladeshi student group has put the government on tenterhooks as it announced to again launch their protest across the country if their leaders are not released from confinement.

Last week's violence killed at least 205 people, including several police officers, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed, and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium.

The group’s chief Nahid Islam and others "should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn", Abdul Hannan Masud told reporters in an online briefing late Saturday.

Masud, who did not disclose his location because he was hiding from authorities, also demanded "visible actions" be taken against government ministers and police officers responsible for the deaths of protesters.

"Otherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests" from Monday, he said.

Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were forcibly discharged from hospital in the capital Dhaka on Friday and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

He told AFP last week he was being treated at the hospital for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention and said he was in fear for his life.

"I haven’t seen him since he was picked up," Islam’s mother Momotaz Nahar told reporters outside the national detective agency after unsuccessfully asking officers to allow a visit with him.

"We are worried about his life," she said. "I want my son back."

Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan has said the trio were taken into custody for their own safety but did not confirm if they had been formally arrested.

'Forced to open fire'

At least 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide since the unrest began, according to Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s largest daily newspaper.

Khan said 147 people had been killed in clashes so far in the government’s first toll, published a day after Students Against Discrimination gave its own preliminary count of 266.

Khan told reporters on Sunday that police had operated with restraint and only fired on demonstrators to protect government buildings.

"Despite the killing of their fellow officers, they showed extreme levels of patience," he said. "But when they saw that the properties could not be protected, then police were forced to open fire."

A curfew imposed last weekend remains in force but it has been progressively eased through the week, a sign of the Hasina government’s confidence that order was gradually being restored.

One small street rally held in Dhaka on Sunday to demand Hasina’s resignation was quickly dispersed by police.

Bangladesh’s mobile internet network was restored on Sunday afternoon, 11 days after a nationwide blackout imposed at the height of the unrest.

Fixed line broadband connections were restored on Tuesday but the vast majority of Bangladesh internet users rely on mobile devices to connect with the world.

Jobs crisis

Protests began this month over the reintroduction of a quota scheme reserving more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.

With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League.

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups last week.