Loud and clear: Protesters marching in Dhaka to demand justice for those killed in the recent nationwide deadly clashes. — AP
THOUSANDS of Bangladeshi protesters demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign clashed with pro-government supporters, with at least 50 people killed as mass rallies and violence erupted countrywide.
Huge crowds of protesters, many wielding sticks, packed into Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square yesterday, with street battles in multiple sites as well as in other key cities, police said.
“There were clashes between students and the ruling party men,” police inspector Al Helal said, saying two young men were killed in Dhaka’s Munshiganj district.
“One of the dead was hacked in his head and another had gunshot injuries.”
Another policeman, who asked not to be named, said “the whole city has turned into a battleground”, adding that a crowd of several thousand protesters torched cars and motorcycles outside a hospital.
Police and doctors reported six more deaths in the northern Pabna and Rangpur districts, as well as in Magura in the west.
Asif Mahmud, one of the key protest leaders in a nationwide civil disobedience campaign, earlier asked supporters to be ready after rallies last month were crushed by police.
“Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook yesterday.
While the army helped to restore order in the wake of earlier protests, some former military officers had since joined the student movement.
Ex-army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.
Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman spoke to officers at military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday, telling them the “Bangladesh Army is the symbol of trust of the people”.
“It always stood by the people and will do so for the sake of people and in any need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement issued late Saturday.
The statement did not give further details or explicitly say whether the army backed the protests.
Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem in July that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.
Troops briefly restored order, but crowds returned to the streets in huge numbers this week in an all-out non-cooperation movement aimed at paralysing the government.
On Saturday, when hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka, the police were largely bystanders.
The protests have grown into a wider anti-government movement across the South Asian nation of 170 million people.
The mass movement includes people from all strata of Bangladesh society, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs calling for people’s support have spread widely on social media.
“It is no longer about job quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name, as she scrawled graffiti on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka, calling Hasina a “killer”.
“What we want is that our next generation can live freely in the country.” — AFP
