Staff Reporter :
General Students spearheading movement for quota reform and some teachers of the Dhaka University (DU) came under attack of some activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) again yesterday.
They blocked their attempt to hold human chain in the campus demanding immediate release of the arrested students and stop to torture and repression on students.
The quota movement is no longer confined at national level. After expressing concern by several
missions in Dhaka on lack of security of students at DU, 62 students studying in the USA this time reacted demanding a stop to repression on students and a finding a reasonable solution to quota problem.
But as the situation suggests the government remains totally defiant while police and ruling party activists are trying to break the movement for the government using all sorts of torture and unlawful arrests.
In yesterday’s event, DU students under the banner of ‘Progotisheel Chhatra Jote’ – a left leaning platform of the students at first laid siege at Shahbagh intersection to press home their demands. But BCL men forced them out from the spot using violence.
Later the students were again attacked near TSC as they were returning from the Central Shaheed Minar after holding a brief demonstration there to voice out their demands.
Eyewitness said, a section of BCL leaders and activists attacked them snatching their banners and kicking them. They formed counter human chain to create chaos. At least, 10 students were wounded in that attack while teachers were humiliated.
They vandalize the video camera of a TV reporter, snatched his mobile phone and harassed female protesters hurling derogatory remarks on them.
The BCL repression and police action on quota leaders continues despite repeated appeals by concerned citizens and guardians who also made plea to the government on Saturday again to end the repression.
At a protest meeting at CIRDAP they called upon the government to make clear its position over the quota reform and immediate legal actions against the policemen arresting students in false cases and BCL activists attacking students.
“If the government really had the goodwill, it would not have been possible for the administration, police and cadres of a certain student organisations to run the repression,” they said in a statement.
BNP’s central committee member Barrister Moudud Ahmed has already warned that it may eventually become a bigger political issue destabilizing the country’s educational institutions.
The signatories in the statement referred to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s April 11 announcement of scrapping of the quota system and the reversal of her policy in the past week.
They urged the authorities to stop detaining the demonstrators, accusing them in false cases and “torturing them on remand”.
Police picked up at least 13 quota reformist students in the past few days, seven of them were sent to jail while four were placed on remand.
Meanwhile, 62 Bangladeshi youths, studying overseas, released a statement calling for a rational solution to the stalemate and urged the government to ensure proper treatment of the injured quota reformists.
The students, mostly studying in the US, said the repression on quota reformists was creating a negative impression of Bangladesh and its universities abroad.
Supreme Court lawyer and rights activist Jyotirmoy Barua said, in a clear violation of the law, some quota reform activists were arrested in different cases although there was no specific complaint against them.
There are attempts to label the reformists as “enemy of the state” and the movement as anti-government. “It is not understandable why.”
SC lawyer Sara Hossain said there could be debate and disagreement over the extent to which the quota system should be reformed, but there was no doubt that what was done to the reformists was unacceptable.
Prof Amena Mohsin of Dhaka University said the state should feel proud of the demonstrators because so many of them are accepting torture to oppose injustice.
Hafiz Uddin Khan, former adviser to a caretaker government, said there was no definitive answer from the government as to why it was opposing the quota reform movement. “As a nation, we have forgotten to protest,” he said.
General Students spearheading movement for quota reform and some teachers of the Dhaka University (DU) came under attack of some activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) again yesterday.
They blocked their attempt to hold human chain in the campus demanding immediate release of the arrested students and stop to torture and repression on students.
The quota movement is no longer confined at national level. After expressing concern by several
missions in Dhaka on lack of security of students at DU, 62 students studying in the USA this time reacted demanding a stop to repression on students and a finding a reasonable solution to quota problem.
But as the situation suggests the government remains totally defiant while police and ruling party activists are trying to break the movement for the government using all sorts of torture and unlawful arrests.
In yesterday’s event, DU students under the banner of ‘Progotisheel Chhatra Jote’ – a left leaning platform of the students at first laid siege at Shahbagh intersection to press home their demands. But BCL men forced them out from the spot using violence.
Later the students were again attacked near TSC as they were returning from the Central Shaheed Minar after holding a brief demonstration there to voice out their demands.
Eyewitness said, a section of BCL leaders and activists attacked them snatching their banners and kicking them. They formed counter human chain to create chaos. At least, 10 students were wounded in that attack while teachers were humiliated.
They vandalize the video camera of a TV reporter, snatched his mobile phone and harassed female protesters hurling derogatory remarks on them.
The BCL repression and police action on quota leaders continues despite repeated appeals by concerned citizens and guardians who also made plea to the government on Saturday again to end the repression.
At a protest meeting at CIRDAP they called upon the government to make clear its position over the quota reform and immediate legal actions against the policemen arresting students in false cases and BCL activists attacking students.
“If the government really had the goodwill, it would not have been possible for the administration, police and cadres of a certain student organisations to run the repression,” they said in a statement.
BNP’s central committee member Barrister Moudud Ahmed has already warned that it may eventually become a bigger political issue destabilizing the country’s educational institutions.
The signatories in the statement referred to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s April 11 announcement of scrapping of the quota system and the reversal of her policy in the past week.
They urged the authorities to stop detaining the demonstrators, accusing them in false cases and “torturing them on remand”.
Police picked up at least 13 quota reformist students in the past few days, seven of them were sent to jail while four were placed on remand.
Meanwhile, 62 Bangladeshi youths, studying overseas, released a statement calling for a rational solution to the stalemate and urged the government to ensure proper treatment of the injured quota reformists.
The students, mostly studying in the US, said the repression on quota reformists was creating a negative impression of Bangladesh and its universities abroad.
Supreme Court lawyer and rights activist Jyotirmoy Barua said, in a clear violation of the law, some quota reform activists were arrested in different cases although there was no specific complaint against them.
There are attempts to label the reformists as “enemy of the state” and the movement as anti-government. “It is not understandable why.”
SC lawyer Sara Hossain said there could be debate and disagreement over the extent to which the quota system should be reformed, but there was no doubt that what was done to the reformists was unacceptable.
Prof Amena Mohsin of Dhaka University said the state should feel proud of the demonstrators because so many of them are accepting torture to oppose injustice.
Hafiz Uddin Khan, former adviser to a caretaker government, said there was no definitive answer from the government as to why it was opposing the quota reform movement. “As a nation, we have forgotten to protest,” he said.
