28/07/2024
Bangladesh student leaders call for international pressure amid arrests
Leaders of Bangladesh's anti-quota movement called for the international community to help pressure the government to release arrested students, saying they feared for their safety.
At a virtual press conference Saturday, the students also threatened “drastic action” if the government does not release detained students and withdraw legal cases against them by Sunday night.
Speakers accused police of violating human rights by detaining three student leaders – Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder.
The three turned up at a hospital on Friday where two of them were being treated for injuries apparently sustained while in custody, but police arrived and took them away, another student leader, Sarjis Alam, told BenarNews.
Sarjis Alam has now been arrested himself alongside another protest organizer, Hasnat Abdullah, students said at their virtual press conference on Saturday.
The country’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Saturday stated that students had been taken into custody "for their own security," AFP reported.
“They themselves were feeling insecure. They think that some people were threatening them,” AFP quoted him as saying. “That's why we think for their own security they needed to be interrogated to find out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we will take the next course of action.”
Leading daily Prothom Alo has reported that more than 5,500 people have been arrested across Bangladesh as the government moves to “restore order” following massive student protests and subsequent violence in which at least 200 people were killed.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Saturday told the press that opposition activists were being tortured before being brought to court, and then tortured again after remand. Opposition figure Nurul Haque Nur could not even stand when taken to court on Friday, as documented in photographs, Prothom Alo quoted Alamgir as saying.
Below: Bangladesh army stand guard near the country's Secretariat as the curfew is relaxed after the anti-quota protests, in Dhaka on July 27, 2024. [Munir Uz Zaman/AFP]