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Authors' Note: This piece was co-authored between Uzayer Masud, a DAY team member based in Bangladesh, and Parveen Kaur Mundi, DAY’s Vice President. The date of writing was prior to the recent development of Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and the dissolution of the parliament.
The authors stress this is not meant to be an infographic or journalistic report: you can find recaps of the Bloody July events on other platforms. In fact, this is not meant to be more than it is— which is some of the personal commentary and observations shared between two students with different proximities to the violence ensuing over the past few weeks, and as the students of Bangladesh continue to build a new order. Our organization has seen such crises materialize in the lives of our members over the years, whether it be the Myanmar coup or natural disasters, and seeks to provide a forum where our affected membership can process their experiences.
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The people of Bangladesh now stand behind one demand—the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her cabinet to bring an end to her 15-year-old authoritarian regime with the ruling party, the Awami League.
In a country where ⅕ of the population is unemployed, students began a peaceful movement demanding reforms to the discriminatory quotas for government jobs. In which 30% of the jobs are reserved for the descendants of freedom fighters of 1971. The events of 2024 come from a history of dissent around these quotas: being contested in 2013, and again in 2018, at one point scrapped entirely. Other quotas were still necessary for certain marginalized people, who filed a case to the high court. They deemed the 2018 circular as illegal, reviving the 30% quota. So the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement started protests again.
What is now a shoot-at-sight curfew and national state of emergency came from civil unrest over years of rising inflation and autocratic rule. Growing mistrust and the general decaying state of affairs laid the foundation for rightful escalation by students, which was in turn met with immediate and entirely senseless violence. The violence we see now ensued within hours of one remark by the Prime Minister
“If the grandchildren of freedom fighters don't get quota benefits, will those then go to the grandchildren of the Razakars? That's my question to the countrymen.”
Bangladesh has a very emotional protest culture rooted in the inception of the country, having been born out of resistance, most slogans and media now embody the same passionate spirit. The regime laundered billions, drove up inflation, and made a farce of democracy, all of which was largely tolerated. What was not, could not be accepted was the Prime Minister’s remark. In order to understand the violence, one must understand the slur that set the country ablaze. Razakar is a term entirely native to Bangladesh. In literal translation it means “traitor” but there are nuances: a razakar is a murderer, a razakar is a coward, a razakar is a traitor. Bring forth the culmination of every slur there is and what you get is a razakar.
With that, the student protestors revolted, and the first videotaped murder was that of a student, Abu Sayeed, who defiantly spread out his arms waiting for the police to shoot him. And they did, in a moment that has become the most publicized murder of 2024 in Bangladesh. Now we bear witness to scenes of children playing on rooftops and verandas being shot at from the ground. Of helicopters circling Dhaka, firing grenades and tear gas. Of a father holding his dead daughter in his arms. Of police barging through university gates and shooting students inside. Of hospitals, barred from treating the wounded unless the already brutalized protestors also agree to be arrested.
Protestors now demand justice for those killed and the resignation of each person responsible.
Bangladesh has a rich history of dissent: the pot stirred in 1952 when students protested against the Pakistani government’s imposition of Urdu as the one and only official language and were killed by the police. Again in 1971, when Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, having formed the Awami League, led another independence war against Pakistan in which nothing short of three million proto-Bangladeshis paid with their lives. We commemorate their sacrifices with monuments built in their honor, the Shaheed Minar for the language movement, and the Martyr’s Monument for the independence war.
In 2013, 2014, 2018, and 2024, the students protested, and every change they brought was paid for with their lives. From the People’s University for Gaza encampments to anti-fascist protests all around the world, why must a government reply with bloodshed to the students who only seek to enact a better order?
“Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is Bangladesh's folkloric George Washington by vision and verve, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln by assassination, and Stalin by his advocating of a one-party state”
As written in The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community by Sudeep Chakravarti
The inception of Bangladesh was that of a guerilla state, a character of militancy still embedded in the fabric of this country. Every major infrastructure project is named with the Bangabandhu (Mujib) prefix, meaning Friend of Bengal. Buildings are named Freedom Tower. But since achieving sovereignty, Bangladesh has only changed hands from one imperial fascist to another.
The students taking to the streets right now have known nothing but an authoritarian regime and, still, possess the willingness to imagine a better order and struggle for it. The Awami League has dismantled its opposition piece by piece over the last 15 years until none remain, making a farce democracy and creating a one-party state. A 2021 Al Jazeera Investigation reminds us that local gangs and murderers effectively negotiated Sheikh Hasina’s initial rise to power. Fascism takes many faces: from forced disappearances to rewriting the national curriculum with propaganda, the Awami League is playing every card from the authoritarian handbook.
The government’s propaganda machine is both uncoordinated and would be amusing if the price paid for it were not the lives of student protestors. There is no consistency in the lies perpetuated by different people in the Awami League. There is no consistency across what political figures say either. The police raid houses and check civilians’ phones for footage of brutality and VPN apps while a minister deems it illegal on live TV. If found with either, the person will be taken into remand, which is a Bangladeshi euphemism for state-sanctioned torture. Internet blackouts to control the people, while the IT minister says data centers caught fire, and two days later didn’t catch fire. Apparently, the internet shut itself down, and then the rain-damaged satellites in orbit are to blame.
At the same time, the initial grassroots nature of the 2024 quota movement was weaponized by the political opposition, whose factions joined in rallies en masse and incited violence. Burning down BTV (the state media), highway toll plazas, or the new Metro Rail are not actions of sensible students protesting for their right to a meritocracy. Despite claiming that they did not commit arson, students are now held liable by the ruling party.
Much of the world suffers from the corrupt rule of gerontocracy. Still, it is also not lost on us that younger generations are also losing their principles: it was the Chhatra League, the youth wing of the ruling Awami League, that was entrusted to brutalize protesting students.
The PM called the protesting students traitors to the state, “tarnishing the image of the great liberators.” And Obaidul Quader, the AL General Secretary, said that the Chhatra League would give a fitting reply to the chhatra (students).
So with every move, protesting students were met with a new type of violence: that too from goons who act like little dictators of a banana republic. The Chhatra League wears helmets and attacks with makeshift weapons under the guise and protection of the fascist Awami League. The Chhatra League storms hospital emergency wards and bludgeons people to death. These indoctrinated youth rule with fear and rape in broad daylight as the entire country descends into chaos. What results is the unsettling normalcy of students being the subject of enforced disappearances, torture, and mass arrests.
Students are the lifeblood of a country, and so the construction and upholding of the Chhatra League as a legitimate actor in civil society by the fascist party is only one example of the tactics used to dissolve our revolutionary power. The position of the Chhatra League as an extrajudicial arm of the state is a tactic we know from other places, including the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the ruling BJP in India, another side of the same fascist coin. Youth who are fed alternate histories, whether it be in the apartheid state of Israel or Dhaka, become cemented in party-student alliances that only enable further bloodshed.
But in a much larger sense, from our debate clubs to student governments to Model UNs, we as youth around the world commonly spend the formative years of our lives inundated with the political establishment. This in many ways acclimates us to stabilizing the dominant order of things and moderating the liberatory efforts of our peers. Think of how easily some people pledged their votes to Kamala Harris with no demand that the Democratic Party even change its platform on genocide. From Dhaka to D.C., this party loyalty does not serve us, and in fact, is compelling youth to police the tactics of and turn against other youth who stand proud to dissent. A new cascade of student identity politics ensues.
The same ruling party that memorializes the sacrifices of students for the right to a national language every year murders principled students with blatant hypocrisy. When the state violence was circulated broadly, the internet shut down, and even after it returned all social media was blocked. Every night there are gunshots and police raids into people’s homes. There are countless parallels between the fight for independence in 1971 and the current tactics of 2024. Unclaimed corpses and police violence mark some of them.
1971: Are there any freedom fighters here?
2024: Are there any students here?
Now every night is spent worrying if our house will be the next site of a raid. Or if someone we know will be dead come morning. Shutting down the internet also shuts down misinformation, which is a global problem now. In every prior conflict, what the government does is shut everything down. The measures taken are almost entirely reactive, never proactive. You cannot have a headache if you don’t have a head.
Coordinators of the student movement were forcefully discharged from the hospital and kidnapped in the middle of the night. Two days later the detective branch of the police published photos of the student leaders eating chowmein. Forced to release a sham surrender statement under gunpoint, the ordeal was so staged even the high court released a statement saying not to make a mockery out of the people by posting it. Imperialists from the left, fascists from the right. Authoritarian all the way.
With a shoot-on-sight curfew and police raids every night, we do not know what will happen but we have held strong, and we will continue to resist until the Awami League is out of power, and a democracy led by the people is restored.
Sources
All the prime minister’s men | al jazeera investigations (2021) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6v_levbUN4 (Accessed: 06 August 2024).
‘KATATARE PRAJAPATI BANGLADESH LINKTREE’ (2024). Google Docs.
Authors: Masud, U. & Kaur Mundi, P.
Editors: Masud, U., Kaur Mundi, P. & Yin, L.
Image source: Rajib Dhar/AP