Vilification of a social movement

 

In the recent past, Bangladesh has witnessed a new social phenomenon, a social movement spearheaded by a generation of students who may be called the generation of the 2000s. It all began on 29 July 2018 in protest of two Ramijuddin School and College student’s death due to reckless driving near airport road in Dhaka. Although initially, emotions ran high for the first day or two, the protest soon took a peaceful, organized look in the following days with demonstrations taking place on a number of streets and intersections of Dhaka and elsewhere in the country. Students carried innovative placards and festoons, written all by themselves and performed protest songs day in and day out. They chanted slogans such as we want justice. Demanding for safe roads all along, the students at some point even took up the role of traffic police, somewhat trying to show the nation and the “elders” how to ply on the roads and what needs to be done!

All of this was received very well by the ordinary citizenry of Dhaka. Road safety, after all, is an issue close to the heart of many but despite protests and outcries in the past, spontaneous or otherwise, there has never been a serious headway made into the policy and practice. The student’s recent movement seemed to be a unique opportunity and a game-changer. Due to the wide acceptance of the movement, the government also took some steps albeit hurriedly to calm down the outrage. Among other things, it included expediting the enactment of a law, ignored for long.             

While this was going all very well we noted in horror that after the sixth day of continual protest, a spate of violent activities took hold of the streets of Dhaka, perpetrated by a number of different bodies of the ruling AL. In deep shock, we noted how the peaceful social movement by school and college students were demonized by the ruling party and their different official and unofficial functionaries. A number of false flags (rumours in popular parlance) had been set up to create a confrontational situation on the streets of Dhaka. While the sources of these rumours remain a mystery (as is always the case with all false flags), one thing is clear that the ruling party machete-wielding members have taken full advantage of the situation by heavily coming down on the peaceful demonstrations of the students.

The thugs of the ruling party have chased down students, violently attacked on peaceful gatherings, molested female students and journalists, locked up students in different buildings and also physically assaulted students under broad daylight and in front of police. On several occasions, police teargassed students to disperse students, shot rubber bullets and used water cannons to dissipate students. On August 4, 2018 alone in Dhanmondi’s Zhigatola area where a large protest was on, more than a hundred student protesters were physically assaulted by the AL goons. Some of these injuries were serious and had to be treated at local hospitals. On August 5, 2018 too, the student protesters were chased down by armed goons of the ruling party with the help of police. What is alarming is that the police took up the role of the silent observer when most of these violent attacks were carried out by the thugs of ruling BAL.