Daily Times

Bangladeshi student protesters stormed a prison and freed hundreds of inmates Friday as police struggled to quell unrest, with huge rallies in the capital Dhaka despite a police ban on public gatherings.

This week’s unrest has killed at least 75 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by hospitals, and emerged as a momentous challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic government after 15 years in office. Student protesters stormed a jail in the central Bangladeshi district of Narsingdi and freed the facility’s inmates before setting the facility on fire, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know the number of inmates, but it would be in the hundreds,” he added. Dhaka’s police force took the drastic step of banning all public gatherings for the day — a first since protests began — in an effort to forestall another day of violence. “We’ve banned all rallies, processions and public gatherings in Dhaka today,” police chief Habibur Rahman told AFP, adding the move was necessary to ensure “public safety”. That did not stop another round of confrontations between police and protesters around the sprawling megacity of 20 million people, despite an internet shutdown aimed at frustrating the organisation of rallies.

“Our protest will continue,” Sarwar Tushar, who joined a march in the capital and sustained minor injuries when it was violently dispersed by police, told AFP. “We want the immediate resignation of Sheikh Hasina. The government is responsible for the killings.” At least 28 people were killed in the city on Friday, according to a list drawn up by the Dhaka Medical College Hospital and seen by AFP, along with two other deaths elsewhere in the country. Police fire was the cause of more than half of the deaths reported so far this week, based on descriptions given to AFP by hospital staff.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the attacks on student protesters were “shocking and unacceptable”. “There must be impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations into these attacks, and those responsible held to account,” he said in a statement. The capital’s police force earlier said protesters had on Thursday torched, vandalised and carried out “destructive activities” on numerous police and government offices. Among them was the Dhaka headquarters of state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which remains offline after hundreds of incensed students stormed the premises and set fire to a building.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP Hossain that officers had arrested Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, one of the top leaders of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). “He faces hundreds of cases,” Hossain said, without giving further details on the reasons for Ahmed’s detention. Near-daily marches this month have called for an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.