DHAKA: Bangladeshi police have been discharged from hospital and arrested the leaders of a student protest that sparked nationwide unrest last week, as security forces clashed with demonstrators.
Students have been demonstrating since early July against a rule that reserves a large portion of government jobs for descendants of those who fought in the country's 1971 liberation war.
At least 209 people have been killed and thousands injured, according to a count based on local media reports after protests turned violent last week.
Most of the casualties were reported in Dhaka, which saw intense clashes between protesters, government supporters, police and paramilitary troops, as the country plunged into a six-day communications blackout.
Among the injured were student leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, coordinators of Students Against Discrimination, the largest protest organization. They were patients of the Gonoshasthya Hospital in Dhaka, from where they were arrested by the Dhaka Detective Department on Friday evening. Another student leader who visited Islam and Mahmud, Abu Baker Majumder, was also arrested.
Detective Division chief Harun Or-Rashid told reporters in Dhaka on Saturday that the trio had been detained “for security reasons” as their families were worried about their safety.
“We took them into our custody to keep them safe,” he said.
The student leaders were arrested by a group of more than a dozen plainclothes officers despite objections from medical staff, a hospital worker told Arab News.
“At first we tried to make them understand that without proper protocols, admitted patients could not be released from the hospital. Later they spoke to our authorities and the students were taken from the hospital. There was no way we could keep them any longer,” said the hospital worker on the condition that they are anonymous.
“The students' health was not so good … Asif was dealing with low blood pressure, and Nahid was suffering from blood clots and bruises on various parts of the body. Both required further treatment.”
The arrests come in the context of a crackdown launched by police in Dhaka, where a curfew imposed last week was still in place.
Liton Kumar Saha, Joint Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said 2,284 people have been arrested in Dhaka for the protest-related clashes, in which many administrative offices were set on fire.
“We analyze the images from different places and identify the miscreants. When we get confirmation of someone's involvement in the anarchy, we conduct the operations to arrest them. It has been carried out with transparency and we are checking the people who were involved in sabotage,” he told Arab News.
“In the last 24 hours, 245 people were arrested in Dhaka. Our drive will continue until the situation returns to normal.”
International rights groups have repeatedly expressed concern over Bangladesh's handling of the protests, with Amnesty International saying that witness statements and video and photographic evidence “confirm the police's use of unlawful force against student protesters.”
The protests erupted after the Supreme Court upheld a controversial quota system, where 56 percent of public services were reserved for specific groups, including women, marginalized communities and the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters — for whom the government earmarks 30 percent of posts.
The Supreme Court last week scaled back the quota system and ordered that 93 percent of government jobs be allocated on merit.
