Thousands of Bangladeshi protesters, many with sticks, thronged a central square in Dhaka on Sunday for mass protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after a deadly police crackdown.
Asif Mahmud, one of the main protest leaders in a nationwide civil disobedience campaign, told supporters to be ready to fight.
“Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
While the army stepped in to help restore order in the wake of earlier protests, some former military officers have since joined the student movement, and ex-army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile red to show his support.
Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman spoke to officers at the military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday and told them that “Bangladesh Army is the symbol of the people's trust.”
“It has always stood for the people and will do so for the sake of the people and in the need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement issued late Saturday.
The statement gave no further details and did not specifically say whether the army supported the protests.
Rallies against civil service quotas sparked days of chaos in July that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest during Hasina's 15-year tenure.
Troops briefly restored order but crowds returned to the streets in large numbers this week in an all-out non-cooperation movement aimed at crippling the government.
On Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka, police were largely bystanders watching the demonstrations.
Growing movement
The protests have grown into a wider anti-government movement in the South Asian nation of about 170 million people.
The mass movement includes people from all walks of Bangladeshi society, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs calling for people's support have been widely shared on social media.
“It's no longer about labor quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name, as she scrawled graffiti on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka, calling Hasina a “murderer”.
“What we want is for our next generation to be able to live freely in the country.”
Counter-protests supporting the government are also expected.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Hasina's ruling Awami League, has called on party activists to gather in “all wards of Dhaka city” and “in every district” across the country to show their support for the government.
“We don't want to engage in any kind of confrontation,” Quader said.
The capital Dhaka was tense on Sunday, with fewer cars and buses on the normally congested streets of the megacity of 20 million people.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Dhaka and across the country.
Student protest
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing the first protests, called for demonstrations across the country.
Protests will be held at the entry points to Dhaka, with the main demonstrations in Dhaka's central Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered on Sunday morning.
“We will hold our protests and demonstrations peacefully,” the group said in a statement late Saturday. “But if someone attacks us, we urge (everyone) to take all preparations.”
Students Against Discrimination have asked their compatriots to stop paying taxes and electricity bills from Sunday to put pressure on the government.
They have also asked state workers and workers in the country's economically vital garment factories to strike.
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth straight election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Her government is accused by rights groups of abusing state institutions to consolidate its grip on power and root out dissent, including through extrajudicial killings of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of the quota system, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been reduced by the Bangladesh High Court.
