Editor’s note: Bangladesh has been burning since the beginning of July. Peaceful protests on university campuses by students opposing a quota system for government jobs, spiralled into unrest across the country after the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, insulted the protesters and dismissed their concerns. Violence exploded when the student and youth wings of the ruling Awami League attacked protesters, with police action following on. On 20 July the government deployed the army and imposed a country-wide curfew to try and maintain order. As protests continued in the streets, large numbers of people have been reported killed and thousands were injured. The Bangladesh Supreme Court scaled down the quota after which there there was a brief but uneasy few days of peace. People resumed their protests over the weekend of 3 August asking for the release of those arrested and for Hasina’s resignation, again accompanied by clashed with pro-government forces resulting in at least 90 people reported killed.

Shahidul Alam, a renowned photojournalist, educator and activist based in Dhaka, has been documenting the protests and the government’s brutal reprisal. Alam has managed to get his dispatches out to the media despite an internet shutdown imposed to try and contain the protests, which has since been partially lifted. Himal Southasian is republishing these dispatches, which offer a picture of the situation inside Bangladesh even as the internet shutdown has severely restricted the outflow of information.

The events and circumstances described in the dispatches have been changing rapidly and there have been several developments since Alam penned each of them. Internet connectivity has been partially restored, although it remains patchy and communication with many parts of the country remains difficult. On 4 August, at least 90 people were killed amidst worsening clashes with police and protesters. On 5 August, Hasina resigned and fled Bangladesh, and the army chief announced that an interim government would be installed to run the country. The dispatches reflect the extent of violence and repression unleashed by the Sheikh Hasina government against its people. They have been lightly edited for clarity. 

Click here to read all dispatches.

Alam sent his fifth dispatch on 2 August 2024.

“A lie is like quicksand – the more you try to get out, the deeper you sink.” 

The ministers and other government spokespeople take turns to do summersaults on their statements. The knots they get themselves into would have been funny, had they not involved the death of so many, most of them young.

The minister of state for information, Mohammad Ali Arafat, urges quota protestors not to prolong public suffering, as the government introduces curfew. The orders are to shoot to kill. The hundreds killed and thousands injured, the closure of banks, online ticketing and ATMs, I presume, caused no inconvenience to the public. The drama continues as he whittles down the “third force” idea to BNP/Jamaat and has now settled on “Islamists”. “We have evidence” he keeps saying, without providing a single shred. On the other hand, with internet slowly opening up, the images and clips that have escaped confiscation by the police, begin to crop up. The evidence that Chhatra League, the government goons, solidly supported by the police, were responsible for the overwhelming proportion of deaths, is undeniable. Abu Sayeed’s image appears on Facebook profiles. The entire world watched the video of Sayeed being shot, multiple times from close range by the police, crumbling as he fell. Media reports that police had arrested 24 civilians, including a minor and various students and ordinary people for Sayeed’s murder. The first information report (filed by the police themselves), failed to mention gunshot as being the cause of death and had no reference of police involvement. The theatre of the absurd plays out as a grotesque farce.

The minister of state for information and communication and technology claimed that fire set by “miscreants” in one centre had led to the collapse of the entire internet structure. It was denied by industry experts. Their logs pointed the finger at the government for the closure. News of the diplomatic community and people close to the government having Internet access, blew the narrative of the infrastructure collapse due to fire. Pro-government packet switching is a technology that I am yet to come across! Then there was a version that the Net had shut itself down. Net suicide is a novel concept. Leaks that specific government orders had been given to internet service providers (ISPs), telling them to operate at 10 percent of full capacity, scuppered that particular version. While the minister desperately looks for yet another angle, I am more concerned by the more sinister aspects of control of data. The forced finger printing of the injured being brought into the hospital resulted in many of the injured choosing to stay untreated. 

The head of the detective branch (DB) had never owned up to torturing the student coordinators, but the physical signs told a different story. It was no coincidence that the six students picked up by the DB were precisely the ones who promised to cancel the protests. Two of them, who were recovering in hospital were taken against doctors’ orders “for their own safety”! Images of them having a meal at the DB office were circulated. One of the students in the photo indicated with pointed fingers that they were being held at gunpoint. The remaining students have rejected the staged call for cancellation, and the social media criticism from across the globe, has had the head of DB transferred. Transferring the guilt will not be quite as easy.

It is what the narrative is preparing us for that worries me.

“I’m in a different place. If anything goes wrong my Ammu (Mom) will contact you. I’ve given your number to my elder brother too.” The message was from a young hip hop artist who had written a protest song. I just hear of another rapper Hannan Hossain Shimul being arrested. Other students need medical treatment but are scared of getting picked up at the hospital. The night raids are worrying and few of us feel safe sleeping in our own homes at night. The vehicles packed with armed border guards (BGB) parked outside our flat late at night, was not a welcome sight. Other pain lingers. The footage of the indiscriminate shootings, of a child dying in her father’s arms, of another child being shot through the window. Saif Mohammad Ali, a Lakshmipur Government College student, was picked up without any formal charges. His father died of a heart attack the next day. What saddened me most was the news of a young man in a residential part of Rayerbazar who had been shot. His wife committed suicide days later. They killed with bullets, they killed through torture, they’ve also killed by heartbreak. 

I am contacted everyday by students on the run. The lucky ones are not tortured too badly and are released on the basis of a “muchleka”, a guarantee by someone, usually an elderly relative, that she will never repeat the “crime” she had committed. The student who approached me today had been picked up the same day as I had been arrested, six years ago on 5 August 2018 during the road safety movement protests. Unlike me, he had been released on the basis of a muchleka. Six years later, the police have been hounding his guarantor. “We’d better not see him with the protesters,” they warn. 

The shifts in the government narrative is telling. Blaming the violence on the students had clearly been counterproductive. The story morphed to BNP-Jamaat who “used the students as a front”. The new narrative is exclusively the Islamists. The Islamic demon is the best selling product on the market. The international community buys it. The PM’s godfather Modi, loves it. Even China, with its repression of Uyghurs seems happy with the characterisation. Back home it’s an easy sell to the secularists, who seem to forget that the right to observe one’s faith is an intrinsic part of the democratic process.

“It’s OK to shoot 15-year-olds if they are Islamists” a high official has mentioned to a diplomat. While I was in jail, I knew of at least one incident where prisoners who had been kept in jail for 13 months, were surprisingly released, only to be found dead days later. Killed by the security forces in a raid on jihadis. Off the record, journalists talk of set up raids whenever a dead jihadist is needed, or for burying some troubling news item or perhaps a more sinister purpose. As in the Pilkhana killing, the Shapla Roundabout killing, or the nationwide killing spree after the death sentence verdict on Delwar Hossain Sayedee. The Trump-like “civil war” politics of this regime precedes Trump. Well-known human rights defenders see nothing wrong with their demand for human rights for all EXCEPT Jamaat-Shibir. One needs no crystal ball to see that the Jamaat-Shibir ban, hurriedly passed through parliament, is merely a prelude to another carnage. The spin doctors of the fascist regime are already busy packaging it as ‘71 version. “The ghost of 1971 still hovers” says the PM.

Remand is a Bangladeshi euphemism for state sanctioned torture. You are not in jail and have no access to anyone, not your family or your lawyer, but kept in an unknown location in the control of the security forces. Arif Sohel, a coordinator from Jahangirnagar University has been picked up and sent for a six-day remand. Families worry as death in custody is not so rare in Bangladesh. Golden A+ student Hasanatul Islam Fayaz is a little over 17. The orders to put him in remand is a clear violation of Bangladeshi laws. But the laws are very selectively applied. The War of Liberation of 1971 (commonly abbreviated to ’71) was fought mostly by ordinary Bangladeshis. The Awami League, the current ruling party, had then been led by the PM’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He had led the resistance movement, though he himself had spent the entire period in a Pakistani jail. ’71 is now the golden goose of the current regime. Not having held a proper election in fifteen years, it has milked ’71 at every level. Any critic or dissenter is labelled as being anti-’71 or a razaakar. Bangladesh’s cultural elite, in its attempt to be pro-liberation, has turned a blind eye to the litany of corruption, deceit and gross human rights violations that the regime has been involved in. Justifying these acts as a necessary evil, to ward off the Islamists. 

People gathered around a police van and forced the police to release the two young men they had arrested. A video comes in of a woman being freed in Barisal. The six coordinators whom the DB had taken away for “safe keeping” have been released facing an ultimatum by civil society organisations. A newspaper, especially close to the government, reports several ministers and members of parliament had left the country, while others are making getaway plans. The Awami League “boat” is sinking, but they have no exit plan. The extent of their misdeeds makes it highly likely that the fall of the government will open the floodgates to people wanting revenge. 

The regime feels the jihadist trope is their only way out and the label will be used to annihilate all opposition, in the name of ridding the country of jihadis. The international community will accept it under the rubric of the “War on Terror”. The secularists and the crony intellectuals will accept it because otherwise “the jihadis will take over”. Given the level of anger against the tyrant, I don’t think even such a drastic step will quell this movement. The people will triumph, but a lot more blood is likely to be shed and all those who turn a blind eye to this grotesque injustice will have blood on their hands. The government is right when it says we must fight disinformation and terrorism. The biggest source of terror is the Bangladesh Chhatra League and the biggest source of disinformation is the government. We should certainly get rid of them. 

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family had been assassinated on 15 August 1975 and after coming to power, Sheikh Hasina’s regime lost no time in declaring August the official month of mourning. Black badges, banners, pop-ups on all TV channels are forced down our throats. Red is the colour of this revolution. Students have declared, July is our month of mourning. Bangladeshi social media has been overwhelmed by a sea of red. July is not over yet. Today is the 34^th of July.△