Bangladeshi elite silent: Scroll.in

The recent attacks on unarmed students by political workers and the police in Bangladesh are an alarming development that warrants independent investigation, writes Scroll.in.

The Indian news site called it ‘organic demonstrations’ that “grew into a peaceful civil disobedience movement, bringing the Bangladesh capital to a halt and spreading to other parts of the country.”

After the protests continued for a week, alleged cadres of the ruling Awami League assaulted the unarmed protestors as well as journalists who were documenting the attacks, said a Scroll.in article referring to Human Rights Watch.

The protests followed the death of two students on 29 July when a speeding bus ran them over in Dhaka city. The young student protesters demanded road safety.

In the article ‘Bangladesh has damaged its democratic credentials with the latest crackdown’, Scroll.in said the crackdown on the protestors lasted for days and left hundreds injured.

“The ruling Awami League maintains that Bangladesh is a democracy, and that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-Jamaat coalition and self-seeking members of civil society are to blame for the protests, which were aimed at destabilising the government and, by extension, the country,” the article mentioned.

It went on to say: “A further difference between a democracy and an autocracy is that, in a democracy, any claims - even those made by the government - must be supported by evidence to keep the public’s trust.

“In an autocracy, however, government claims are projected as the only accepted truth, and claims contrary to that are deemed lies regardless of the overwhelming evidence.”

The article written by Ikhtisad Ahmed also reads: “The Bangladesh government has dealt with the protesting students who wanted road safety in the same way as all other dissidents.”

Scroll.in pointed out that just a few months ago, in April and May, demonstrations by university students that the government reform quotas in government jobs, saw the Awami League promise an outright abolishment only to renege on its word, and retaliate against the students with violence.

“Some people have defended the government action against the protestors,” Scroll.in wrote, adding that the truth is that the school students who took to the streets inconvenienced the Bangladeshi elite, whom even the government dares not inconvenience..

“The patronage and silence of the elite allows the government to rule with an iron fist, and the government’s patronage and silence allows the elite to increase their economic privileges,” it said. “The government attempted to justify the violence using its well-worn strategy of labelling dissenters 'anti-state'.”

The Indian news site also mentioned that it is becoming clear that Bangladesh’s ruling and elite classes are becoming increasingly unpopular among its citizens.

The article quoted a few lines from the autobiography of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: “The leaders were thereby creating an atmosphere of terror so that nobody would dare criticise the government. The government was assuming that hired goons could stifle people’s demands. That such measures have never succeeded, and would not succeed in this case did not seem to have occurred to them.”

The full text of the article is here: <https://scroll.in/article/889870/opinion-bangladesh-has-damaged-its-democratic-credentials-with-the-latest-crackdown>