By: Hannah Fraser, News Editor
Content warning: mentions of natural disasters, government oppression, and death.
The line “একতাই বল” (ako-ty-bal), meaning “unity is strength,” resounded through the streets of Vancouver in July from SFU’s Bangladesh Student Alliance (BSA). Driven by their shared commitment to raise awareness about the violence in Bangladesh this summer, the BSA came to embody the unity of the Bangladeshi protestors.
In early July, “tens of thousands” of students and job seekers in Bangladesh began peacefully protesting against the quota system for government jobs, which reserved 56% of well-paid government jobs for specific communities.
But on July 15, Dhaka University students were met with violence while protesting, allegedly by members of the Bangladesh Chatra League (BCL). The BCL is a student political organization implicated in a multitude of crimes such as murder, theft, and extortion. They are affiliated with the previous ruling political party in Bangladesh, the Awami League. Members of the BCL attacked Dhaka University students with “rods, sticks, and clubs with a few even brandishing revolvers,” beginning a lethal chain of violence against peaceful protestors in Bangladesh.
Since the first protests in July, the BSA has been working to raise awareness about the current situation in Bangladesh and support those affected by it. On July 20, the group protested near Science World in Vancouver, with students across Canada also protesting. On August 4, the BSA also did a sit-in and walk at UBC to try and share the news on a broader scale.
An executive member of the BSA expressed that the group had to cancel many of their upcoming events because they were deeply impacted by the recent events in Bangladesh. Many members have family living in Bangladesh that had to endure its recent violence and disaster.
Under the quota system, 30% of government jobs were reserved for the “descendants of veterans.” Another 26% was allocated to women (10%), underdeveloped districts (10%), ethnic minorities (5%), and individuals with physical disabilities (1%). This left 44% of government jobs as “merit-based,” available for the rest of the population.
In 2018, Bangladesh’s former prime minister and leader of the Awami League party Sheikh Hasina Wazed agreed to abolish the quota system entirely after “a smaller anti-quota movement” protested against it. Students of this movement first began protesting about job quotas because the Awami League government began abusing the quotas for their own benefit. The Awami League was the previous governing body since 2009 and was co-founded by Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father.
In an interview with six members of SFU’s BSA, Farsim Raihan, a former president of the BSA, described how Bangladeshis would have to bribe the Awami League for a job position, even if these individuals already had political connections to the party. The same conditions applied to individuals applying to the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and Bangladesh police jobs, creating corrupt law enforcement agencies.
“That’s how it went from these quotas to [an] attack on the principles of democracy,” said Raihan. In other words, giving people “equal rights and being able to run a corporation according to the needs of the people, not of the political parties.”
About 20% of Bangladesh’s population was below the poverty line before 2020 — a figure that has “increased substantially since, and is becoming a phenomenon less temporary than expected,” according to the United Nations. Estimates also suggest that around 18 million young Bangladeshis are unemployed, with university graduates facing “higher rates of unemployment than their less-educated peers.” Nowmee Rahman, the BSA’s president from 2019, expressed that many young Bangladeshis look forward to government jobs after graduation, but are restricted due to the quotas.
Some BSA executives also noted that it doesn’t make sense to reserve positions for the descendants of their “freedom fighters.” Given that the veterans gained Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, their descendants looking for jobs in 2024 are their grandchildren, showing how the quota system problematically transcends generations.
However, on June 5 this year, the court reversed the decision to abolish the quota system after an appeal from a “freedom fighter” descendant. This sparked the most recent wave of protests.
The Diplomat noted students and job seekers couldn’t believe “the quota system was back as if nothing had happened.”
Soon, “tens of thousands” of students and job seekers came together to peacefully protest against the system’s reinstatement. However, in an effort to subdue the protestors and prevent the Bangladesh quota reform movement from gaining momentum, the Awami League deployed police and other departments like the BGB, who protect the borders of Bangladesh, to attack them.
This violence sparked more intense protests against the government. The killing of Abu Sayed, a Begum Rokeya University student who peacefully stood his ground, sparked outrage among Bangladeshis. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 89 infants and children. The government detained nearly 10,000 people and “tens of thousands” were accused of crimes such as arson and vandalism.
Not only were students protesting, but other citizens too, enraged at the deaths of their families and people. The protests evolved from job quota reform demands to demands for an apology from party leader Hasina, officials, and those who attacked citizens to be arrested or resign. Protestors also demanded families of the killed and injured to be compensated. The government imposed a nationwide curfew on July 12, in which the army began patrolling the streets, and a media blackout on July 17.
It wasn’t until July 21 that the high court finally allocated 93% of government jobs as merit-based. The media blackout also ended on this day. On August 5, Hasina resigned and fled the country by helicopter, heading for India.
A leader who once fought for “democracy” and helped Bangladesh become “one of the fastest-growing economies in the region,” was now responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 Bangladeshis. Hasina also led a highly controversial election in 2023, getting her party re-elected for a fourth straight parliamentary term. Her government was accused of “numerous allegedly corrupt business deals,” and criticized for being “too subservient to India.” It was during her fifth term as prime minister in Bangladesh that she fled to India.
Economist Muhammad Yunus was sworn in as the head of the interim government, but violence continued in Bangladesh in the first few weeks of August.
Then, one of the “country’s worst floods in living memory” began on August 21.
In eastern and southeastern Bangladesh, over 5.7 million families have been deeply affected by a massive overnight flood. At least 23 people have died and 1.24 million families are stranded, increasingly fearing waterborne disease without “food, clean water, medicine, and dry clothing.”
Bangladesh’s monsoon season, from June to October, accounts for about 80% of its yearly rainfall, putting almost one-third of the country underwater. However, many Bangladeshis blame India for the recent flooding, claiming they deliberately opened the Dumbur dam in neighbouring Tripura state. “They opened the gate, but no information was given,” Shoriful Islam told CBC, a citizen who returned to his hometown to help rescue people in the floods.
Former BSA president Farsim Raihan also noted that there was no notice or “any sort of sympathy towards the Bangladeshi people. No room to take precautions.” India “denied the dam release was deliberate and said excessive rain was a factor.”
“Bangladesh has one of the best flood detection systems in southeast Asia,” said Ibrahim Al Haque, another former president of the BSA, “However, this happened because overnight they decided to open [the] dam,” he added. The BBC described that to India, Bangladesh is a “strategic partner and close ally crucial to India’s border security, particularly in the northeastern states.
“When the only statement is that the dam opened by itself and we couldn’t have done anything about it, it seems very avoidant of actually speaking about the issue,” added a BSA executive.
“In order to prevent such disasters in the future we want accountability to why we weren’t given a warning, and are we gonna get a warning next time if they decide to open another dam,” said Al Haque.
“We understood how it feels like to be oppressed, and we stand by anyone who is being oppressed in the whole world.” — executive member of the Bangladesh Student Alliance
At the time of publication, Hasina remains sheltered by the Indian government, which is not engaging in any discourse with the Bangladeshi interim government on how to hold her accountable. “We haven’t seen anything from the Indian government in terms of what their plans are with Sheikh Hasina,” said Raihan.
“We expect an apology from the Indian government,” he continued. “We expect them to come into discourse with our interim government.” To prevent an anti-India sentiment from developing, Al Haque said “it’s on them now to prove ‘we are with the people of Bangladesh and not with the authorities of Bangladesh.’” On September 1, the chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal announced the legal process to send Hasina back to Bangladesh and face trial.
A BSA executive mentioned that during a summer trip back to Bangladesh to enjoy with their family, the situation escalated so quickly that, before they knew it, no one could speak up on social media about Bangladesh’s current situation.
They also revealed that one of their childhood friends was taken away. “You don’t expect things to go wrong in the blink of an eye,” they expressed. The media blackout made them uncertain if they could still catch their flight back to Canada, or even enroll in their SFU classes on time.
Rahman further expressed the dangers of speaking up at the time and being unable to contact her parents for three days during the media blackout: “You didn’t know what was going on and the news we were getting was not looking good.”
Al Haque told The Peak that his family had strong ties to the Awami League and that his uncles were threatened when he showed support for the student protests. “It puts you in a really complicated situation where it’s either you stand for what’s right or you think about your parents and don’t take any actions.”
Although the BSA rarely engaged in the politics of their country in the past, an executive member said the BSA had a cultural shift when they started discussing the country’s recent events to focus on the well-being of students at SFU. In addition to their protest and sit-in, the BSA emailed and created group chats with students who were concerned about the state of Bangladesh to provide a space for them to express their feelings and keep their mental health in check. The BSA also discussed their hopes that SFU would show more compassion to Bangladeshi students at this time, considering their financial situations and mental health more seriously.
“We understood how it feels like to be oppressed, and we stand by anyone who is being oppressed in the whole world,” said an executive member on behalf of the BSA.
Raihan expressed how the Awami League government became an oppressive regime, using its resources to terrorize its own people. But, he said that “now having 5,000 other people afraid together, you’re no longer afraid.” And similarly, “If you go out together with the fear of death, no one will die.”
Despite recent events hitting too close to home, the BSA’s sense of unity and courage seemed completely unbreakable.
“একতাই বল” (ako-ty-bal), or “unity is strength.”
For more information, you can follow the BSA at @sfubsa on Instagram.
