The enraged crowd then set fire to the network’s reception office and dozens of vehicles parked outside, a BTV official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Dhaka: Bangladeshi students set fire to the country’s national broadcaster on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke on the network to try to calm rising confrontations that killed at least 32 people.
Hundreds of protests demanding reforms to public service hiring procedures battled back, overwhelming riot police who had shot rubber bullets at them. The enraged crowd pursued the fleeing officers to BTV’s headquarters in the capital Dhaka, where they set fire to the network’s reception facility and hundreds of parked cars.”Many people” were stuck inside as the fire spread, the broadcaster reported in a Facebook post, although a station official subsequently told AFP that they had safely evacuated.
“The fire is still going on,” the official stated. “We have approached the main gate. “Our broadcast has been temporarily suspended.”
Hasina’s government has ordered that schools and universities be closed indefinitely as police increase attempts to regulate the country’s deteriorating law and order situation. On Wednesday night, the premier appeared on the broadcaster to condemn the “murder” of protestors and promised that anyone involved would face punishment regardless of party allegiance.Despite her appeal for calm, violence escalated on the streets as police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up demonstrations.
“Our first demand is for the prime minister to apologise to us,” demonstrator Bidisha Rimjhim, 18, told AFP.”Secondly, justice must be ensured for our killed brothers,” according to her.
According to an AFP calculation of casualty data from hospitals, at least 25 people were murdered on Thursday, adding to seven slain earlier in the week, while hundreds more were injured.
We have seven deceased here,” said an official at Uttara Crescent Hospital in the capital, Dhaka, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
“The first two students had been injured by rubber bullets. The other five sustained bullet wounds.
Nearly 1,000 people were treated at the hospital for injuries sustained during fights with police, according to the official, with many suffering from rubber bullet wounds.Didar Malekin of the online news site Dhaka Times told AFP that one of his reporters, Mehedi Hasan, was murdered while covering riots in Dhaka.Several cities in Bangladesh experienced violence throughout the day as riot police marched on demonstrators who had set up another round of human blockades on roadways and highways.
Helicopters rescued 60 police officers who were trapped on the roof of a campus building at Canadian University, the scene of some of Dhaka’s fiercest clashes on Thursday, the elite Rapid Action Battalion police force said in a statement.
“Calling Her A Dictator”
Near-daily marches this month have demanded an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.
Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.Her administration is accused by rights groups of capturing state institutions and stamping out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladesh expert at the University of Oslo in Norway, said the protests had grown into a wider expression of discontent with Hasina’s autocratic rule.”They are protesting against the repressive nature of the state,” he told AFP”Protesters are questioning Hasina’s leadership, accusing her of clinging onto power by force,” he added. “The students are in fact calling her a dictator.”
On Thursday, Bangladeshis reported widespread mobile internet outages across the country, two days after Facebook, the protest campaign’s key organizing platform, was cut off by internet providers. According to junior telecommunications minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak, social media was “weaponized as a tool to spread rumours, lies and disinformation,” forcing the government to restrict access. Demonstrators and students allied with police.
Amnesty International said video evidence from this week’s riots revealed Bangladeshi security personnel using unlawful force.
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