Residence minister says three scholar leaders taken into custody ‘for their very own safety’ and have been being questioned.
Bangladeshi authorities have taken three scholar leaders, who helped coordinate rallies towards authorities job quotas, from a hospital following days of lethal nationwide protests and state-imposed curfews and communication blocks.
Officers reportedly pressured the discharge of three leaders of the Students Against Discrimination movement from the Gonoshasthaya Kendra hospital within the capital, Dhaka, on Friday.
Police had initially denied that Nahid Islam, Abu Bakar Mazumdar and Asif Mahmud have been taken into custody. However Residence Minister Asaduzzaman Khan subsequently informed reporters: “They themselves have been feeling insecure. They suppose that some individuals have been threatening them.”
Whereas Khan didn’t verify whether or not the three had been formally arrested, he informed reporters late on Friday, “We expect for their very own safety they wanted to be interrogated to seek out out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we’ll take the following plan of action.”
Safety forces additionally picked up a ward boy from the hospital within the Dhanmondi space and seized the telephones of Islam’s mom and spouse, together with these of Mazumdar and Mahmud.
The incident befell an hour after an Al Jazeera crew tried to interview them, however their rooms had been cordoned off.
Islam had informed reporters final week that he feared for his life after being taken from a good friend’s home and tortured.
Deeply disturbed by reviews from #Bangladesh that three leaders of the College students Towards Discrimination motion have been forcibly taken from hospital by police. They have been reportedly in hospital within the first place on account of police torture. This insanity should cease @BDPM_Geneva pic.twitter.com/I2wlCX1o0M
— Mary Lawlor UN Particular Rapporteur HRDs (@MaryLawlorhrds) July 26, 2024
No less than 150 individuals have been killed and 1000’s have been arrested because the protests turned violent final week as pro-government scholar teams attacked rallies.
The protests have been initially peaceable and targeted on opposing a quota system that reserved 30 % of presidency jobs for members of the family of those that fought in Bangladesh’s struggle of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
The Supreme Courtroom final week scaled back the reservation to make 93 % of jobs merit-based, and the federal government formally accepted the transfer.
However after the lethal crackdown on protesters and imposition of a curfew in tandem with a heavy throttling of web entry and telephone communications, student leaders have made nine demands, together with a public apology from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the sacking of cops, a number of ministers and college chiefs.
The curfew has been relaxed for rising hours every day, restricted web connectivity has been restored and a variety of companies have been allowed to reopen.
However many restrictions stay in place – amid a suspension of protests by the scholar leaders because of the bloodshed – additional hurting the financial system, which was already coping with excessive inflation and youth unemployment.
Mohammad Arafat, Bangladesh’s minister of state for info and broadcasting, informed Al Jazeera in an interview that “third-party” actors, together with “extremists and terrorists”, have been fuelling the unrest.
The United Nations excessive commissioner for human rights, Volker Turk, called for an unbiased investigation into alleged human rights violations, saying many individuals “have been subjected to violent assaults” by government-affiliated teams.
A gaggle of UN consultants additionally individually known as for an unbiased investigation into what they stated was a “violent crackdown on protesters” by the federal government.