No Less Than A War | Bangladesh Diary | 17th - 24th July Darkness

"Students are Bleeding"

Yeah, you heard me right, the students of Bangladesh are bleeding right now. What’s our fault? We have demanded equal rights for ourselves. Yeah, that's it. We are being oppressed, we are being shot dead. Just today(18th july), forty plus of our students were killed on the streets. Yeah, we call these murder because the authorities know that the students are unarmed still they are firing bullets on us. What did we do? We just started movements, blocked roads for our demands that are being unheard and ignored over and over again by the government.

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Let's start from the beginning. What’s this movement for, right? Bangladesh got its victory from Pakistan in 1971, we are forever in debts to our freedom fighters. Due to them we got this independent country so we gotta honor them right? They are our freedom fighters and get many facilities like respect, financial hells, and other priorities in each and every sector. We don’t have any problem with that. Even their families are getting those facilities after them because they are the childrens of a freedom fighter, they are still getting pensions, priorities in every sector as they have this freedom fighter quota. We don’t have any problem with that as well. Well, the grandchildrens of the freedom fighters should get the same priorities as well? What do you think? What about the other general people who don’t have any quota? Its not about just
freedom fighter quota, there are many more as well like female quota, minority quota, district quota, alliance quota and what not. Almost 55 to 90 percent of the opportunities are grabbed by these quota and rest of them are left for the general public whearese they quota holders won't be five percent of the total population. Isn't it an injustice to the mass people? In 2018, there were similar clash regarding quota and the whole quota system was dismissed, now the same issue arrived, we are on the streets again so that the quota system doesn't come back like a curse for us.

Lemmee give you an example of how it is doing injustice to the general people. In 2019, when I sat for the Public University admission tests, in one of the universities I scored around 3000 positions but I didn’t qualify to be enrolled but one of my friends who was a grandchildren of a freedom fighter got enrolled even though his position was above 8000. My merit position was around 3k and his was 8k and still I didn’t get the opportunity just because I don't have any quota. The same scenario in job sectors and many more. Isn't it unfair? Freedom Fighters? Accepted, Freedom Fighter’ childrens, okay accepted, do we need to accept their grandchildren as well? Why??

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It's been four to five days since the movement started. From Dhaka University, one of the most prestigious educational institutes in the country. They started this protest with different activities. Peaceful movements with little students. The next day it grew, students started to join, it spreaded to other universities as well. The authority tried to dismiss with the help of police, also they used “Bangladesh Student League(BSL)” who are an organization of the government, they are students by name and do all sorts of political activities except study. BSL applied strength to the general students on the streets while the police kept standing as if they are empowering the BSL to dismiss the general students. A few clashes, here and there.

Youths, the hot blooded students, came out spontaneously. One spread his hands and the chest forward towards the police to shoot. He stood still even after being shot, hands spread, chest spread, another bullet took him down. Yeah, he died, one of the first students that we call martys in this movement, like this we lost more in the next day. At night, the Public University halls where students live became a place of massacre, they were completely blackout, their internet connections were cut off, network jammed, no electricity, water, and they were being forced to leave halls so that they can't be united again.

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What happened today?(17th july),

The whole country’s students came on the streets again, all the universities, colleges, even the school students on the streets. Situation got worse at their peak, clashes one after another. Videos with the students being shot dead are all over social media. Government took down the mobile internet from the morning, also the broadband internet was having issues. So far we have learned that more than 40 students died today. Can you imagine? We are killing the finest brains of the country just because they are demanding equal rights which is against the government's interest.

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Student Demands Accepted

18th july
It's been four hours since I am out of the internet connection, the mobile network is gone since morning and now the broadband has also been cut off with a mysterious statement.

In the meantime, the government is shaken by the fear of student power and the support of mass people. In the evening they have agreed to sit with the students and negotiate. But isn't it too late? What about the lives we have lost today? Our prime minister gave a speech yesterday evening as well, exactly at the same time. She didn’t accept anything back then, didn’t try to negotiate anything, ignored the whole thing and acted like she didn't care about the demands and threw in the long waiting schedule. My biggest regret is that they agreed for negotiations today but made a delay. If she had taken the same step in her yesterday's speech then we wouldn’t have lost so many lives today, all the finest brains of the country. We were fighting for talent over quota while paying the price of our talents.

Will we be going over the blood now to negotiate with them? Should we? I don't know what's coming ahead.

It's 1.00 AM now, 19th july. It's midnight, and yesterday the whole nation couldn’t sleep as one after another disturbing news kept coming, posted by the students who were suffering. Saw videos where the whole campus is under darkness and the sounds of shootings, rubber bullets, still they were wounded and what not. But what about tonight? Only Allah knows what's happening there. The whole nation's internet connectivity is disconnected now. Throughout the whole day, the people of Bangladesh kept scrolling through the feeds with fear whether the brothers and sisters fighting there are good or not. And now? Complete darkness, is this the digital nation that we had wanted?

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Slipped from the Students to Political Clashes

2.00 PM, it's been more than 17 hours that the whole nation's internet connection is completely cut off, yeah, we are completely disconnected from the internet. Can you imagine? You digitalise everything and then make us cripple like this. So far, I have gotten calls from friends to know if there is any way to recharge electricity because our digital meters need to be recharged digitally and our ‘good’ government has thrown us in darkness. There are numerous families that are out of electricity and can't even recharge. What about freelancers? Those who do remote jobs? All on a stand still. Should we be grateful that we do have electricity? I mean, they can cut off that too to teach us a lesson for demanding equal rights. Can you imagine the situation of the family members who live outside the country and can't communicate with the family members in this tense situation.

On the television, we see the situation is still worse in many places, especially in Dhaka. From the students movement now the other political parties are trying to take benefits to provoke the government even more. Political games, right? We aren't into any of these. The fun fact is, we got to see there are five deaths in today's clash but I believe the number is higher than seen because these mainstream media isn't showing everything with full transparency. The owners and high officials have interest in the government and they don't want to ruin the relationship as well. Only social media was the source of authentic news of everything. They have successfully taken that down and thrown us into darkness, we are still in this. Restless me, watching these tv channels to see some good news about the situation so that I can calm myself that my brothers and sisters in the streets are fine, the damage is less, not getting worse.

Okay, throughout the whole day, its been a political game where the opposition party is now chanting for the government to step down, this wasn’t the motto of the students, we had just wanted equal rights and while doing so we have shed blood and lives. Based on that, now the other political party is trying to gain benefits. Today, there weren’t any student movements, but thousands of clashes that caused many destruction to institutes and national properties. Many died as well, the situation has worsened and it's now out of students hands.

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Declared Curfew

20th july, 12.01 AM

Here you go, the government has declared curfew and army personnel throughout the whole nation effective from now. I do support this decision as things have gone out of control. The student movement is accepted and waiting for an organized demand and negotiations. Keeping that aside, the damage done today is completely political and has some different agenda and in the meantime, the national properties are being damaged in a large scale, death toll is rising, and there isn't any better alternative. So yeah, CURFEW!!

Oh, one thing to remember, its been more than 28 hours that we are completely disconnected from the internet. When are we gonna reconnect? No one knows!

Let's stop counting hours, it's 23rd July, lemme tell you what happened in the meantime.

We are still under curfew, no internet connection nationwide. What about the television channels? They are broadcasting the same news over and over again. They are stating everything is under control, no more clashes, and stuff like that. But in reality there have been numerous clashes even in this curfew. One thing to be noted, now there aren’t any students on the roads. After 19 to so far, no student is on the roads. Now all the political clashes to establish their own agenda.

The Country is Torn Apart

No one can deny that amidst all these clashes the most sufferer after all those martyrs is the country. Hundred plus have been dead in this last one week and the majority of them are students, what's more devastating than this? After that, we can look at the damages done in many public properties, it would take more than a year to recover the losses. Hundreds of vehicles, many govt institutes, public services, and many more. All these destructions are pre-planned by many groups who don't want this country to prosper. Don't think any of these to be involved with students, no students did damage any of these, all their movements were peaceful and on the contrary they did suffer on the roads when they faced forces to stop their movement. They stood still, shed blood, gave lives, but they didn’t do anything with the country.

Some Timeline:

20th July, the government has imposed a curfew. No Internet!!

On 21th July, the Appeal Division revoked the past quota proposal and proposed a new one, 93% on merit, 5% for freedom fighters(up to their kids, no grandchildren) , 1% for autistics and third gender, and 1% for minority people. No Internet!!

On the 22nd of July, nothing happened to mention, we are expecting a gadget from the government with this new policy, scheduled for 23rd july. No Internet!!

23rd July 23rd, the government released this policy to be effective from today and decreasing the curfew. No Internet!!

July 24th, banks, garments, govt/non-govt offices and other public services are open today, curfew is postponed from 10am to 5 pm, so everything will be running in this period except educational institutes. Yeah, educational institutes are still closed and I don't think they will be open this week, maybe from the next one. No Internet for mass general people!!

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Guys, we are back online, lemme post this as soon as possible as I might go into darkness once again. Please forgive me for the grammatical and other errors. This was written in the hard days in many parts, many time, with different mindsets.