Dhaka, Bangladesh – Since early August, Fahmi*, 24, who was once a dominant determine on the sprawling campus of Dhaka College in Bangladesh’s capital, has been in hiding.
Fahmi was a member of the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the scholar wing of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) occasion that dominated over the South Asian nation with an iron fist for greater than 15 years earlier than she was ousted and compelled to flee to neighbouring India following a student-led motion in August.
On Wednesday, Bangladesh’s interim authorities, led by its solely Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus, declared the BCL a “terrorist organisation” and banned it. The Ministry of Residence Affairs stated the BCL had a historical past of significant misconduct over the previous 15 years, together with violence, harassment and exploitation of public sources.
“Not way back, I used to be a voice of authority right here,” Fahmi, an undergraduate pupil of utilized chemistry, advised Al Jazeera. “Now, I’m operating round like a fugitive with no possible future.”
Fahmi’s story mirrors that of hundreds of scholars previously affiliated with the AL, whose once-powerful maintain over Bangladesh’s campuses collapsed in a single day. The previous powerbrokers on campuses and the AL’s muscle on the streets now face eviction, retribution and even imprisonment for his or her function in attempting to suppress the favored revolt towards Hasina and for the rights violations they allegedly dedicated whereas she was in energy.
Fahmi maintains he didn’t instantly take part within the authorities’s lethal crackdown towards individuals through the anti-Hasina demonstrations. “My sisters had been a part of the protests,” he stated. “I additionally believed within the trigger however was trapped by occasion obligations.”
The lethal protests started in July after school college students demanded the abolition of a controversial reservation system in authorities jobs that they stated favoured supporters of the governing occasion. Although Bangladesh’s high courtroom scrapped the quota, the protests quickly morphed right into a wider name for the elimination of Hasina’s “autocratic” regime, marked by allegations of widespread rights violations.
The federal government’s response was one of many bloodiest chapters in Bangladesh’s historical past as safety forces beat the protesters, and fired tear fuel and dwell ammunition on peaceable demonstrators, killing greater than 1,000 individuals in three weeks and arresting hundreds of others.
On August 5, as defiant Bangladeshis stormed outstanding authorities buildings, together with Hasina’s residence and the parliament, the 77-year-old prime minister fled the nation in a navy helicopter and sought refuge in New Delhi.
The violence, nevertheless, didn’t finish with Hasina’s fall. The previous perpetrators of state atrocities grew to become the brand new targets as a whole lot of AL politicians and members, together with college students, had been attacked or killed. Many went into hiding or had been detained whereas making an attempt to flee.
Fahmi stated the anti-Hasina protesters set hearth to his household’s house and chilly storage enterprise in Noakhali district, 173km (107 miles) from Dhaka. “They threatened to make my youthful brother disappear if he didn’t disclose my whereabouts,” he stated. Up to now, they haven’t acted on the menace, stated Fahmi, although his youthful brother has been bullied on the madrasa [a Muslim educational institution] the place he research.
Reflecting on his BCL involvement, Fahmi admitted, “I used to be a superb pupil who cared little for politics, however at Dhaka College, corridor politics was unavoidable. You both joined, otherwise you suffered.” He admitted that being a BCL chief would enhance his prospects of touchdown a authorities job – an interesting incentive in a shrinking job market – particularly since his obligations in the direction of his mom, two single sisters, and youthful brother grew after his father’s dying two years in the past.
However his loyalty to the Awami League additionally meant he was not at all times there for his household after they wanted him.
On August 15, 2022 – only a day after his father’s passing – he left his grieving household in Noakhali to attend an occasion in Dhaka marking the anniversary of the dying of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father and the chief of Bangladesh’s motion for independence from Pakistan.
“Trying again, I see I prioritised the occasion’s approval over supporting my household,” Fahmi stated with remorse.
Now, whereas his erstwhile chief Hasina is protected in India, he faces the fixed menace of violence or arrest, a situation that he says made him really feel that he has been deserted by the occasion he as soon as represented and the college he’s a pupil of.
“The salam [peace] I provided and hours I invested buttering up our leaders and arranging occasion rallies … now appear meaningless,” he stated bitterly. “The occasion used us as its political pawns however provided no safety after we wanted it most. The regime fell immediately; saving myself from the indignant mob was the toughest factor I ever confronted that night. But, neither high occasion leaders nor BCL’s pupil leaders have checked on me.”
Along with his closing 12 months exams underneath manner, he can’t attend courses or full his diploma. “I needed to affix the civil service and serve the nation,” he stated. “However stepping on campus may result in my arrest on doubtful prices – or worse, I might be overwhelmed to dying.”
1000’s in limbo
Fahmi’s scenario is way from distinctive. The Awami League estimates that at the very least 50,000 of its pupil associates throughout the nation at the moment are in limbo, struggling to proceed their tertiary schooling.
Shahreen Ariana, a BCL chief from Rajshahi College, was arrested on October 18 on “solid prices,” based on her household. She was detained whereas attempting to take a seat for a term-final examination. Saikat Raihan, one other BCL chief at Rajshahi College, was arrested on the identical day.
The district police, nevertheless, claimed that each confronted prior instances, however refused to supply paperwork to again their declare. In the meantime, the college’s proctor, Mahbubur Rahman, advised Al Jazeera, “Different college students refused to take a seat with any BCL chief through the examination.” To stop any “mob justice,” Ariana and Raihan had been handed over to the police. “We needed to intervene,” he stated. “In any other case, issues may have gotten worse.”
On October 25, two extra BCL leaders — Abul Hasan Saidi, a finance pupil and Kazi Shihab Uddin Taimur, an anthropology pupil — had been arrested whereas showing for exams at Dhaka College. “There have been current instances towards the 2 college students, and so they had been arrested accordingly,” stated college Proctor Saifuddin Ahmed.
The wave of violence towards Awami League-affiliated college students has unfold throughout campuses. On the outskirts of the capital, former Jahangirnagar College BCL activist Shamim Ahmed was overwhelmed to dying on September 18, whereas Masud, one other BCL chief, was killed by a mob in Rajshahi on September 7.
“These are simply the reported instances,” says Redwanul Karim Sagor, who goes by the identify Sujon and was a senior BCL chief who’s now in hiding. Sujon, practically six toes tall, was carrying a crumpled black shirt and unpressed pants, his hair untrimmed. Throughout our interview, he repeatedly requested if anybody else knew in regards to the assembly. “There have been extra killings, arrests and fabricated instances towards us, typically in areas we’ve by no means even visited,” he stated.
The interim authorities that took over after Hasina fled, led by Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, issued a gazette on October 23, formally banning the BCL underneath the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009 – a legislation that was introduced, mockingly, by Hasina’s authorities quickly after it got here to energy in 2009.
This resolution got here after nationwide protests led by College students Towards Discrimination (SAD), the scholar group that mobilised the scholars towards the Hasina authorities in July, and different teams demanding BCL’s ban.
Abdul Hannan Masud, a founding member of SAD, who earlier demanded this ban, stated, “The Chhatra League can’t function in Bangladesh. All their operatives will probably be recognized nationwide and dropped at justice.”
In the meantime, police filed a significant case over the July 15 BCL-led assault on protesters, incriminating 391 people, together with then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and a number of other BCL leaders. It additionally names as much as 1,000 unidentified people.
For the reason that ban on the scholar physique on October 23, officers within the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) confirmed to Al Jazeera the arrest of at the very least 10 BCL leaders from town. Greater than 100 pupil activists had been arrested from throughout the nation.
“Nearly all of those arrests are underneath instances filed over July protests,” stated a senior DMP official, searching for anonymity, “based mostly on no particular prices however underneath suspicion, and largely due to their affiliation with Chhatra League.”
Amid this turbulent atmosphere, Sujon advised Al Jazeera he now lives in a secret location.
We met on October 21 in a small, rundown cafe manufactured from wooden and bamboo over a canal alongside a desolate street, removed from any neighbourhood, the place passing vehicles would sometimes cease. We sat at a nook bench underneath dim lighting as Sujon consistently shifted his gaze in the direction of the window, his eyes betraying his nervousness, as he saved downing glasses of water.
At one level, two vehicles pulled up outdoors, their occupants stopping briefly for water. As a broad-shouldered man stepped out, Sujon’s face tensed up, his voice stopping for a second earlier than he managed to proceed sharing his story.
“I grew up in a technology that solely noticed Awami League in energy. Aligning with them was the one choice,” he stated.
Sujon was pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in physics at Rajshahi College and was one final-term examination away from commencement earlier than the August upheaval pressured him into hiding.
Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury, a former minister in Hasina’s cupboard, now in exile in India, criticised the interim authorities for the insecurity confronted by BCL college students. “This authorities claims to be constructing a discrimination-free Bangladesh,” he advised Al Jazeera. “But it’s depriving hundreds of scholars of their proper to schooling.”
He argued that sidelining the BCL, the nation’s largest pupil organisation with an estimated 100,000 members, may have penalties for all of Bangladesh. “How can Dr Yunus hope to construct a greater future for Bangladesh whereas excluding such a major phase of its youth?”
Chowdhury emphasised that his occasion stays loyal to its members. “When the time is correct, we are going to combat for his or her rights,” he asserted, “and guarantee they’ll full their schooling with out concern.”
Azad Majumder, Muhammad Yunus’s deputy press secretary, advised Al Jazeera that “everyone is free to affix common educational actions except there are any prison prices towards her or him”.
Nonetheless, when requested in regards to the authorities’s measures to guard college students from mob violence or arbitrary arrests, he stated, “I’ve nothing so as to add.”
Rahman, the college proctor, harassed that the campus violence that was widespread when the BCL dominated shouldn’t be repeated in “new” Bangladesh. “Authorities goal to make sure all college students graduate with out going through violence,” he said, noting that investigations are underneath technique to establish the perpetrators of violence on the college’s campus from July 15 to August 5.
“Any college students discovered responsible will face disciplinary actions based on the college’s code of conduct,” he added.
Reversal of fortunes
For greater than a decade, the BCL dominated campuses with an iron grip. The Chhatra Dal, the scholar wing of the most important opposition occasion, the Bangladesh Nationalist Get together, managed to take care of a presence however was typically on the defensive. In the meantime, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the scholars’ physique of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Muslim occasion, was pressured underground.
Quite a few media experiences over 16 years present college students being pressured out of campuses – tortured, and even gruesomely murdered – by BCL members on suspicion of ties to the Shibir, which in August this 12 months was banned by the Hasina authorities underneath the identical anti-terror legislation now used towards the BCL.
The ban on the Shibir was lifted by the Yunus authorities. And now, the tables have turned on the BCL extra broadly, with opposition pupil wings reclaiming management throughout campuses.
“BCL created a system of contemporary slavery,” stated Abu Shadik, president of the Chhatra Shibir’s Dhaka College unit — the primary publicly declared Shibir committee in a long time. “College students needed to align with BCL to safe dorms; dissenters confronted a residing inferno. Some joined for survival, others for private acquire.”
“All BCL operatives who repressed college students or joined the July violence should face justice. The widespread college students have rejected them from society,” he advised Al Jazeera. “Even those that didn’t assault however remained silent are culpable. To reconcile, they have to admit to BCL’s 16 years of brutality, the July ‘genocide,’ and search forgiveness. Solely then can reintegration be thought of.”
In a separate dialog, Nahiduzzaman Shipon, common secretary of the BNP’s Dhaka College unit, recalled the reign of violence on campus when the BCL dominated. “Awami League turned BCL right into a pressure to rig votes, suppress dissent, and bypass the legislation,” he said.
Shipon added that the BCL used sickles, machetes and firearms towards their friends. “After 2009, many Chhatra Dal [BNP] members had been tortured and compelled off campuses, their schooling reduce brief.”
Whereas actual figures on BCL-linked killings are unavailable, the opposition estimates recommend that the toll runs into the a whole lot.
Nonetheless, Shipon insists, his occasion, the BNP, just isn’t advocating for vigilante justice towards BCL members.
“Any pupil with out prison prices is welcome again to campus, no matter their political affiliations,” he stated. “However those that used brutality as political enforcers have to be held accountable underneath Bangladeshi legislation.”
A legislation that the occasion of scholars like Fahmi as soon as managed has now turned towards them.
