Bangladesh student group vows to resume protests if demands not met

Bangladeshi student group threatens protests unless leaders are released, amid deadly crackdown and unrest, demanding justice.

Bangladeshi student group has vowed on July 28 to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody.

“Last week’s violence killed at least 205 people”, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

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Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination group, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium.

The group's chief Nahid Islam and others "should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn", Abdul Hannan Masud, one of the coordinators of the anti-discrimination group, said in an online briefing on July 27.

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