Students Movement Against Discrimination, a platform for anti-quota movement, announced protest rallies across the country today for pressing home their demands.
鈥榃e urge people from all walks of life to express solidarity with the movement,鈥� said a coordinator of the platform Abdul Kader in a statement late Sunday night, hours after Nahid Islam, another coordinator of the platform, announced of withdrawing all programmes under the platform from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Detective Branch office in the capital.
In a video message sent out from the DB office, Nahid announced to withdraw their programmes and urged the government to reopen the universities.
Kader alleged that the DB coerced the coordinators into signing a scripted statement, despite several hundred sacrificed their lives during the unrest.
鈥楾he government has staged new drama after conducting mass killings and wholesale arrests,鈥� he added.
Kader said that the government had cracked down on the country鈥檚 students during the unrest centring around the quota reform movement and making blanket arrests of citizens on suspicion of their involvement in violence during the recent student protests.
Nusrat Tabassum, a coordinator of the platform and Dhaka University political science student, was picked up from her Mirpur home by 10鈥�12 members of the detective police at about 5:00am on Sunday.
Earlier on Friday, the DB took three student leaders鈥擭ahid Islam, Abu Baker Mazumdar, and Asif Mahmud鈥攊n their custody forcibly from Gonoshasthaya Nagar Hospital in the capital鈥檚 Dhanmondi area.
Three of them were reportedly picked by security agencies in the past week and faced physical and torture.
DB also picked up two other coordinators, Sarjis Alam and Hasnat Abdullah, on Saturday evening.
Earlier, protesting students for quota reform in government jobs on Saturday issued a 24-hour ultimatum to meet their three-point demand, including enactment of a law in the parliament through forming a commission, and warned of a street movement tougher than 鈥榗omplete shutdown鈥�.
Their other demands are return of those disappeared and release of arrested protesters with withdrawal of false cases; and removal of those, from minister to constable, involved in the 鈥榤ass killings鈥�.
Students鈥� protests that had been continuing since early July seeking reform in quotas for government jobs turned violent following an attack on protesters by the ruling party student body, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, on July 16.
The resulting backlash prompted the government to launch a brutal crackdown on protesters, leaving at least 212 people killed and thousands injured in clashes in the past week.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said on Sunday that, in their primary estimate, 147 people were killed in clashes during the protests.
The government shut down the internet, imposed a curfew, and called in the army to end the protests before arresting nearly 10,000 people, mostly leaders and activists of opposition political parties, on charges of carrying out vandalism and damaging some key infrastructure.
The government imposed a curfew and deployed an army on July 19 midnight as protests for quota reform in public services turned violent in Dhaka as elsewhere in the country.
The government has relaxed curfew hours from 7:00am to 6:00 pm in Dhaka, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Narsingdi between Sunday and Tuesday.
