DHAKA: Clashes between Bangladeshi protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and government supporters left at least eight people dead on Sunday, including from knife cuts and gunshot wounds, police and doctors said.
Three people were killed in the northern district of Pabna, two in the northern district of Rangpur, two in the capital Dhaka's Munshiganj district and one in the western district of Magura, police officers and hospital doctors told AFP.
Asif Mahmud, a leading leader of the nationwide civil disobedience protest, has called on his supporters to be ready to fight.
“Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
While the army stepped in to help restore order following earlier protests, some former military officers joined the student movement, and former army chief General Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.
Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman addressed officers at the military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday, telling them that “the Bangladesh Army is the symbol of the people's trust.”
“He has always stood by the people and will continue to do so for the good of the people and for every need of the state,” he said, according to an army statement released Saturday evening.
The statement did not provide further details and did not explicitly say whether the military supported the protests.
Demonstrations against civil service job quotas sparked days of chaos in July, killing more than 200 people in the worst unrest in Hasina’s 15-year tenure.
Troops briefly restored order, but this week crowds returned to the streets en masse, in a movement of total non-cooperation aimed at paralyzing the government.
On Saturday, when hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Dhaka, the police were mostly mere spectators watching the demonstrations.
Growing movement
The protests have morphed into a broader anti-government movement that has engulfed the entire South Asian nation, numbering some 170 million people.
The mass movement involves people from all strata of Bangladeshi society, including film stars, musicians and singers, and rap songs appealing for people's support have been widely circulated on social media.
“It’s not about work quotas anymore,” said Sakhawat, a young protester who gave only one name, as she scrawled graffiti on a wall at a protest site in Dhaka calling Hasina a “murderer.”
“What we want is for our next generation to be able to live freely in the country.”
Counter-demonstrations in support of the government are also planned.
Obaidul Quader, general secretary of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, called on party activists to rally “in every neighborhood of Dhaka city” and “in every district” across the country to show their support for the government.
“We don’t want to engage in any kind of confrontation,” Quader said.
The capital Dhaka was tense on Sunday, with fewer cars and buses on the normally congested roads of the megacity of 20 million people.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Dhaka and across the country.
Student protest
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing the initial protests, has called for demonstrations across the country.
The protests will be held at Dhaka's entry points; the main demonstrations will be held in Dhaka's central square, Shahbagh Square, where crowds gathered on Sunday morning.
“We will hold our protests and rallies peacefully,” the group said in a statement Saturday night. “But if someone attacks us, we urge (everyone) to make full preparations.”
Students against discrimination have called on their compatriots to stop paying fees and bills starting Sunday to increase pressure on the government.
They also called on civil servants and workers in the country's most economically important textile factories to strike.
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without any real opposition.
His government is accused by human rights groups of abusing state institutions to consolidate power and suppress dissent, including through the extrajudicial killings of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of the quota system, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been scaled back by Bangladesh's top court.
