DHAKA: Bangladeshi police broke out of a hospital and arrested the leaders of the student protests that sparked chaos across the country last week as security forces clashed with protesters.
Students have been protesting since early July against the law that reserves most government jobs for descendants of those who fought in the country's 1971 liberation war. .
At least 209 people have been killed and thousands injured, according to local media counts after protests turned violent last week.
Most of the casualties were reported in Dhaka, where heavy clashes between protesters, government supporters, police and military personnel have been seen as the country has been cut off for six days.
Among those injured were student leader Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, a major protest group. They were patients at Dhaka's Gonoshasthya Hospital, where they were arrested by the detective branch of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Friday evening. Another student leader who visited Islam and Mahmud, Abu Baker Majumder, was also detained.
Detective chief Harun Or-Rashid told reporters in Dhaka on Saturday that the trio were being held “for safety reasons” because their families were concerned about their safety.
“We took them to prison to protect them,” he said.
A group of more than a dozen plainclothes officers arrested the student leaders despite protests from medical staff, a hospital official told Arab News.
“Initially, we tried to appeal to them but without the proper protocol, we admitted that the patient cannot leave the hospital. They later talked to our authorities, and the students were transferred to the hospital. There was no way we could have kept them longer,” said a hospital official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The health of the students is not very good… Asif is suffering from low blood pressure, and Nahid is suffering from bleeding and bruises in different parts of her body. Both needed additional treatment.
The arrests stemmed from a police crackdown in Dhaka, where a curfew was still in place.
Liton Kumar Saha, the joint commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said that 2,284 people were arrested in Dhaka in connection with the protests, in which many administrative offices were burned.
“We are analyzing the footage from different places and identifying the perpetrators. When it is confirmed that someone is involved in a disturbance, we take action to arrest them. It was done with transparency, and we are looking at the people involved in the sabotage,” he told Arab News.
“In the last 24 hours, 245 people were arrested in Dhaka. We will continue to drive until the situation is resolved. “
International human rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about Bangladesh's handling of the protests, with Amnesty International saying that testimonies and video and photographic evidence “confirm the use of “the police use illegal force against student protesters.”
The protests erupted after the High Court upheld the controversial recruitment system, which reserved 56 percent of public service jobs for special groups, including women, communities -marginalized communities and children and grandchildren of freedom fighters – where the government provides 30 percent of the articles.
The Supreme Court last week overturned the quota system, ordering 93 percent of government jobs to be awarded on merit.
