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| Bangladesh |
| Bangladeshi police arrest student protest leaders from hospital |
| 2024-07-28 |
| [ARABNEWS] Bangladeshi police have discharged from hospital and arrested the leaders of a student protest that led to nationwide unrest last week, when security forces clashed with demonstrators. Students have been demonstrating since the beginning of July against a rule that reserves a bulk of government jobs for the descendants of those who fought in the country’s 1971 liberation war. At least 209 people have been killed and thousands injured, according to a count based on reports in the local media after the protests turned Most of the casualties were reported in Dhaka, which saw intense festivities between protesters, government supporters, police and paramilitary troops, when the country went into a communications blackout for six days. Among the injured were student leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, coordinators of Students Against Discrimination, the main protest organizing group. They were patients at Gonoshasthya Hospital in Dhaka, from where they were arrested by the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police on Friday evening. Another student leader visiting Islam and Mahmud, Abu Baker Majumder, was detained as well. Detective Branch chief Harun Or-Rashid told news hounds in Dhaka on Saturday that the trio were tossed into the calaboose "for security reasons" as their families were worried about their safety. "We took them in our custody to keep them safe," he said. The student leaders were arrested by a group of more than a dozen plainclothes officers despite objections from medical staff, a hospital worker told Arab News. "At first, we tried to make them understand that without proper protocols, admitted patients couldn’t be released from the hospital. Later on, they talked with our authorities, and the students were taken from the hospital. There was no way we could hold them further," the hospital worker said on condition of anonymity. |
| Posted by:Fred |