Over 50K student affiliates of Sheikh Hasina’s party now find themselves in hiding

DHAKA: Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) party, ruled over Bangladesh for over 15 years before she was ousted and forced to flee following a student-led movement in August, today find themselves in hiding and at the receiving end of interim government’s action

At least 50,000 affiliates of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League are now struggling to continue their tertiary education, a report by Al Jazeera stated.

On October 23, the leader of the Bangladeshi interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, banned BCL terming it a “terrorist organisation”. According to Bangladesh’s Home Ministry, the BCL had a history of serious misconduct over the past 15 years, including violence, harassment and exploitation of public resources, Al Jazeera reported.

“Not long ago, I was a voice of authority here”, an undergraduate student of applied chemistry, told Al Jazeera. “Now, I am running around like a fugitive with no probable future”. This student’s case is not an isolated one. All affiliates like him, who had a powerful hold over college campuses in Bangladesh collapsed.

The deadly protests began in July after college students demanded the abolition of a controversial reservation system in government jobs that they said, favoured supporters of the governing party. Though Bangladesh’s top court scrapped the quota, the protests soon morphed into a wider call for the removal of Hasina’s “autocratic” regime, marked by allegations of human rights violations.

The student told Al Jazeera that he did not participate in the government’s crackdown against the protests. “My sisters were part of the protests,” he said. “I also believed in the cause but was trapped by party obligations.”

Talking about his involvement in the now-banned party, the student said, “I was a good student who cared little for politics, but at Dhaka University, hall politics was unavoidable. You either joined, or you suffered”. He admitted that being a BCL leader would improve his prospects of landing a government job.

On August 5, protestors stormed prominent government buildings, including Sheikh Hasina’s residence and the parliament, and the 77-year-old prime minister fled the country.

The violence, however, did not end with Hasina’s fall. The former perpetrators of state atrocities became the new targets as hundreds of Awami League politicians and members, including students, were attacked or killed. Many went into hiding or were detained while attempting to flee, according to Al Jazeera.

According to the estimates of Awami League, at least 50,000 of its student affiliates across the nation are now in limbo, struggling to continue their tertiary education.

Shahreen Ariana, a BCL leader from Rajshahi University, was arrested on October 18 on “forged charges,” according to her family. She was detained while trying to sit for a term-final exam. Saikat Raihan, another BCL leader at Rajshahi University, was arrested on the same day.

The wave of violence against Awami League-affiliated students has spread across campuses. On the outskirts of the capital, former Jahangirnagar University BCL activist Shamim Ahmed was beaten to death on September 18, while Masud, another BCL leader, was killed by a mob in Rajshahi on September 7, as reported by Al Jazeera.

The Muhammad Yunus-led interim government that took over Bangladesh, issued a gazette on October 23, officially banning the BCL under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009 – a law that was brought, ironically, by Hasina’s government soon after it came to power in 2009.

According to Al Jazeera, for more than a decade, the BCL ruled campuses with an iron grip. The Chhatra Dal, the student wing of the biggest opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, managed to maintain a presence but was often on the defensive. Meanwhile, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student body of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s largest Muslim party, was forced underground.

Several media reports over 16 years claim incidents of students being forced out of campuses – tortured, or even gruesomely murdered – by BCL members on suspicion of ties to the Shibir, which in August this year was banned by the Hasina government under the same anti-terror law now used against the BCL.

Yunus government lifted the ban on the Shibir, following which the tables have turned on the BCL more broadly, with opposition student wings reclaiming control across campuses. (ANI)