What are they protesting now? - Day 3
The violence is continuing for the 3rd day running and Rajshahi has turned into a battlefield. But the big question is what are they protesters protesting about when all of the demands have been met.
I have no independent verification of this but alarmingly shadakalo blog is reporting the following
- The 3 service chiefs met with US and UK embassy officials and UN officials for an all-nighter. The martial-law question came up, and was put on hold for the time being but that option is not off the table.
- Unrest spreading to other universities
- Education adviser’s house in Dhanmondi has been attacked by a procession.
I saw the news footage of people breaking private cars and buses. It doesn’t look like it is done by general students any more. After the apology, the withdrawal of the camp, neither I am sure what the protesters are protesting now. I want to echo eishob and jyoti in saying a premature end to CTG will bring grave danger for our country. The first two days of protest was an eye-opener for powers that may be, but now continuing past the first two days without genuine grivences will not only lose the public appeal but also put our country in a collision course that we are not prepared to handle. As we know from history that its always a vested quarter who reaps the benefit of such aimless revolt, unrest and destruction.
Update:
After having speaking to more people, I feel I should correct this post by saying that a newer element to this protest is that it spread like wildfire across the country which we haven’t seen even in the heady days of anti-government movement of november last year. So what’s the difference? Downplaying it as simply as political hackjob would be a mistake. We have often talked about here the labour unrest, the disconnect of the government with the real people, the inflation– add this to the years of neglect of public interest by previous governments, such massive unrest was predicted but it wasn’t seen to be coming this quickly. We will have a further post today on how the CTG blew it by losing its moral authority in governing the country. The nervousness in Barrister Mainul Hossain’s face yesterday was palpable. If the government goes down, he and people like him will bear the major responsibilities. Very sad and disappointing day for Bangladesh.