Tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina were scattered by police using tear gas and stun grenades, resulting in at least 27 fatalities and numerous injuries on Sunday in skirmishes in Bangladesh.
This is the first time the interior ministry has implemented an indefinite statewide curfew since the protests that started last month. It was announced on Sunday at 6 p.m. (1200 GMT).
The government has had to shut down internet connections due to the disturbance, which is its largest test since the violent protests that broke out when Hasina won a fourth term in a row in January elections that the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party boycotted.
Human rights organizations and Hasina’s detractors argue that her administration is used disproportionate force to put an end to the movement, a claim that neither she nor her ministers acknowledge.
On Sunday, as student protestors began a program of non-cooperation to demand the resignation of the administration, demonstrators blocked major roadways and violence spread across the country.
Following a meeting of the national security panel, Hasina declared, “The people demonstrating in the streets at the moment are terrorists seeking to topple the government, not students.”
“I implore our compatriots to use firm measures to suppress these terrorists.”
Witnesses reported that during a three-way battle between protestors, police, and governing party activists in Munsiganj, central district, two construction workers were killed on their way to work and thirty others were injured.
The district hospital’s superintendent, Abu Hena Mohammad Jamal, stated, “They were taken, bullet wounds and all, to the hospital.”
The area became a battlefield after several makeshift bombs went off, despite the police’s claims that they had not fired any shots.
Witnesses reported that during a conflict between protestors and supporters of Hasina’s ruling Awami League in the northeastern region of Pabna, at least three persons were killed and fifty injured.
Hospital officials reported that 20 people were killed in nine different districts and two additional people were killed in violence in Bogura’s northern area.
Following a group’s vandalism of a medical college hospital in Dhaka, the capital, and their setting of vehicles, including an ambulance, on fire, Health Minister Samanta Lal Sen declared, “An attack on a hospital is unacceptable.” “Everyone needs to avoid doing this.”
According to mobile providers, the government has blocked high-speed internet access for the second time during the recent protests; additionally, social media sites Facebook and WhatsApp are not accessible, not even through broadband connections.
Protests against government job quotas spearheaded by student organizations resulted in violence last month that claimed at least 150 lives, thousands of injuries, and around 10,000 arrests.
After the Supreme Court struck down the majority of quotas, the protests came to a halt, but this week, students resumed their intermittent public demonstrations to demand justice for the families of those slain.