On July 16, Abu Sayed, a student of English department at Begum Rokeya University in Rangpur was shot dead by the police in broad daylight. He was a rights activist, the youngest among nine siblings. Like any other aspiring young man and woman, he had dreams. Upon graduation, he was to join the civil service by procuring a government job. That was the only way to alleviate his family from poverty and offer them a decent life. Therefore, joining the student led quota reform movement was important to him.
He posted a comment on social media the night before that he was willing to sacrifice his life for the movement. Ironically, his nonliteral wish came to a reality the very next day as he went out to the streets to participate in the protest. Right before the fatal shot, Abu Sayed had both his arms stretched in order to expose his chest to the full view of the law enforcement officials. Was he daring the police or was just being playful? It could be both but in his wildest dream perhaps he did not imagine what was to take place in the next few minutes.
From eyewitness accounts, it was confirmed that shots were fired from different directions; two police officers were shooting at him. According to an FIR filed by the law enforcement, the police are denying any involvement as per one Dhaka daily report on July 27. The shooting death of Abu Sayeed was verified and confirmed by Amnesty International as well.
A revolution or a movement of any sort is usually recognized by an image or a face that leaves a lasting impression. Who can forget the face of 12-year-old Sharbat Gula, an Afghan girl in a refugee camp in Pakistan? The 1985 cover picture in the National Geographic of Sharbat Gula with haunting green eyes became the symbol of Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.
Dhaka Tribune’s editor Zafar Sobhan’s column of July 24 titled “The future is now” provided me with a narrative of the unbearable images of the violence that I had watched on the screen on the student-led protests across Bangladesh. Sobhan painted a heart-wrenching picture of how the young students in colleges and universities, including children, became casualties of police killings across Bangladesh. I have long admired Zafar Sobhan's writings for his razor sharp analysis, objectivity, and precision in bringing a situation alive to those who are reading. His latest piece helped me grasp the shocking reality that was unfolding in the country of my birth.
Seeing the images of students of all ages getting chased by the police was like a déjà vu of Pakistan days when students took to the streets before 1971. Autocrats and dictators everywhere in the world want to silence the voices of the students. We have seen it time and over during the Vietnam War all across the US college campuses. In democratic Bangladesh, such images came as utter shock and disbelief.
In the course of the last 10 days, there were many instances that I had felt was either a nightmare or at best a movie set of John Huston directing Stephen Crane’s civil war novella. The images of the Dhaka streets very much resembled as if I was actually watching a shooting reenactment scene where the police were firing away indiscriminately at the running crowd. But alas! It was not so. It was our own law enforcement people who were shooting at the unarmed students with orders from their superiors.
In all fairness to Bangladesh police, it is possible the police on duty at times were acting on their own to disperse the large crowd with bullets. By now we all have seen hundreds of live videos and read news stories covered by both the Bangladeshi and international media as to what went down since July 16.
Why were the lives of the young students cut short for exercising their right to voice their opinion on the existing quota system? In a democratic system, students have the right to express their opinions, gather peacefully under the open sky. Our students were doing exactly that. And the government had failed to protect them. Instead, the police were shooting as they had orders to shoot on sight -- a ghastly act to let police do this in the name of keeping peace and order.
Now the government’s priority is getting things back to normal by opening offices and reducing the curfew hours. As long as the army is guarding the streets of the capital and other major cities, life cannot come back to normal. What about those grieving parents who had to bury their sons' bullet-ridden bodies? Now, how will they cope with the trauma?
What about Abu Sayed’s parents and siblings who were counting on him to become a civil servant to ensure a better future for them? How will they sleep at night remembering how their youngest son and brother had succumbed to his untimely death?
Zeenat Khan (University of Rhode Island, USA and Holy Cross College, Dhaka) co-taught middle school children with learning disabilities at a parochial school in Washington DC. She writes from Maryland, USA.