Alam’s legal team managed to appeal to a higher court, which ordered that he be taken to a hospital and examined by a physician who can investigate torture. But over the weekend, Alam was moved to another jail and charged with spreading rumors and hurting the image of Bangladesh. On August 13, UN human rights experts called for his immediate release, but as of this writing he is still imprisoned. [...]
The students had taken to the streets because of a July 29 incident in which the driver of a private bus, competing with the driver of another private bus to pick up passengers near a stop, had rammed into a group of students who were attempting to cross a major road, killing two of them and injuring twelve others. Road safety is notoriously poor in Bangladesh. According to the national committee to protect shipping, roads, and railways, 7,397 people died on Bangladeshi roads last year, and the figure for this year had already reached 2,471 in June. Driving standards are lax, with many unlicensed drivers, a high proportion of unroadworthy vehicles, poorly lit highways, malfunctioning traffic signals, and ill-maintained roads. [...]
This summer, students’ demands were for something far more modest and straightforward: safer roads. But the government of Sheikh Hasina did not appreciate their show of defiance. As the current student protest entered its second week, on August 3, young men belonging to two ruling party-affiliated leagues, Chhatra (students) and Jubo (youth), disrupted the demonstrations. Armed with machetes and sticks and wearing helmets so that they couldn’t be identified, they began attacking students and journalists to break up the protests. Alam witnessed all this and began recording—and then told Al-Jazeera what he’d seen. [...]
The government’s anxiety is surprising, considering it faces no real opposition. Hasina is probably calculating that, aside from criticism from some NGOs, the international community won’t bother her because her government has performed the important task of providing asylum for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who recently fled murderous persecution in neighboring Myanmar. With nearly 800,000 displaced Rohingyas now in southern Bangladesh needing to be looked after, none of the major donor countries—the US, the EU, and Australia—want to alienate Bangladesh. Nor is Hasina likely to come under any pressure from Bangladesh’s closest regional ally, India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing elections there in a few months, and he wants to crack down on Bangladeshi migration into Assam, which neighbors Bangladesh. Modi would also like to expel some 40,000 Rohingyas elsewhere in India, a decision human rights lawyers have challenged in Indian courts; if he succeeds, Bangladesh would likely be the refugees’ ultimate destination. Finally, although her government has done little to protect secularist bloggers, Hasina presents herself to the international community as its partner against fundamentalist terrorism.
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