Notes from a campus under siege

Jahangirnagar University (JU), a serene oasis known for its lush greenery and migratory bird populations, erupted into chaos on the evening of July 15. Nestled on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, the university had been relatively calm until student unrest at the University of Dhaka triggered a violent response from the ruling Awami League’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), leaving around 300 students injured.

Things changed drastically when a group of JU students, infuriated by the events at Dhaka University, decided to protest the attack on their peers with a torch rally in the evening. At around 7 PM, when the rally was crossing to Bangabandhu Hall, a student dormitory dominated by Sheikh Hasina’s Chhatra League cadres, the rally came under a surprise attack.

The attack was brutal. Chhatra League men beat up both the boys and the girls who were part of the rally. When the girls tried to run away, they were chased, pushed into the ditches, and then beaten up. Some of them suffered fractures in their arms, and some in their legs. The rest went to the Shahid Minar area after the BCL men left them injured.

This story narrates events that unfolded at Jahangirnagar University, one of the four oldest universities in Bangladesh, centring on the anti-quota movement, which has resulted in at least twenty-one deaths so far. The story is based on the eyewitness account of a participant in the protests who sent us his stories from a hiding place as law enforcement agencies, along with Hasina’s cadres, have cut off the university from the rest of Bangladesh and taken up positions inside the campus.

The university is virtually under siege, and the protesters fear an all-out attack. Netra News has confirmed the events narrated in the story from various other sources and media reports.

A Police-Protected Mayhem

After the July 16 evening carnage led by BCL cadres, the students gathered around the Shahid Minar area of the university to discuss the next steps at approximately 8 PM. After hours of discussion, they decided to march to the residence of the Vice-Chancellor of the university between 10 PM and 11 PM to inform him about the attack and demand protection from the BCL cadres.

“We wanted to ask him why we were beaten mercilessly on his campus and requested him for protection from the Chhatra League,” said our source.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dr Md. Nurul Alam, told the protesters to wait 30 minutes and claimed he had called the police for their protection around 11 PM. That, however, turned out to be an empty promise when the police arrived.

When the protesting students, who were injured a few hours before by BCL cadres, were having a conversation with Professor Nurul Alam, dozens of BCL men and some local hoodlums hired by them gathered in front of the gate of the VC’s residence with sticks, GI pipes, and machetes.

“When we were waiting at the compound [of the VC’s residence], dozens of local people were entering the campus. These people were local hoodlums close to the JU BCL [General] Secretary Habibur Rahman Liton because Liton got enrolled at JU using his dependent quota as he is from this area,” our source claimed.

Jahangirnagar University, like most public universities in Bangladesh, reserves a portion of seats for the relatives of teachers and university officials. They get preferential treatment during the admission process.

The hoodlums, backed by the BCL general secretary, were making noise with their machetes to scare the students who were waiting inside the VC’s residence complex.

“When they were threatening us, there were around 150 students at that time inside the gate [of the VC’s residence], and many of them were female students,” our source, who was inside the compound, claimed.

When the police arrived around 12 AM, those hoodlums under police protection got, according to our source, ‘ferocious’ and tried to break the gate while police waited and watched.

In a surprise move, after a while, instead of disciplining the hoodlums and BCL men, the police opened a gate, and the attackers started pouring into the VC’s residence complex with their weapons. They carried out an attack and beat up students, irrespective of their gender, creating total chaos for around an hour.

After the first round of beating, the police told the protesters to ‘clear off’ the compound within a few minutes. When they got out of the compound after 3 AM, the attackers, mostly local hoodlums backed by BCL leaders, swooped on the protesters again while the police started firing teargas and rubber bullets.

“On one hand, there were these hoodlums who were beating us; on the other hand, police started firing tear gas and bullets,” he narrated.

After that, the students moved out of that place and started reorganising themselves. Students from other dormitories joined them as well to fight back.

“By 4 AM, we were joined by other students. I heard the Fajr prayer. After that, we started fighting them back and held our position till 6 AM.” he added.

The Chhatra League and their hired goons were driven out of that place.

Students Take Control

Later, during the night of July 16, the agitated JU students who had been attacked and beaten by BCL cadres for years took inspiration from their counterparts at DU, where students took over control of the halls, expelling BCL leaders who were running shadow administrations in the halls. By 11 PM, the BCL leaders were expelled from their halls and the students had taken control of their rooms.

Before that, as Chhatra League men started losing control of the campuses and students were rising up against them, the Sheikh Hasina government decided to use age-old tactics used by military dictators: shutting down all the universities sine-die and vacating all the student dormitories.

However, there was one obstacle. A special provision of Bangladesh’s laws does not allow the government to force its decision on a few universities, including Jahangirnagar University. The decision to close the university and vacate the halls has to come from the university’s syndicate, the executive body of the university.

The next day, July 17, tension rose high when the Vice-Chancellor of JU called for a meeting with syndicate members in the morning, and the students were well aware of his intentions by then.

“As far as we know, the first meeting of the syndicate ended without any decision on the closure, and some teachers were asking for the protection of the students,” said our source. However, the VC decided to call for another meeting, where he cited ‘pressures from above’ and convinced the syndicate members to approve his decision to vacate the university halls by 4 PM and close it for an indefinite period.

As the students learned of the decision, they protested and attacked the university’s registrar building to take control of it.

The Purge Continues

As the students stormed into the registrar building, locking some syndicate members along with the VC, the VC called the law enforcement forces inside the campus. This time, along with the police, came the country’s armed paramilitary force, Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB).

“He (VC) brought police inside the campus. And then came BGB. BGB entered the campus in 5-6 trucks and cut off the entry points of the halls so that no one could join us.”

By then, the source was in front of the registrar's building. The students were assured they would not be harmed if they did not attack.

“They told us that if you don’t engage with us, we won’t engage. So, we did not go for any confrontations with the police and BGB,” our source said. But the police had a different plan.

“When I approached them and listened to the conversation over their walkie-talkies, I realised they were preparing to attack us and were waiting for a backup force to join them as they knew they wouldn’t be able to control a large angry mob with that force,” our source claimed based on the conversation between the police officials. His claims hold water.

Though police took up positions around 1 PM, and the VC and his colleagues were locked inside the building, the police did not charge the students until their reinforcements arrived, approximately at 4 PM. It was around 5:30 PM when the police started firing tear gas shells and rubber bullets targeting the students, claimed our source, to clear off the registrar building compound.

After the hour-long attack on the students by police backed by BGB, they rescued the VC and his colleagues from the building, who were seen fleeing in a car waiting for them outside by several media personnel.

It was after the VC’s departure that police came down hard on the protesters, forcing them to leave the campus.

“Right now, the situation is volatile. The halls are being vacated, and we are fearing that they will raid the halls. BGB has taken a position around the campus gates. There are some local hoodlums with them. The students who were coming from Daffodil University through C&B Road were faced with gunshots, and some of them have been critically injured,” he claimed from his hideout. Students from Daffodil, a private university, joining signals a broadening of the protesters’ base.

As the night progressed, our source and his fellows took shelter in a secret place while the government cut off the electricity connection to the halls at around 10:30 PM.

Netra News has received reports that over 150 students were injured. At least a dozen of them suffered bullet wounds on their bodies.●