Police clash footage shocks Bangladesh as internet returns

AFP | Dhaka, Bangladesh

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

When millions of Bangladeshis came back online this week after a nationwide internet shutdown, many were shocked to watch a ferocious police clampdown they had earlier only heard while bunkered in their homes.

At least 206 people were killed last month during some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, sparked by student demonstrations against civil service hiring rules. Bystanders and several police officers were among the dead but most were protesters killed by police fire, hospitals told AFP, with rights groups and the European Union condemning what they said was an excessive use of force.

Footage of clashes between security forces and crowds was largely absent from news broadcasts and few had a grasp of their extent until the national mobile internet network was switched back on after an 11-day shutdown.

Though the unrest has since calmed, several graphic amateur videos published to social media that show police firing on protesters have inflamed public anger against Hasina’s government. “How come the police are killing our brothers and sisters like this?” one user wrote, in response to a short clip of a police officer firing at a wounded young man while another tried to drag him safely from the scene.