As protests and subsequent government crackdowns have roiled their home country, some Bangladeshi students at Illinois State University say they have not been able to contact their friends and family back home.
Around 20 students from the Bangladesh Students Association formed a human chain on ISU’s Quad Friday afternoon, a demonstration aimed at both showing solidarity with students in Bangladesh and drawing local attention to the ongoing crisis within the south Asian country.
“We are living here without [our] families, without [our] kids — our families are back in [our] home country and we cannot make any contact with them,” said Mohammad Hosain, an English doctoral student. “So we are very frustrated and angry about what is happening back in [our] country.”
Demonstrations in the country began earlier this month, fueled by student groups frustrated by a job quota system in which 30% of government jobs were set aside for veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence, according to reporting from the Associated Press. Student groups have called out the quota practice as a form of discrimination.
The protests turned deadly on Tuesday, a day after students at Dhaka University began clashing with police. Violence continued to escalate as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and hurled smoke grenades to scatter stone-throwing protesters, according to the AP.
Bangladeshi authorities haven't shared any official numbers of those killed and injured, but at least four local newspapers on Sunday reported that more than 100 people have been killed.
Amid that unrest, universities have been closed and internet access shut off.
“We are pretty much sure this is a strategy of the government to quell down the protests,” said Khandaker Azad, a recent ISU graduate headed to the University of Oklahoma. “I managed to call and talk with one of the protestors… but the connection was very interrupted.”
Azad said Friday’s demonstration was an attempt for the Illinois-based students to show solidarity with their peers back home, since the students here “are feeling that we have left them on an island where they are being attacked by terrorists, being attacked by police [while] we’re not able to do anything.”
“That’s why we are showing solidarity today because that is what we can do now,” he said.
On Sunday, Bangladesh’s high court scaled back the controversial quota system for government job applicants, signaling a partial victory for student protesters after days of nationwide unrest. Still, as of Monday, AP reporting indicated internet communications remained shut off.
Ali Riaz, a professor in ISU’s Department of Politics and Government, called Friday’s show of solidarity with students — both at ISU and in Bangladesh — categorically imperative.
“They’re worried because there has been a complete internet shut down. They’re worried about their families. And what we have witnessed over the past couple of days is the sheer brutality of the state, law enforcement and ruling party henchmen,” Riaz said. “This is absolutely unacceptable. This is an autocratic regime and now that this wonton violence has been perpetrated against the students, I feel it a moral obligation to protest.”
The violence against student protestors drew the attention of the United Nations late last week, with the international organization’s human rights chief calling the attacks “shocking and unacceptable.”
Late on Sunday, protesters gave Bangladesh's government 48 hours to meet a string of new demands, including a public apology from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for the violence, and the restoration of internet connections disrupted in the unrest.
"I sincerely hope the pushback will result in tangible change," Azad said. "Thousands of people have come down in the streets. They could not stomp them down. ...[The students] are calling for more and more resistance and people are starting to resist. But the thing is that, now, [without internet], we don't know what is happening. We are disconnected — and there is a gap."
