Posted on 25 August 2007 by Tasneem Khalil
Pod: Military crackdown on students and teachers
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[Podcast by Tasneem Khalil: Military crackdown on university students and teachers in Bangladesh. With an interview with M Sanjeeb Hossain, son of Professor Anwar Hossain. Professor Anwar Hossain is now believed to be in DGFI custody.]
[Rush transcript/elements.]
A brutal military crackdown is on against thousands of university teachers and students in Bangladesh. Members of Bangladesh army led by major or captain-ranking officers are raiding residences of students and teachers who in the last few days started protesting against the current state of emergency in Bangladesh and demanded withdrawal of army and police from all the campuses.
We are receiving disturbing details of these raids from Dhaka and elsewhere.
In one incident, as the BBC Bangla service reported, platoons of army members entered a residential-cum-commercial complex near Dhaka University searching for students. Each and every apartment was searched and all the students residing in the building were taken to the landing area where they were mercilessly beaten up by soldiers in wide public view. After that, they were tied up and driven away in army trucks to an unknown destination.
We received an email from Dhaka and I am going to quote from that:
August 25th, 2007 at 2:24 am
This is for all the beaten, threatened and detained students, teachers and journalists :
August 25th, 2007 at 4:02 am
[...] Reposted from E-Bangladesh [...]
August 26th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Accio Freedom: I don’t know why but your poem made me think of Taslima Nasrin. Good one.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:52 am
How can professors be enemies of the country? In 1971, the Pakistani military killed Dhaka University professors branding them as traitors and infidels. It’s a shame that the same mind-set still works in Bangladesh where it’s own military doubt the patriotism of academics and scholars. Why don’t they realize that if the Dhaka university was not established, people of the then East Bengal wouldn’t have become conscious enough to demand a separate homeland for them. It is this University which has uncompromisingly molded public opinion that resulted in the historic struggle for liberation culminating in the birth of Bangladesh. It is this very university that has created a vast majority of the country’s leaders in every sphere: politics, civil service, judiciary, business. It’’s difficult to believe that selfless professors are now tortured and harassed by their own military!
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Military is like a horde of wild animals, as they have their own sanctuary in the jungle. The military should always be confined in the cantonment or fight in the borders. They shouldn’t be on the streets or any public places at all in the first place.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
[...] there anything sadder or more ironic than expecting