Bangladesh unrest intensifies: Protesters set jail ablaze, free ‘hundreds’ of prisoners

PTC News Desk: On Friday, protesters in Bangladesh’s central town of Narsingdi stormed a jail, liberating hundreds of prisoners before setting the building on fire. This was a dramatic escalation of the student protests that have shaken the country.

“The inmates fled the jail and the protesters set the jail on fire,” a police officer told AFP while speaking under condition of anonymity. The officer guessed that there were probably hundreds of escaped prisoners.

At least twenty men were seen fleeing the jail with their possessions in handbags, according to Ripon, a local. At least 50 people have died this week as a result of the brutal crackdown on student protests that has swept across Bangladesh at the same time as the jailbreak. 

Anger over government job quotas served as the initial catalyst for the protests, which have since expanded into a movement against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s administration. Some observers speculate that the violence is now also being propelled by more general economic problems, such as rising inflation, rising unemployment, and depleting foreign exchange reserves.

On Friday, there were further fights and deaths as three individuals were reported killed in new protests. In an effort to quell the protests, authorities interfered with communications, suspending cell service; nevertheless, they denied any link to a worldwide cyber outage.

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On social media site X, Tarique Rahman, the interim chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and exile, expressed his solidarity with the demonstrators and urged others to support the students and carry on what he called a movement.

“I call upon all leaders, activists, and common people … to stand by these tender-hearted students, provide them with all support, and carry this movement forward,” On X, Tarique Rahman made a post.

The protests have tapped into a general sense of dissatisfaction as youth unemployment is rampant and inflation is skyrocketing. Old and delicate political rifts between those who supported Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 and others who are alleged to have worked with Islamabad have been exposed by the protests.

Among the former is the Hasina-based Awami League party, which called the demonstrators ‘razakar’—a term used to refer to collaborators during the independence era.

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