Brutal violence descended on July 15, 2024, as activists of the Bangladesh Chhatra League launched coordinated attacks on students protesting for reforms in the public service quota system.
On July 14, 2024, tensions flared as hundreds of students poured out of their DU dormitories to protest a “disparaging comment” made by then–prime minister Sheikh Hasina regarding quotas in government jobs.
On July 13, 2024, the Students Against Discrimination announced a fresh set of protest programmes, shifting their strategy from blockades to processions and symbolic marches.
Despite the weekly holiday, anti-quota protesters once again blocked the Shahbagh intersection in Dhaka, demanding reforms to the quota system in government jobs and condemning the police action on students the previous day.
On July 11, 2024, the anti-quota movement entered a new phase of confrontation. Ignoring police warnings and ministers’ calls to step back, thousands of protesters defied barricades and took to the streets as part of their “Bangla Blockade.”
July 10, 2024.Protesters refuse to back down.Shamsuddoza Sajen.The protests over the quota system in government jobs showed no signs of slowing down on July 10 as students across the country vowed to continue their movement despite the Supreme Court’s order for a four-week stat
The ongoing Bangla Blockade paused for a day as students leading the quota reform movement prepared for their next round of protests.
For the second consecutive day, the Bangla Blockade grips the capital, with thousands of students and jobseekers bringing traffic to a standstill at key intersections across Dhaka.
Pakistan President Yahya Khan in an interview published in The Financial Times today said Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would be put on trial “very soon”.
All the members of the Bangladesh mission interviewed by the Swiss representative Dr Bonard in Calcutta today refused to be repatriated to Pakistan and reaffirmed their allegiance to the Bangladesh government.
A three-member Canadian parliamentary delegation that visited Pakistan was told by Pakistani officials in Islamabad that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was at present in a jail in West Pakistan.
Reg Prentice, a member of the British parliamentary delegation which had visited both Pakistan and India to study the present crisis, wrote an account of his tour today in the New Statesman:
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh Tajuddin Ahmed declared today that “military victory is the only solution to the situation in Bangladesh”, reported The People, a pro-AL English-language weekly.
The New York Times in an editorial published today urges the US administration to promptly divert military supplies already en route to Pakistan.
The New York Times today published excerpts from a report by a mission of the World Bank that visited East Pakistan in June, 1971 and from a report on a survey of the western area of Bangladesh by Hendrik van der Heijden, an economist and member of the mission.
The Indian External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh told the Lok Sabha today that supply of arms to Pakistan by any country in the present context “amounts to an intervention on the side of the military rulers of West Pakistan against the people of Bangladesh”.
The first conference (July 11-17) of Sector Commanders began at the office on Theatre Road-8 in Kolkata today.
World Bank board members today received copies of an outspoken report on the dire situation in East Pakistan.
