Bangladesh: Protest leaders held 'for their own security'

Bangladeshi authorities say three leaders of recent protests who were forcibly removed from the hospital by plainclothes detectives on Friday have been taken into custody for their own safety.

The three students include Nahid Islam, the head of the protest group Students Against Discrimination, and two other senior members. Islam earlier this week told AFP news agency he was being treated at the hospital in the capital, Dhaka, for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention. 

The trio coordinated recent nationwide street rallies that triggered a police crackdown during which at least 200 people are estimated to have died.

The protests were initially prompted by reintroduced rules reserving government jobs for particular groups but have sometimes metamorphosed into general protests against the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

What have authorities said?

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan confirmed the arrests late on Friday after police initially denied they had taken place.

Khan told reporters that the three "were feeling insecure."

"They think that some people were threatening them," he said.

"That's why we think for their own security they needed to be interrogated to find out who was threatening them. After the interrogation, we will take the next course of action," he added.

Khan did not confirm whether the trio had been formally arrested.

Activist refutes government's claim

However, in an interview with DW, student activist Prapti Taposhi said she did not believe what the authorities have said.

"I think they're just lying. The government of Bangladesh, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, she is just blatantly lying to the international media," she said.

"They're actually trying to threaten us," she added, saying that authorities wanted to scare students so "we don't talk, we don't share anything or don't post anything to the Facebook or social media websites."

Taposhi said the current situation for student protesters was very precarious.

"Right now, the students of Bangladesh [are] living in a war zone. They are living in complete terror, complete fear, because like our three coordinators, normal students, the students who were on the roads protesting, they are being abducted from their homes. They are being abducted; they are being picked up from the roads." she said.

Huge protests

Bangladesh's government previously deployed both the police and the military to quell the protest movement over job quotas that government critics say rewarded loyalists of the prime minister.

In a partial victory for the protesters, however, the country's top court revised down the number of reserved jobs from 30% to 5% for the relatives of people who fought in the 1971 independence war against Pakistan. Another 2% are to be reserved for ethnic minorities or people with disabiliites.

However, protest groups have not been completely mollified by the court's ruling. Many are also accusing Bangladeshi security forces of using undue force during the protests.  

Hasina, who won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition. has lamented the damage caused during the unrest. 

"This does nothing but cripple our economy and turn us into a nation of beggars," she told reporters. 

"I want justice," she said.

This article uses reporting from the AFP news agency.

Edited by: Wesley Dockery