College students in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, held a torch procession and rally on the campus of Jahangirnagar College (JU) to demand justice for a dealer who was brutally murdered lately. The scholars expressed their frustration, stating that final 12 months’s protest in July was ineffective, as legal actions have continued to rise even after a change in energy, in accordance with native media stories on Sunday.
The protest adopted the ugly homicide of Lal Chand, also called Sohag, a 39-year-old scrap dealer from Outdated Dhaka.
The protestors condemned latest incidents of violence throughout the nation, together with killings and assaults pushed by political and spiritual tensions, reported the main Bangladeshi day by day, The Dhaka Tribune.
The demonstration was organised below the banner of Jahangirnagar Towards Repression.
The torch rally started Saturday at 8:30 p.m. from the bottom of the college’s Shaheed Minar and moved via a number of components of the campus earlier than culminating at BotTala, the place a protest rally was held.
Varied scholar leaders and activists took half within the protest, voicing anger over what they described as a worsening human rights state of affairs within the South Asian nation, regardless of the Muhhamad Yunus-led interim authorities assuming energy.
Yunus administration promised to convey reforms after the July protests led to the ouster of the democratically elected authorities below former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Nevertheless, since then, the regulation and order state of affairs has additional worsened in Bangladesh.
Sajib Ahmed Jenich, organiser of the Socialist Scholar Entrance (Marxist), JU unit, mentioned through the rally: “Even after the interim authorities has taken cost, we nonetheless need to protest towards enforced disappearances, murders, rapes and extrajudicial killings. That is deeply shameful for the nation.”
He additionally instantly linked the killing of Sohag to the failure of state establishments to behave towards politically protected criminals.
“When a homicide is not acknowledged as against the law and makes an attempt are made to downplay it, criminals really feel emboldened to commit extra. Sohag was murdered over extortion; that accountability lies not solely with BNP but additionally equally with the present interim authorities,” he mentioned.
In the course of the rally, one of many college students protesting instructed The Dhaka Tribune, “After killing a person, they’re leaping on his lifeless physique to point out their energy. They suppose it is simply one other political incident. Can they confidently say that tomorrow they or their members of the family will not be killed by extortionists? If not, they have to realise the place we stand now, a 12 months after the July rebellion. The horror we lived via final July has solely intensified. We didn’t see any significant outcomes from that motion.”
Earlier this week, Sohag was brutally murdered in broad daylight close to the gate of Sir Salimullah Medical Faculty, Mitford Hospital.
Witnesses reported that he was dragged from his store, overwhelmed with iron rods and chunks of concrete, and left lifeless on the road as passersby appeared on in shock.
The scholars at JU vowed to proceed their protests, demanding justice for Sohag and all victims of politically motivated and communal violence throughout the nation.