The following article commemorates the 2018 students’ road safety protests in Bangladesh. These protests became the cornerstone of the current state of media freedom and the Awami League government’s drift towards a more authoritarian rule.
When frenzy prompted the drivers of two racing public buses to lose control of their vehicles on 29 July 2018, they bulldozed into the sidewalks in front of Kurmitola General Hospital, over a gathering of commoners going on about their daily lives. The lives of two innocent pupils of Shaheed Ramiz Uddin School – Diya Khanam Mim and Abdul Karim Rajib – were lost to their motor sport that day. The owner and the drivers of Jabal-e-Noor Paribahan, the company under which the buses were listed, were arrested soon after, but the sight of the lifeless bodies of two young children lying in a pool of blood became a symbol and the driving force of what became one of the largest social movements in the history of independent Bangladesh.
What began as a memorial and a small-scale protest held by the classmates of Diya and Abdul sporadically grew into a nationwide public demonstration with the help of social media circulation in less than a week, at the vanguard of which were school students as young as 13 years of age. The capital city of Dhaka came to a standstill as the schoolchildren created makeshift check posts at major roads and intersections, demanding to check licenses, legal documents and fitness certificates of drivers and vehicles, and organized themselves to guide the flow of traffic in a city infamous for transports exceeding traffic laws casually and regularly. Their effects reverberated even outside the capital. In major cities around the country, the demonstrations were comparatively less intense and organized, but the passion and demands remained the same. However, the impact on businesses and the lives of the working population were surprisingly limited to a minimum.
The peaceful protests continued until 2 August when police started to use tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. Members of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of the ruling Awami League, joined in and began to openly charge on the students with bats and batons. Headlines were made but people, especially the student population, turned towards social media to share, collect and circulate messages about places where protests had been fueling, or where the police had been firing, or even the addresses where they could seek refuge from being targeted.
People at the time were opening their homes to provide shelter to those on the streets. The use of the internet to disseminate information during these few days was exceptionally noteworthy, it allowed international media to be informed and Nas Daily, the renowned content creator on Facebook, even labelled the Kishore Bidroho (Students’ Protest) as one of the largest online grassroots movements recorded in history.
But this very aspect of it was assimilated by the ruling party to legally obstruct dissent. The 2018 road safety protests were a turning point in generating the state of the country in the present – where dissenters are incarcerated for lengthy periods of time, often without trial, journalists face attacks and inhumane treatment in broad daylight, and a portrait of the Prime Minister appears on RSF’s gallery of “Press Freedom predators” as the second only female to qualify.
The drift towards authoritarianism in Bangladesh can most vividly be expressed by painting a picture of the landscape of media and journalistic freedom in the country. Photojournalist Shahidul Alam faced a hundred days of imprisonment for making an appearance and commenting on the events of July 2018 in an interview with Aljazeera. He had been picked up from his house in the evening by men in plain clothes, and had allegedly faced torture while in custody; the reason behind which, as the police confirmed, was the spread of misinformation and defamation the nation.
It was the same year the general elections were to be held, and a protest of such a scale had nearly put the regime’s stability at risk. For years, national and international audiences have been spectators to the suppression of free press in Bangladesh by means of a security law titled the Digital Security Act. The Digital Security Act, which was framed on the basis of Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act of 2006, had been passed by a Parliamentary consensus in October 2018, soon after the noise surrounding the road safety protests and the subsequent arrest of Shahidul Alam had died down. The draconian law is vague and open-ended in scope and was met with immense criticism by members of the media, international human rights organizations and the opposition Jatiya Party. In the remainder of 2018 alone, around 71 cases were filed against people who exercised freedom of speech and their right to protest.
This number increased by almost seven fold by 2020, especially after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when the country went into a lockdown. At a time when governments around the world were trying to reduce the number of inmates held behind bars, Bangladeshi security forces jailed artists and media persons by the masses.
With the elimination of any strong opposition parties to contest the 2018 general election, Awami League won a landslide victory for the third consecutive time. The party led by Sheikh Hasina had earned 257 out of 300 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad, thus becoming a majority in the Parliament. They were accused of vote rigging, with political scientists and activists commenting on how the procedure had not been free and fair. International media outlets like the BBC reported on allegations of vote rigging, with ballot boxes in certain polling stations being already filled as the day began, and election violence reaching all across the country.
Recently, the opposing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Secretary General Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir commented at a press conference on the Awami League’s “one-party rule”, and the extent to which the democratic institutions in the country has been undermined. “It is unfortunate that the judiciary and the Election Commission have played a big role in changing the character of the state,” he says.
However, the manner in which censorship and attack on free press have been utilized by the State to erode truth and weaponize fear in the country has served its interests on a much wider scale. In the history of Bangladesh, print and broadcast media have always played a vital role.
During the War of Liberation in 1971, Bengali nationalists and freedom fighters relied heavily on the regular news updates they received from Shadhin Bangla Betar Kendro in order to organize or prepare themselves for any attack by the Pakistani Army. Prior to which, when the negotiations for the regional autonomy of East Pakistan were ongoing, political activists followed Rajnoitik Moncho (The Political Stage), an editorial column by journalist Tofazzal Hossain in The Daily Ittefaq, more often than decisions of actual meetings themselves. These bear witness to the role of media in the dissemination of information amongst the commoners and the generation of political activity in the country. An attempt at silencing these voices has the potential to set back the country in terms of democratic development tremendously.
The ruling party has, however, successfully maintained a large popular base. Advancing wearing the guise of developmental progress in the country – having inaugurated the Bangladesh chapter of China’s Belt & Road Initiative, strengthening bilateral ties with neighboring India, and recently, the rekindling of talks surrounding a potential relationship with Pakistan.
Sheikh Hasina has welcomed an influx of more than a million Rohingya refugees from the south, and received the United Nations Champions of the Earth award, resulting in her celebration by her countrymen. Much of the older population, cultural activists and nationalists, remain sincere to the memory of the Awami League and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s contribution to the independence of Bangladesh. PM Hasina’s earnest and habitual application of the liberation war rhetoric in her dialogues and speeches tend to serve as a reminder to the people of her acknowledgement of the people’s sacrifice and dedication towards repaying them, by serving for the wellbeing of the nation.
In relation to the Kishore Bidroho, the ruling party has successfully maintained a humanitarian image by partially implementing some of the Nine Point Demands made by the students, that they were able to use in their favor. A new Road Transport Act 2018 was approved on 6 August that proposed capital punishment for offenders, and where the students requested that the government “take responsibility for the students killed or injured in road accidents”, they donated approximately $23,500 to the families of the two departed.
As the third of her five-year term draws to an end, Sheikh Hasina remains persistent in her attempts to suppress any opposition, a message that has now been well established as journalists continue to self-censor or impose self-exile to escape the consequences of free expression. While it has not yet been confirmed whether or not Bangladesh is one of the countries to apply NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware against its own people, the practice of surveillance in the country is severe and age-old.
*The writer is a student of social sciences at Sciences Po Paris, France and a writer of political subjects concerning the comparative politics of South Asia and media censorship.