Bangladesh students vow to resume protests unless leaders freed

A Bangladeshi student group has vowed to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody on Sunday.

Last week’s violence killed at least 205 people, based on a count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed, and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium.

The group’s chief Nahid Islam and others “should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn”, Abdul Hannan Masud told reporters in an online briefing late Saturday.

Masud, who did not disclose his location because he was in hiding from authorities, also demanded “visible actions” be taken against government ministers and police officers responsible for the deaths of protesters.

“Otherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests” from Monday, he said.

Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were on Friday forcibly discharged from hospital in the capital Dhaka and taken away by a group of plain clothes detectives.

Earlier in the week Islam said he was being treated at the hospital for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention and said he was in fear for his life.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters on Friday that the trio were taken into custody for their safety but did not confirm if they had been formally