Death toll in anti-Hasina unrest in Bangladesh may be double official tally

Hundreds of people died in the civil unrest that rocked Bangladesh in July and August, but efforts to determine exactly how many are ongoing. 

One student activist has claimed that the number is more than double the official figure given by the transitional government: 630.

“The number of martyrs in the July revolution is 1,423 people. But this number can be more or less. We will be able to make a full list very quickly,” Tariqul Islam, a member of the health affairs sub-committee of the Student Movement Against Discrimination, said in a Facebook Live post on Friday. 

He was referring to people killed in violence during student-led mass protests, which led to the fall of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government on Aug. 5. 

Not included among the 1,423 was a sixth-grade student who died Monday from injuries suffered when he was shot while attending an Aug. 5 protest with family members in northern Bangladesh. The boy was being treated at the National Institute of Neurosciences and Hospital in Dhaka, his sister told reporters.

Members of the student movement said it was difficult to determine the number of people who were injured during the anti-Hasina protests, noting that many hospitals did not keep treatment records because of harassment concerns from officials of the Awami League, the former ruling party.

Still, “we have a list of 22,000 injured people so far,” Tariqul Islam said.

Nahida Bushra, a member of the student committee, described the group’s painstaking efforts to gather information about deaths and injuries.

“We collected data and completed cross-checks. There are many names we have in our list that lack family details,” she said, adding that the committee was being supported by the Directorate General of Health Services, NGOs and voluntary organizations.

“We are very hopeful that there are no double counts and there are no major errors, but we have taken a decision to recheck all the data before making the list public,” she said.

Students are leaders in an interim government headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, but it has struggled since it took office in early August to contain deadly violence and looting targeting Awami members. 

Last week, his government empowered the army to intervene and carry out arrests anywhere in the country for up to 60 days to help authorities safeguard law and order. Prior to that announcement on Sept. 17, troops had been placed on patrol but had no enforcement powers.

During Friday’s announcement via Facebook, Tariqul Islam said 587 people had lost arms or legs during the protests while hundreds of others suffered other injuries.

“A total of 685 people lost partial or complete sight because of bullets – 92 of them were shot in both eyes or had both eyes destroyed,” he said.

Commenting on the students’ findings, M.A. Akmal Hossain Azad, senior secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the interim government, said an official list was being compiled.

“We also are making a detailed list of the people who were killed during the movement. The list would be made public by the cabinet division very soon,” he told BenarNews.  

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Muhammad Humayun Kabir, a former senior secretary of the nation’s Health Services Division, endorsed the students’ findings.

Kabir was appointed by the interim government to an inter-ministerial committee tasked with creating a list of casualties tied to the student protests.

“Yes, I very much agree with the findings of the student’s committee. Though we primarily released the number of deaths as 630 based on primary and very formal data, there was a huge number beyond our counting due to necessary information,” Kabir told BenarNews.

“During our work of collecting data, a director of a private hospital shared his experience with us. He said that he was picked up by police at a nearby police station from his hospital in Dhaka and threatened that he would be prosecuted if treatment was provided to people who were injured during clashes,” Kabir said.

What began as peaceful student protests on July 1 against extensive quotas in government and civil service jobs disintegrated into deadly clashes two weeks later when police and supporters of Hasina’s Awami League party joined the fray to quell the demonstrations.

Kabir noted that times had changed during the last month, although precise numbers for those Bangladeshis who were killed or injured in unrest in the post-Hasina era were not available so far. 

“Look, the situation between July 16 and Aug. 5 is massively different from today,” he said, alleging that officials from the Hasina government were desperate to remove data of the killings.

Last week, human rights organization Ain O Salish Kendra reported that at least 10 people were killed and hundreds injured in intra-party clashes among Bangladesh Nationalist Party members who were seeking to gain control of former Awami League properties. 

And in late August, scores of people were believed to have died after they went missing in a massive fire set by looters at a tire factory near Dhaka. But authorities abandoned the search for the missing people, declaring that the burned-out building too unstable to enter.

Boy dies

Meanwhile, sixth-grade student Junaid Islam Ratul died of his injuries seven weeks after being shot, said his sister, Jerin Sultana.

“Without having breakfast on Aug. 5, my husband and Ratul went to the movement despite my mother’s prohibition. At one time we reached Jhowtala, near the Bogura Sadar police station, as part of a procession. Ratul was injured when the police fired at the procession,” Sultana said.

Bogura is a district of northern Bangladesh.

“I was very close to him [Ratul] at that time. Suddenly, four bullets hit Ratul’s head. One of the bullets entered Ratul’s head through his left eye,” she said.

The boy was taken to a local hospital where doctors referred him to the specialized hospital in the nation’s capital. 

“After we brought him [Ratul] to Dhaka, he underwent head surgery. Doctors removed a bullet from inside his brain,” Sultana said.

“After the operation, the doctors said that even if Ratul survived, he could lose his eyesight forever. But in the end, he did not survive.”