Safwan Shafquat has watched in horror as security forces in Bangladesh have massacred hundreds of student protesters in recent weeks, including a family friend.
Shykh Aashhabul Yamin was a friend of Shafquat’s sister and a student at the Military Institute of Science and Technology, the school Shafquat attended before enrolling as a master’s student in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“He was shot (by security forces) and his body was carried like dirt. He was thrown away. He was kicked. He was just treated like dirt,” Shafquat said Sunday evening as he and more than 50 other members of El Paso’s Bangladeshi community and their allies gathered in Sunset Heights’ Mundy Park for a protest of the widespread killings in their homeland.
Many of the protesters were graduate students at UTEP and products of the universities at the heart of student protests in Bangladesh that started last month.
Amnesty International said it verified videos of security forces carrying Yamin’s body on an armored personnel carrier, then tossing the body off and dragging him over the road.
“He was just going to the police, and he was just going to tell them, ‘Don’t just throw tear gas shells, don’t just shoot random people, we are students.’ But he was just shot,” Shafquat said.
Dr. Ahmed Farooque, an El Paso internist originally from Bangladesh, said he has been “extremely horrified and shocked” at the repression in his home country. His brother has gone into hiding out of fear of being abducted by government forces.
“People are dying on the street. Kids are dying. Babies are dying. They’re arresting people right and left, without any notice,” Farooque said.
Humaira Arif is a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at UTEP, doing research on cybersecurity and cyber-physical systems.
“All of our brothers and sisters, all of the students back at home, they’re doing something wonderful. They were trying to achieve something wonderful by just doing normal protest. They were unarmed. It was peaceful, and they had to die for that,” she said.
The El Paso demonstrators, like the protesters in Bangladesh, called for the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s prime minister for 15 years. They also called for increased pressure from the United States and United Nations on the Bangladeshi government.
“As an El Pasoan, as a Bangladeshi-born American, I demand that the United States take decisive action to stop this genocide,” said Ahsan Choudhuri, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at UTEP.
Choudhuri estimated that about 130 people from Bangladesh live in El Paso, many of them UTEP graduate students, professors and physicians.
UTEP reported 79 Bangladeshi students in the fall of 2022, the most recent data available online from the university. That was the largest cohort of international students from any country other than Mexico.
Members of the El Paso Bangladeshi community and their allies gathered at Mundy Park in El Paso on Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, to protest the killings of hundreds of students by Bangladesh security forces. (Robert Moore/El Paso Matters)
Dozens of people have been killed in political violence in Bangladesh the past couple of days. In July, more than 200 people were killed in clashes between student protesters and security forces.
The U.S. State Department last month recommended that U.S. citizens not travel to Bangladesh because of civil unrest, and the Biden administration has criticized the Bangladesh government over the attacks on student protesters.
The July protests focused on a policy that reserves a portion of government jobs for families of those who fought in the country’s 1971 war for independence against Pakistan, the Washington Post reported.
The more recent protests have called for the resignation of Hasina, who on Sunday called for a crackdown against student protesters she labeled “terrorists.”
Hasina’s Aswani League party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in January, but the United States and other Western nations raised concerns about the fairness of the elections.
Bangladesh is a country of more than 171 million people in South Asia, and shares a 2,500-mile border with India. The country has struggled with high levels of poverty and income inequality since winning its independence in a 1971 war with Pakistan.
Located on the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh also faces numerous threats from climate change.
The El Paso Bangladeshis at Sunday’s protest said they’re optimistic that the students and other pro-democracy forces ultimately will prevail in Bangladesh.
“I think there will be a positive (outcome), but at what cost?” Arif said.
The post El Paso Bangladeshis condemn government attacks on students in their homeland appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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