Bangladeshi Winnipeggers fear for loved ones as violent clashes continue

Members of Winnipeg's Bangladeshi community say they're worried about their families' safety, with a nationwide curfew in effect in the South Asian country following deadly clashes between authorities and protesters.

About 100 people gathered outside the Manitoba Legislature early Saturday afternoon in solidarity with students in Bangladesh, as deadly clashes there continued over the weekend.

Universities and colleges in Bangladesh were closed indefinitely after students began a protest over allocation of public sector jobs amid high unemployment rates, including a 30 per cent civil service quota for descendants of the country's 1971 independence war against Pakistan.

On Friday, the government of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the curfew as it deployed military forces to keep order. Several people have been killed since the clashes began.

Members of the Bangladeshi diaspora at Saturday's demonstration held signs with slogans calling for an end to the violence. Some included the names of people who were killed.

"All of us, we can't even contact our families," said rally attendee Abdul Ahad. "We don't even know if after this, are we even going be able to speak to them? Even are they alive?"

Ahad said most people taking part in the protest were international students whose entire families are back home.

Communications in the country have been shut down, and misinformation spread around online is preventing people from figuring out what's going on on the ground, said Ahad.

The last time he spoke to his family was two days ago, when he called his brother.

"I just asked him, How are you doing, guys?' They said, 'We're just holding tight. That's it,'" he said. "They said … 'Just pray for us that we go out of this safely.'"

Helal Mohiuddin, an academic in social sciences, has been living in Winnipeg for more than two decades, but regularly taught in Bangladesh over the years.

Mohiuddin said the demonstrations in the country may be new, but the anger the Bangladeshi protesters are expressing over what they believe is an unfair system has been brewing for a long time.

"Many times, many students came to me just to express their frustrations," he said.

"Civil society is dead in Bangladesh. It was made deliberately dead by the government."

The Awami League, Prime Minister Hasina's political party, led the country's independence movement and has been ruling the country since 2009. Protesters argue the public sector quotas are discriminatory and corrupt, and should be replaced by a merit-based system.

Mohiuddin said similar calls for reform were met with force in 2018, and the current situation is playing out very similarly. 

"If this movement fails and if the government doesn't step down, what will happen? The students will be crushed down once again. They will not even have any opportunity to voice their demand or just to speak up once again," he said.

The government doesn't "have any … kindness or mercy in their heart. I don't believe they have, because it's not possible. How can you think that hundreds of people can be killed, just like birds?"

Hasina secured her fourth term in January, in an election that was boycotted by the country's main opposition party amid claims of fraud and a government crackdown on political dissent.

"I have never felt so helpless. I have never felt so, so distressed," Akib Nawaz, who came to Winnipeg eight months ago, said at Saturday's protest.

"We are really feeling helpless sitting here, thinking about our family."