Solidarity With Quota Reform Movement In Bangladesh and Down with the Fascist Hasina-Awami League Regime

Lal Morich
(315) 677-1602
Lalmorichnews@gmail.com

We are Lal Morich, a Bangladeshi anti-oppression mass base organization supporting genuine democratic movements just like the students in the quota reform movement who are fighting for something they genuinely believe. We educate, mobilize, and organize the Bangladeshi diaspora on the issues in our desh. Let us update you all on the current situation in Bangladesh since July 15.

Lal Morich stands with the students and masses who are waging a genuine anti-fascist movement against the Hasina-Awami League regime. Since early July, students have taken to the streets to courageously demand reform to the discriminatory civil service job quota system. The protesters are calling for a logical quota system that solely considers gender-oppressed, disabled, and indigenous people and removes the 30 percent quota for the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters, which mainly favors loyalists of the current fascist government.

The Hasina-Awami government initially responded to the protests by calling the protestors “razakars”. This furthered violence against protesters from the ruling party’s student wing, the Chatro League. A few days ago, the government dispatched the military.

The people of Bangladesh are now subjected to military curfew, checkpoints, and shoot-on-sight orders. The government shut down internet access and all but selective state-affiliated media is being censored. The media shutdown makes it difficult to gauge an accurate death toll but reports point to more than 170 deaths and more than 2500 injured by Chatro League, police, BGB, the armed force, and the US-UK trained paramilitary death squad RAB. There are accounts from families that agents from the Indian Intelligence agency, RAW, are carrying out activities in select areas.

The High Courts came to a decision on July 21 to scrap the quota system and create a new quota system, lowering the 30 percent quota for descendants of freedom fighters to 5 percent, and the remaining quotas down to 2 percent. This will open up the remaining 93 percent of jobs for all other Bangladeshis.

However, after the government’s brutal response on the protestors, different sections of students and youth have come to the realization that this is not just a battle for a logical quota system anymore but a fight against Awami League fascism. This is why Lal Morich rallied the Bangladeshi diasporas in Brooklyn, New York to do a mass teach-in on the root causes of the Quota reform movement.

On Saturday, July 20, in Kensington, Brooklyn, Lal Morich held a solidarity action and teach-in about the ongoing quota reform movement. The NYPD surrounded us immediately when we began our protest, attempting to herd and corral us. We responded by pointing to connections between the Bangladeshi police, NYPD and US military. There was a small group of community members, affiliated with the non-profit organization Desis Rising Up and Moving or DRUM, who confronted us in defense of the NYPD. The group began derailing our event, snatching mics from our organizers, and interrupting the march. They insisted that the issue is unrelated to the police in the United States and it’s solely about the police in Bangladesh. However, we understand these struggles are interconnected and our struggles are not isolated from one another. The faster we grasp this, the stronger our unity will be in the long run. The first question for any revolutionary movement is to understand: who is the friend of the people and who is the enemy?

The police exploited the situation and targeted Comrade Moh for Disorderly Conduct as they were using a microphone and criticizing the pro-American police element that drenches our community. Mid Speech and without warning, the comrade was arrested with physical force. Comrade Moh was taken to the 66th precinct where he faced humiliation. He was ordered by police to take off the lace from their pants before going inside the cell. The lace was not coming off so the cops cut the lace holding up his pants. The comrade recalls his pants fell off and he stood exposed for several seconds, while the officer made a joke while touching the comrade in a sexual manner without permission. These sexual and psychological abuse tactics are similar to what Bangladeshi police utilize on protestors to silence them. Additionally, these tactics are no different to tactics used by the IOF on Palestinians.

Let us repeat:

We do not work with cops.

We do not work with politicians.

We will not fall into NGOism.

Regretfully, this disruption derailed us from finishing our teach-in. We did not have the chance to fully highlight the brutal assaults and murders by the Awami League goonda. We did not get to honor the more than 170 martyrs with the vigil they deserved. We want to reiterate our solidarity and our commitment to this fight till the end.

We will not let our genuine solidarity with the mass movements against the fascist Awami regime in Bangladesh be co-opted by supporters of equally reactionary political such as the BNP and Jamaat. We will not tolerate NGOs attempting to cease momentum and misdirect the community’s rising revolutionary consciousness with state-approved pacification. We will continue to help build a movement by the masses for the masses, for a true liberation of the people of Bangladesh and its diasporas.

The fascist regime recognizes that the movement is no longer just about the Quota system, which is why they are doing everything in their power to weaken it. They have kidnapped and tortured leaders of the central movement. They have arrested over 500 people and filed over 60,000 reports against dissenters. Hasina is currently going on a PR tour to appease the foreign powers she sells the livelihood of the Bangladeshi masses to. If it was not enough for the Awami government to opportunistically posture against the genocide in Gaza, despite purchasing Israeli spyware, the Bangladesh Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is now taking a page out of the Israeli toolkit to accuse opposition parties of using student protestors as “shields”.

We must fight the tyranny of the fascist Sheik Hasina and Awami League. We must not let this fight end in yet another regime change between Awami League and its equally Fascist counterparts. We must build a united front against fascism, in all its forms, in Bangladesh.

We call for the resignation of the Hasina-Awami League and the call to build an anti-fascist front in Bangladesh against Awami-Hasina Fascism.

The post Solidarity With Quota Reform Movement In Bangladesh and Down with the Fascist Hasina-Awami League Regime appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by CounterPunch News Service.

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