Shahidul Alam, a renowned photojournalist, educator and activist based in Dhaka, has been documenting the protests and the government’s brutal reprisal. Alam has managed to get his dispatches out to the media despite an internet shutdown imposed to try and contain the protests, which has since been partially lifted. Himal Southasian is republishing these dispatches, which offer a picture of the situation inside Bangladesh even as the internet shutdown has severely restricted the outflow of information.

The events and circumstances described in the dispatches have been changing rapidly and there have been several developments since Alam penned each of them. The curfew has been partially lifted and internet connectivity has been partially restored, although it remains patchy and communication with many parts of the country remains difficult. The dispatches reflect the extent of violence and repression unleashed by the Sheikh Hasina government against its people. They have been lightly edited for clarity. 

Click here to read all dispatches.

Alam sent his third dispatch on 24 July 2024.

There is a particular type of bowling in cricket called the Googly or the Doosra. It is a rare spin ball that sends you the wrong way, which only few bowlers have mastered. Good batsmen – and women – can tell from the bowler’s arm and wrist action which way the ball will spin and play accordingly. Except in the case of the deceptive Doosra. Many a famous scalp has been taken by the well-executed Doosra. In Bangladeshi politics, it is the spin doctors themselves who seem to be falling prey to the Doosra, with the outcome not going quite the way it was intended. 

Bangladeshi citizens have an unusual choice. The coming 48 hours (I began writing the piece in July 22) could be a ‘general holiday’ as declared by the government.

The quota students have declared there will be a ‘complete shutdown’.

The Army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman announced on TV that they’ve brought things under control and the country is heading back to ‘normal’.

There are soldiers in the streets enforcing an ongoing curfew with orders to shoot to kill. Curfew isn’t what one associates with a ‘general holiday,’ though sadly, killing unarmed citizens could be considered normal in Gaza or Kashmir.

In Bangladesh, with no internet, no cash, no banking services, and with people with ‘pay as you go’ accounts for gas and electricity on the verge of having their connections closed down due to non-payment, one wonders whether this will become the new normal.

The “shutdown” moniker makes some sense. Most shops are closed, and while there are people on the streets – especially in the two to three hour window when the curfew is called off – the city is tense. Curfew was relaxed today, July 22, from 10 am to 5 pm, and offices and banks were open from 11-3 pm. The only people who ventured out any distance from home, whether or not they had a curfew pass, are people on essential duty. Hospital staff, journalists, fire service people.

People could be seen in back streets, where there appears to be generally no military or police presence, but there are also reports of people being hunted down and killed in alleyways, a source of intense fear.

The policing is also site-specific. The Maghreb azaan (call to prayer) floats across Rabindra Sharani, the outdoor recreation centre in the well-to-do residential area of Dhanmondi. There are no security forces here. Young women and men walk by the lakeside after dusk. Puppies frolic by the amphitheatre as kids play football and parents walk toddlers on the stage. I am told life is also “normal” in the upmarket tri-state areas of Gulshan, Baridhara and Banani. Diplomats and decision-makers live there, and it wouldn’t do to show an overt military presence in such areas.

These are the “normal” zones.

Mohammadpur, less than a kilometre away from Rabindra Sarani, is a “curfew” zone. Topu, the head of the photography department of Pathshala, the South Asian Media Institute which I founded, rings at around 7.30 pm to say that a graduate student Ashraful Haque Rocky has been picked up by the police. Luckily, he has a press card as he used to work for a prominent newspaper. They have taken his camera away and so far he has not been roughed up. We are trying to get someone from the newspaper to ring, to make sure he is not physically harmed or disappeared. We anxiously wait for more information from the police station. After a lot of lobbying through multiple sources, a message comes in just before midnight that Rocky has been released. He has his camera. For the moment, we know nothing more.

News trickles in through our network that anyone taking injured students to hospital, even if they be helpful bystanders, are also getting arrested by plainclothes police. Injured students themselves are getting arrested, as soon as they are well enough to be released. They don’t always get beaten up or put in jail. Sometimes it is just extortion. A friend’s brother was released upon paying a ransom of one lakh taka, just short of USD 1000 – a lot of money in Bangladesh.

Newspapers also report Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus bucking the government narrative with a statement to the international community on Monday, “Bangladesh has been engulfed in a crisis that only seems to get worse each passing day. High school students have been amongst the victims.”

It is July 23 as I continue writing this essay. Local news channels reported last night, July 22, that there had been “no untoward incident”, though a friend provides eyewitness reports of two students and two passersby being killed by the police in the Notun Bazar area of Dhaka. A young rag picker had been shot dead in a different part of the city. She also talks of the smart tanks stationed outside her house in Gulshan.

The foreign minister Hasan Mahmud had summoned the diplomatic community to “brief” them on the current situation, with a presentation. It didn’t go quite as planned. Unusual for diplomats, the UN Resident Coordinator had asked the FM about the alleged use of UN-marked armoured personnel carriers and helicopters to suppress protesters. The outgoing US Ambassador Peter Haas, who had been instrumental in the US government’s sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) for its human rights abuses, was the one to respond to the FM, “I am surprised you did not show the footage of police firing at unarmed protesters.”

There are dissenting voices among civil society despite the fear and repression. Thirty three eminent citizens have asked the government to apologise unconditionally to citizens for all the deaths of protesters since July 16. The Communist Party of Bangladesh has demanded fresh general elections, while Rashtra Sanskar Andolan (Movement for State Reform) has demanded the government’s resignation. Twenty five women’s rights activists and teachers termed the Supreme Court’s verdict on quota system “a trap to confuse the ongoing just protests against the fascist government”. 

My partner Rahnuma and I are both aware that martyrs do not do good reporting. Working with limited resources, along with our wider team of dedicated activists, we have been looking out for each other. I have been out on the streets, on most occasions Rahnuma being my bodyguard. Even in this warlike environment, some show solidarity and want updates. A few even ask for selfies, while heavy set Awami League types scowl from a distance. Curfew and trigger happy security forces have made it difficult to visit friends in hospital, finding safe homes, and getting supplies.

Finding ways to beat the internet ban and get messages such as this one out has been far from easy. We’ve managed so far. It is for you readers to take the next steps to freedom

Broadband connection was restored last night i.e, July 23, but selectively. We now have email and WhatsApp access at home, but no YouTube, no Facebook, and no social media. My niece, two roads down, has none.

Meanwhile the spin doctors are working overtime. The students, who were called razaakars (war of liberation collaborators) a week ago, then became komolmoti shishu (sweet innocent kids) a few days later, and are now obujh chhatro (naive students) whom the dushkritikari o jongi (miscreants and terrorists) have exploited.

The PM met with the business community on Monday afternoon. They were concerned about the effect this problem was having on the nation’s economy. Parts of the discussion was aired on TV. The PM absolved the quota protesters of any ill-deeds, they are not the reason the army has been brought in, she reminded us.

Strange then that one of the demands by the protesters is that all charges against them be dropped. There is silence about the ongoing arrests of students. The spin doctors are working overtime to fit the quota protests, which spilled over into a nationwide uprising, into the government’s holdall explanation, “the BNP-Jamaat-Shibir are responsible.” They will not be spared. They are the ones trying to hold back the country and turn back the development process. The entire cabinet nods.

Some of the party faithfuls come to the podium to hail the PM for her leadership and for thwarting the opposition’s evil plans so successfully. They assure her that the nation will continue in its glorious journey under her able leadership. They would like her to be prime minister “for life.” The images of Sheikh Hasina and her father Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, plastered along every wall across the country, the billboards and banners that litter the countryside, the Bangabandhu corner, required by law to be present in every library and prominently placed at the airport and all important buildings, collectively create the North Korea-like adulation of the great leader. 

As in North Korea, the Bangladeshi leader has total control. The Argentinian army’s loss in the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands, while a loss for the nation, resulted in an unexpected gain. It broke the aura of invincibility of the army, which allowed the resistance to build and eventually overthrow the military regime. It is one of the few instances where the military rulers have been brought to trial. The aura of invincibility is important to maintain. That is why the photo of the soldier on the receiving end of a flying kick by a student, way back in 2007, was quickly hushed up and has disappeared from official archives. It is also probably the reason why the recent attack on the home minister’s house, though instigated by helicopter fire on protestors down below in the first place, never made it to the print and electronic media. Even the acknowledgement of such temerity, even if provoked, is dangerous.

The business community needs the internet to be up and running immediately. The downtime is costing them and they are getting agitated. The great leader informed them that she had explained everything to the naive students and they had understood. The students were no longer the problem. What was left was to tackle the terrorists and the miscreants, which she would take care of. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. The business community knew where the red lines were and were careful not to cross them. They bowed and retreated.

The media has largely long stopped behaving as the fourth estate and has morphed into a PR network, for their corporations and now for the government. With extremely rare exceptions (the daily New Age being one), independent media has perished.

Embedded journalism is the norm. The few free-thinking journalists who still survive in this space worry about the moles surrounding them. Media owners confide that their headlines are dictated by military intelligence. Their own culpability, they conveniently ignore. Even the headlines, some say, are dictated by security agencies.

Even so, there are brave journalists who do what journalists must. Rigorous research. Detailed fact checking. Connecting the dots. Good reporters find holes in spin doctor statements, who get caught in their own web of lies.

Different ministers making contradictory statements, create traps for each other.

Why the police opened fire and killed komolmoti shishus is not an easy one to answer.

If the attackers were BNP and their allies, why they were chanting pro-Sheikh Hasina slogans is also unexplained.

If there was nothing to hide, why, after the claim that it was a technology issue was debunked by the industry experts, was the internet still down?

The government accuses international agencies who are reporting on the situation of providing fake news. Why then is Dhaka Medical College Hospital avoiding to provide figures for the dead and injured?

Tyrants across the globe, Trump, Netanyahu and Modi have resorted to the “fake news” accusation to deny human rights violations that are clear to the public and the rest of the world. They’ve also used the full spectrum of repressive state machinery, including media, to deny culpability and hide their own guilt. They have also clubbed together, sharing resources and copying from each other’s playbook. Sheikh Hasina, a long-standing member of the tyranny club has been playing the game for some time. But arrogance has its drawbacks. It would be wrong to underestimate the public and spin can only take you so far. Especially when the spin doctors seem to be getting wrong-footed by their own Doosra.△