A part-time tutor, shot in the neck and killed. A journalist and young father, felled by a bullet to the head. A shopkeeper’s son, also fatally shot in the head.
When Bangladesh’s near-total communications blackout was partially lifted last week after a vicious crackdown on a student-led protest, one of the first things to emerge online was a digital yearbook of the dead.
It put names and faces to days of carnage unleashed by government forces seeking to quell what had begun as a peaceful demonstration against quotas that reserve sought-after government jobs for specific groups. Conservative estimates put the death toll at near 200. Thousands were injured; in one hospital in the capital, Dhaka, alone, more than 250 people required eye surgeries after being shot in the face by pellets or rubber bullets.
Most of the victims were young, in their 20s. They had been brought together on the streets by the bleak prospects of a stagnating economy. They were also fueled by anger at what they saw as government corruption, cronyism and impunity, as the country’s leaders dismissed their demand for a merit-based distribution of jobs.
Among the dead:
Hridoy Chandra Tarua, 23, was finishing a history degree and working as a tutor. His father is a carpenter, his mother a housemaid. On the days he returned home from college, he would wash clothes for his mother, grind spices on a stone slab and tell her it was just a matter of time before he got a job that would help ease her toil.
Hasan Mehdi, 35, was one of at least three journalists killed. He leaves behind his wife and two young daughters, the oldest a little over 3 years old. “My little daughter has just learned how to say ‘Abu, Abu,’” his wife, Farhana Islam Poppy, said, referring to the word for “father.” “My daughters will never get to know who their dad really was.”
Mahmudul Rahman Shoikot, 20, was closing his family’s shop when the crackdown began. He was killed when he rushed to help some injured students, his sister, Sabrina Shabonti, said. At 6-foot-3, he towered over his two sisters, who teased him for how easily and profusely he would sweat during the hours he spent in the sun playing cricket. “When they went to bury him, he was so tall they struggled to fit him into the grave,” Ms. Shabonti said.
For the families of the victims, the immediate task after their deaths was to piece together what had happened to them, to search for their bodies when the phones were down and a curfew restricted movement, and to carry out last rites as the government was trying to hide the toll, bury the evidence and prevent gatherings that could perpetuate the anger.