Bangladesh: protests all over the country
Featured image: proletarians protesting in an industrial area. Source: The Daily Star
The protests of the Bangladeshi proletariat have intensely continued since last time we reported on that. On Sunday a new wave of protests erupted all over the country by the garment workers. Yesterday almost 3,000 proletarians from several companies started demonstrations in the Gazipur area. Right after the mobilizations, the bourgeoisie agreed on pay a month of salary and give them the day off. Moreover the big bourgeoisie of the garment sector (BGMEA) has decided to abolish the so-called ‘blacklists’ of the workers who participated in mobilizations, made protests and to whom the possibility to get a job in the sector was denied. However the proletariat has not enough with those crumbles and has continued its protests. Some of their demands are: a 15 per cent increase of the wage; payed 18 days of holidays; a night-shift bonus.
On Monday three factories of Ashulia were assaulted and other 50 factories were closed due to the increasing tension. Everything started on Sunday night when the proletariat carried out spontaneous demonstrations demanding wage increasing and the payment of non-payed wages from past months. After that the police attacked them. The protesters defended themselves and then attacked Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)’s vehicles. The RAB is a paramilitary unit which became well-known due to the harsh repression they carried out under the Sheikh Hasina government. The current government is deploying more troops, including a large number of those paramilitaries. These protests are extending to other industrial areas of the country, such as Savar, where dozens of factories have been closed and the government has deployed paramilitary, police officers and even the army.
Union bureaucrats , State officials and high military ranks state that the situation will be under control soon and that now there are much less problems at the factories. However, today itself there are reports of at least other 40 factories closed in the industrial area of Ashulia.
The Bangladeshi students also keep their protests. After Sheikh Hasina fled from the country, the new government included some of the leaders of the students movement in the cabinet, specifically two of them Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud Sajeeb Bhuiyan, two coordinators of the Student Movement Against Discrimination. However this has not prevented the most combative students sectors from keep their struggle and protests. This Monday the students from different polytechnic sectors blocked important roads in Tejgaon, Dhaka, “triggering immense traffic congestion”. The students blocked the roads and claimed for their six-point demand, among them, to remove the craftsmanship instructors who were appointed in 2021 under the Hasina government, and who had no “technical background”, but were part of the quotas. This has not been changed or removed by the Muhammad Yunus government.
Meanwhile the Bangladeshi government shows which interests it serves: according to local media, the Commander Major Jalis Mahmud Khan, in charge of the RAB highlighted this week “the importance of the garment industry to Bangladesh’s economy” and vowing “to take all necessary steps
to keep the sector running smoothly”. Moreover, recently it has been reported that the new government lead by Muhammad Yunus will have “economy talks” with United States (US). The US State Department has expressed its intention to “cooperate” with the interim government of Bangladesh.