One of the more inscrutable aspects of Bangladesh’s dictatorship–at least to the starry-eyed Western stringers from WaPo, NYT, Economist and similar outlets whose local offices are based in Delhi and whose Bangladesh beat is often covered by easily duped newly minted grad student types–is the organization called “Bangladesh Chhatra League” or “BCL”. Literally translated, the words mean simply “Bangladesh Students League”. Simplicity and accuracy are hardly the same in dictatorships.
In reality, the BCL is a shadowy armed cadre whose leadership is well into its 40s and 50s with nary a connection to classrooms. Rather, it’s closely modeled after Iran’s Basij militia or the Red Guards of Maoist China in that it functions as a shadowy parallel to official law enforcement agencies like the police and [US sanctioned] Rapid Action Battalion. Recruited from younger and more criminally-oriented members of the ruling Awami League, this shadowy force regularly unleashes violence on dissenters and keeps a strict control on the examinations, grading, dorms, and activities at public universities. The rather innocuous title of the organization allows the government to claim “oh these are just unruly students” to hoodwink naive foreign reporters. Last week saw what was a great example of how merely ‘unruly’ these ‘students’ were: upset that merchants at a major market were not providing free goodies to these thugs on the occasion of the festival of Eid ul Fitr, the BCL cadres caused hell to break loose on the hapless shopkeepers and, with impunity, murdered several of them while the police, not surprisingly, looked on (as has always been the case).
Even with the pictures, affiliations, and whereabouts of the perpetrators captured on security cameras and distributed widely on social media (before the government clamped down on the distribution using the draconian “Digital Security Act”), most of these murderers roam free under the patronage of the Awami League dictatorship.
