In Weekend of Demonstrations, Bangladeshi Locals Gather in Harvard Square to Protest Government Quotas

Hundreds of Bangladeshi students, families, and local residents participated in demonstrations in Harvard Square over the weekend to denounce the recent deadly crackdowns on student protesters in Bangladesh.

Organizers said the rallies were intended to call attention to the violence and inspire international groups to pressure the Bangladeshi government to comply with the protesters’ demands.

Student protests broke out in Bangladesh earlier this month after the country’s top court reinstated an employment quota that reserves 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of families who fought in the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

The Bangladeshi government imposed a nation-wide curfew Friday following increasingly violent clashes between student protesters and police that have left more than 150 dead and hundreds more hospitalized, according to the BBC.

The internet in Bangladesh was also disrupted on Thursday and has remained offline into Monday.

Zia Uddin, one of the organizers of Saturday’s protest, said he chose to protest in Harvard Square due to the University’s international recognition and attention.

“We believe that it is one of the most prominent locations, it is a historic place, it is within the campus of one of the best academic institutions of the world,” Uddin said. “So we wanted to demonstrate there to get an amplification of our voices.”

Saturday’s demonstration began around 3 p.m. and lasted two hours, drawing more than 250 attendees. All three demonstrations featured Bengali music and flags, while chants included “save the students,” “we want justice,” and “step down Hasina,” a call for the resignation of the country’s prime minister.

The demonstrations also featured a large banner that read, “Stop Mass Killings in Bangladesh, Organized by Concerned Bangladeshi Americans in New England.”

Uddin said plans for the demonstration were born out of conversations between players for the Bengal Tigers, a Bangladeshi cricket team in the Massachusetts State Cricket League, who reached out to local Bangladeshi friends and families.

Word of the demonstration went “viral within different Bangladeshi community groups on social media,” Uddin said.

Friday’s demonstration — the largest of the three protests with nearly 300 attendees — began at 6:30 p.m. and lasted until around 7:30 p.m.

Rally organizer Md. Abdulla Al Mamun — a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology who grew up in Bangladesh — said he hoped the demonstration would make Americans aware of the conflict in Bangladesh.

“The international community should give tremendous pressure to the government to stop the killing of general students and people,” Mamun said.

On Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he had “seen the reports of people dying, being killed in the protests,” and called upon the Bangladeshi Government to “uphold individual’s rights to protest peacefully.”

Sunday’s demonstration began around 4 p.m. and was organized by local resident Badra Alam Syed, a board member for Right to Freedom, a Washington D.C.-based human rights activist organization.

Syed criticized international media outlets’ lack of coverage of the violence in Bangladesh, and said the government could not get away with killing innocent students and civilians “without justice.”

“I am fighting for the democracy and human rights all over the world,” Syed said. “I have the responsibility to talk about Bangladesh.”

—Ben Ali H. Brown contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves or on Threads @elyse.goncalves.