DHAKA: Bangladesh on Monday promised to introduce the death penalty for deliberate road deaths in a bid to quell more than a week of demonstrations calling for better road safety, as new student-led protests were met with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Over the weekend scores of people were hurt as police fired tear gas and mobs apparently loyal to the government attacked demonstrators, photographers and even the US ambassador’s car.

The tens of thousands of teenage school pupils and university students who have paralysed the capital Dha­ka and elsewhere for the past nine days — and tor­ch­­ed eight buses — are pressing for better road safety after a speeding bus killed two teenagers on July 29.

The latest clashes on Monday in the Rampura neighbourhood saw police use tear gas to dispel hundreds of students from a private university, said lo­­c­al police chief Rafiqul Isl­am.

“They tried to set abla­­ze a police camp. We fired tear gas to disperse them,” he said, adding four police officers were injured.

Students told AFP that police fired rubber bullets at protesters in Bashun­d­hara neighbourhood, which is home to two private universities, and that members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League party attacked the protesters with sticks and bricks.

The lengthy standoff, attracting foreign media interest and criticism from the UN and rights groups, has turned into a major test of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government ahe­ad of December elections.

On Monday, the law and justice minister Anisul Huq told AFP the cabinet has approved a new law allowing for the death penalty “if an investigation finds that the death in a road accident has been caused deliberately”.

The protests took a violent turn in Dhaka on Saturday, with more than 100 people hurt as police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators, according to students and doctors who treated the injured.

Photographer detained

Rights group Amnesty International called on the government to stop its “violent crackdown” on “overwhelmingly peaceful student protestors”.

It also cal­led for the immediate rele­ase of Shahidul Alam, 63, a renowned Bangla­deshi pho­­­tographer who was detai­­ned on Sunday night after giving an interview to Al Jazeera about the protests.

“We are interrogating him for giving false information to different media and for provocative comments,” said police official Moshiur Rahman.

Alam said he was beaten in custody. According to his colleague Abir Abdullah, Alam, whose photos have appeared widely in West­ern media, was taken away from his Dhaka home by at least 20 plainclothes police.

Alam is the founder and managing director of the Drik Gallery and the creator of the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, a pho­­to­gra­phy school in the capital Dh­­aka that has spawned hun­­­d­reds of photographers.

In recent days, Alam shot images of the demonstrations by tens of thousands of teenagers in Dhaka and beyond, and discussed the protests on Facebook Live.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2018