Abu Saeed’s killing becomes a game-changing moment for the movement, said Nahid Islam, Advisor to the Interim Government’s Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
He said this in an interview given to the US magazine Time in his office at the Ministry of Information Technology this September.
US magazine Time published the interview on Tuesday.
He told TIME that Hasina is a bloodsucker and a psychopath (mentally ill).
Nahid Islam said that protests spread in the country’s universities for the first time in 2018 regarding the quota system. The protests then ended when the government finally backed down. If the government backed down this year too, the protests and agitations over the quota system could have ended.
However, the security forces started firing on the quota agitators. A student named Abu Saeed was killed on July 16. He was shot and died while standing in front of the police with his hands stretched out and his chest pulled.
Nahid also said that the killing became a game-changing moment for the movement. The student movement quickly gained the support of a large section of the population across the country. The movement gave the people of the country an opportunity to express their anger against the corrupt government, rising commodity prices and increasingly authoritarian rule. The agitators quickly turned their attention to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. On August 3, the students raised a one-point demand for his resignation. Nahid Islam announced that demand from Dhaka University campus.
On August 5, when lakhs of students started marching towards Sheikh Hasina’s residence in Dhaka, she fled to neighboring India in a helicopter. He is still in exile in that country.
This adviser said, no one thought that she (Sheikh Hasina) would be overthrown.
As the head of the interim government. Muhammad Yunus now holds a higher position than Nahid Islam. In response to a question about who among them is taking orders from whom, Nahid said, Muhammad Yunus consults us on major decisions.
Nahid was hiding in a friend’s house to avoid arrest during the agitation. One night about 30 intelligence officers in plain clothes appeared there. Nahid said, black clothes were put on their heads. Later it is said, the world will never see you again.
Nahid believes he was kept in a secret prison. He was beaten. He felt as if he had been beaten with an iron rod. There were also marks of beating on hands and feet. His head was spinning with the intensity of pain, agonizing sounds and bright lights; He was losing consciousness at times.