‘All We Think of Is Him’: Putting Names and Faces to Bangladesh Carnage

The partial lifting of a communications blackout is providing a picture of the young victims of a brutal crackdown on protesters. Thousands of others have been swept into jails.

A part-time tutor, shot in the neck and killed. A journalist and young father, felled by a bullet to the head. A shopkeeper’s son, also fatally shot in the head.

When Bangladesh’s near-total communications blackout was partially lifted last week after a vicious crackdown on a student-led protest, one of the first things to emerge online was a digital yearbook of the dead.

It put names and faces to days of carnage unleashed by government forces seeking to quell what had begun as a peaceful demonstration against quotas that reserve sought-after government jobs for specific groups. Conservative estimates put the death toll at near 200. Thousands were injured; in one hospital in the capital, Dhaka, alone, more than 250 people required eye surgeries after being shot in the face by pellets or rubber bullets.

Most of the victims were young, in their 20s. They had been brought together on the streets by the bleak prospects of a stagnating economy. They were also fueled by anger at what they saw as government corruption, cronyism and impunity, as the country’s leaders dismissed their demand for a merit-based distribution of jobs.

Among the dead:

For the families of the victims, the immediate task after their deaths was to piece together what had happened to them, to search for their bodies when the phones were down and a curfew restricted movement, and to carry out last rites as the government was trying to hide the toll, bury the evidence and prevent gatherings that could perpetuate the anger.