Days when Bangladesh was offline
After the death of Abu Sayeed, a former student of Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur at the hands of police on 16th July 2024, the whole student community stood together turning the ‘Anti-Quota movement’ turned into the ‘reforming the nation’ movement. On 17th July 2024, authorities ordered the closure of universities but the protestors resisted the order and continued the protest. On 18th July 2025 both the private and public university students came over the road with their demands unitedly but both BCL men and police open fired on the students of Brac and other universities.
During this attack many of our brothers lost their lives and some were badly harmed. This event gave birth to the national internet blackout or the period when Bangladesh was totally detached from any type of internet connection. The former government of Bangladesh declared a national internet blackout to disrupt the student protest. Since the internet was the way through which the students used to communicate and spread the information worldwide. Bangladesh was offline for almost 10 days. Those were the days of nightmare for the people of Bangladesh. On 19th July 2024 the government declared a nationwide curfew effective from midnight. The curfew was rejected by the student community.
Therefore, the protest kept moving forward. The government didn’t stay quiet after the decision of the student community. They kept attacking the protesters and almost everyday individuals were losing their lives by the men of BCL and police. And gradually all the leaders of different political parties were taken to jail by the order of the government. Following that, the government started to arrest the frontier faces of the movement including teachers who stayed beside their students. Afterwards they started to arrest the general students from their homes who took part in the protest. At that moment every second had to be spent with fear of a police raid. The students weren’t safe in their homes. Parents used to stay numb with the tension of their child’s safety. Some had fought with their parents just to stand with their brothers in the roads to establish justice. Among them some came back home safely and some never returned.
This incident not only affected the people of Bangladesh but also the people living abroad. They were not able to contact their family members due to the lack of internet connection. During this session, the former state minister of ICT division, Zunaid Ahmed Palak claimed that “the internet was cut down due to fire and cable sabotage”. Later investigations prove that he shut down the internet by the order of the former Prime Minister. These kept repeating for days and after almost 10 days the internet came back to Bangladesh. But the protest doesn’t stop here. Just like the liberation war, our brother returned home with victory in their hands.
