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How Hasina government planned to thwart 'March to Dhaka' on 5 August

Two high-level meetings were held on 4 August under the leadership of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to prevent the ‘March to Dhaka’ program called by the anti-discrimination student movement on 5 August.

A plan to counter the march was made in these meetings.

This information has emerged in the fact-finding report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released on Wednesday.

The report depicts extrajudicial killings by the Awami League government in its final hours to suppress ‘March to Dhaka’ programme on 5 August. However, the OHCHR report names the programme as ‘March on Dhaka’.

The report states that public announcements by the protest leaders and information obtained by intelligence agencies gave Bangladesh’s political leadership the knowledge that the protest movement was planning a major protest march towards the centre of Dhaka on 5 August.

On the morning of 4 August, the then Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the National Security Council in which the chiefs of Army, Air Force, Navy, BGB, DGFI, NSI, Police and its Special Branch, and the Ministers of Home Affairs, Education and Foreign Affairs joined.

They discussed reimposing and enforcing a curfew to prevent the march.

“After the meeting, the Home Affairs Ministry declared that a strict curfew would continue indefinitely without breaks, while the Prime Minister issued a statement describing the protesters as terrorists appealing to countrymen to suppress these terrorists with a strong hand.”

A second meeting was held in the late evening of 4 August at the Prime Minister’s residence, attended by the Prime Minister herself, the Minister of Home Affairs, the heads of Army, Police, RAB, BGB and Ansar/VDP, the Principal Staff Officer of the Armed Forces Division and the Army’s Quartermaster General, among others.

“During the meeting, the Army Chief and other security officials reassured the Prime Minister that Dhaka could be held, according to senior officials.”
A plan was agreed in which the Army and BGB would deploy alongside police to block protesters from accessing central Dhaka, if necessary by force. The Army and BGB were to block access routes into central Dhaka by deploying armoured vehicles and troops and not letting protesters pass, while the police was to “control mobs,” according to senior officials who participated in those meetings.