In addition to what Rumi bhai has said, I’d like to point out two more things.

1. If you look at the photos of the event carefully, you’ll see that at least some of the protesters were probably working youths who had been badly hurt by rising prices and the economic stagnation that followed 1/11. This doesn’t justify the violence against the individual in uniform. But this does put the whole event in context.

2. It is important to stress that our armed forces are raised from us. It is not a foreign army of occupation. It doesn’t have a recruitment policy based on some notion of ethnic or caste superiority. If we looked closely, we will see that the average 20 something DU student protesting last August has a cousin in the cantonment. We should never forget that those who put the army and students in a conflict situation are really pitting brothers against each other.

Thank you for visiting and commenting on this site. I understand you point and agree with most of what you said.

To be fair, students in Bangladesh never want to get involved into conflicts with the armed forces. Army was used against students by dictators when students’ protested against government. Students protests never was aimed at the armed forces. Ever.

In the specific case you mention, as I understand that the man being kicked was a driver of an officer. All my sympathy for him. He should never have been beaten to start with. But these sort of things happen in conflict situations. And the conflict situation started because some senior generals dispatched a military platoon within a university campus.

And then what our professional military forces did? They went to the neighbourhood, cordoned off the area, rounded up all the studets and brutally tortured all of them. This is also not acceptable. And these sort of incidences fuel another future event like that of that picture.

Our students do have deep pride on their armed forces. They wish their defence forces to be stronger and sharper. They are happy with every achievement of our soldiers.

We only need to make sure that our armed forces do not use their training and weapon in brutalizing their own people.

Struggle to democracy in a country must distingush between a protest and thuggery. Are we to do away with a proud and professional Arned Forces in a future modern and truly democratic Bangladesh? Offcourse not. Your struggle for democracy must not be directed at individual Forces personnel but against the culture of Military Chauvanism and userpers of Military positions.