Bangladeshi protests spark fears in Canada

Tens of thousands of students continue a protest that has halted traffic for the past week in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In Canada, their counterparts from Edmonton watch from afar.

Students have flooded Dhaka’s streets in protests that began last Sunday after two college students were struck and killed by a pair of buses racing to collect passengers July 29. Student protesters have been demanding transportation reform by halting vehicles to check for registration papers.

Traffic safety in the country has been a problem for a long time, said Mousum Dhar, 27, a graduate student and vice-president of the Bangladeshi Students Association at the University of Alberta. When studying in Bangladesh before coming to Canada for graduate school, he remembers traffic deaths happening “almost every single day.”

Since traffic in Bangladesh is not regulated, buses are able to dangerously race to pick up passengers, Dhar said. Because students pay smaller fares than adults, buses don’t always stop to allow them to get on. Students often have to run and jump to board moving buses, which Dhar had to learn to do as a student himself.

“They will not stop for you,” he said. “They will tell you they will slow down, and you have to use your left foot and jump.”

“It’s a complete disaster, if you miss ... you will be under that bus.”

Trying to board a moving bus can risk injury or death. Bus drivers aren’t usually considered responsible in these cases because students are thought by authorities to have put their own lives at risk, Dhar said.

At least 12,000 people in Bangladesh die each year in road accidents often blamed on faulty vehicles, reckless driving and lax traffic enforcement.

Aside from traffic, Bangladeshi students have been frustrated with the government’s employment system as well, said Firoz Ali, the president of the Bangladesh Canada Association of Edmonton.

“We feel very bad (seeing the student protests in the news), but what are we going to do?” he said, noting that speaking out against the Bangladeshi government can result in imprisonment.

While he no longer faces a dangerous and unregulated commute in Canada, Dhar fears for his sister, currently a college student in Bangladesh.

“I’m worried a lot for her, and all the students,” he said.