BU students protest for 7th day

Barishal University students continued their protests for the seventh day yesterday, demanding the Vice-chancellor's resignation.

Agitated students held a rally on campus in the morning. They assembled in front of the academic building and announced their memorandum to president and prime minister.

In the memorandum, students demanded that the VC apologise before the students for his “razakar-er bachcha” remark and resign from his post. They said the agitation programme will continue until the demands are met.

“We will start hunger strike unto death to press home our demand,” said a student. Another student said that BU authority closed hall canteens and cut off electricity and water supplies.

Registrar Dr Hasinur Rahman said, “We attended syndicate meeting on Friday and there we decided to solve the issues through discussions with the students. Since then we have made efforts to solve this, but to no avail.”

“We asked students to vacate halls, but did not order a disruption in electricity and water supplies,” he added.

Students started protesting on March 26 after they were allegedly excluded from the university's Independence Day programme. On the same day, VC Imamul Huq made a remark calling protesting students “razakar-er bachcha.”

Agitated students demanded his resignation after this. On March 28, BU authorities announced that the university will be closed indefinitely. The next day, the VC apologised, saying “…I apologise if any of my students got hurt by the statement, and I seek cooperation from them in running the university's academic activities smoothly as before,” he said.