WITNESSING JULY UPRISING: Days at the DMCH

On August 5, 2024, an hour before the news of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation, people inside the premises of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital prayed for new freedom for Bangladesh. — Nasir-Uz-Zaman

By Nasir Uz Zaman

IT WAS the midnight of August 2, 2024. I was at home, talking with one of my comrades over the phone. The doorbell started to ring, suddenly and continuously. As my heart started to race, I froze in fear because of the nonstop ringing at that hour. My partner was sleeping in the bedroom. She woke up and ran to me with a face gone pale with fear. Holding my hand, she asked me in a shaky tone, ‘Who?’ I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I made my way to the door and looked through the peephole, but no one was there. The stairs were empty, yet the doorbell was still ringing.

It might have been some electrical glitch. But in those few minutes, I experienced the same fear that dominated during the student-led mass uprising in July 1–August 5, 2024, which resulted in the ouster of the fascist Awami League regime that ruled for 15 years. After one year, I am still trying to identify the cause behind that night’s shock and fear. As a field reporter, I witnessed the deadly crackdown on student protests, seeking reform in the quota system, that led to the mass uprising, but I never experienced a fear like that night.

At the time, the emergency and the mortuary departments of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, which I visited regularly from the second half of July to collect information, became a centre where one experienced the brutality of the fascist regime, the courage of the protesters and the humanity of people. I used two notebooks back then to write the information I collected. One year has passed since, and it is still not easy for me to turn the pages of those notebooks. Some pages bear bloodstains.

It started with collecting the names of injured students and their stories; it ended with struggling to collect the actual number of the dead. July 15 was the day the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the Bangladesh Awami League, unleashed its fury on the quota protesters. The day before, the then prime minister Sheikh Hasina had sparked controversy by labelling the protesters as ‘razakars’. On the Dhaka University campus, where I was assigned at first, BCL activists, mostly wearing helmets and armed with sticks and iron rods, launched attacks on student protesters in the afternoon and beat them indiscriminately, including female students. A large number of the injured protesters, including students of DU, Eden Mohila College and Government Titumir College were taken to the DMCH, which later also became a part of my assignment.

The information in my notebook and the pictures taken at the DMCH’s emergency department reminded me that many protesters came in with injuries on the head, face and different parts of the body. Many of them sat on chairs or lied on the floor as blood seeped out of their wounds. A staff of the emergency department struggled to note down the incoming patients’ information in a register book as the injured kept coming in. But the BCL activists did not stop after attacking the protesters on DU campus. It was about 7:30pm, when a group of people wearing helmets and armed with sharp weapons, sticks and iron rods came inside the emergency department and attacked the injured students who were there to seek treatment. Police and Ansar personnel, responsible for ensuring security on hospital premises, were present there. But they, like me, took shelter inside the iron-grilled area, locking the gate and leaving the injured unprotected. After the attack, I tried to learn the exact number of injured protesters that received treatment on that day, but I could not find the person that was maintaining the patient register book. After several attempts, a physician, seeking anonymity, informed me that 226 people, including one with bullet injury, took treatment at the emergency department till 9:00pm, the time I left the DMCH for the night.

While people started to die from July 16, the real horror unfolded on July 19, when hospitals, including the DMCH’s emergency department and morgue, were flooded with blood from gunshot wounds and lifeless bodies after the Friday noon prayers. I went to the hospital at about 5:00pm, having covered street protests earlier, and took over the duty from my colleague to collect information about the dead and the injured. On that day, I noted down the information of 24 of the 35 bodies received by the DMCH. The death toll itself that day was so high that gathering information about the injured became nearly impossible. According to the hospital ticket counter, 400 people came in that day and 94 were admitted to the hospital till 9:00pm. People ferried blood-soaked dead bodies and the injured in rickshaws, CNGs and ambulances and the hospital corridor turned red.

With the arrival of more and more victims, the hallway, normally used for everyday emergencies, was full of people asking for help as the hospital lacked enough staff and equipment to provide emergency treatment to such a huge number of victims. Students and ordinary people brought many of the injured and the killed; most of the time they did not even know the victims. As time passed, people started to show up, looking for their loved ones. Many were crying and lamenting loudly, some were sitting on the floor in shock. It was a difficult time for a journalist to decide whether to take notes or offer a hand.

As information was already scarce, I had to concentrate on collecting the exact number of the dead in the hospital. From that day forward, most of the hospital authorities, including doctors on duty and other staff, started to avoid journalists because they did not want to provide any information. They said, ‘Talk to the hospital director.’ Between July 19 and August 5, I waited several times — sometimes alone, sometimes with other journalists — for half an hour to an hour after submitting my official ID card to meet the hospital director. Except for one day, I always had to walk away empty-handed.

The number of deaths and injuries in any protest or movement is not merely a statistic — it represents sacrifice, exposes state brutality and becomes a chapter in political history. Truth is dangerous to power and numbers can carry the truth. As a result, state control over hospitals and morgues to hide or manipulate casualty numbers is widely practised by repressive governments across the world. In this instance, it was not just the DMCH authorities that refused to provide any information. Other hospitals in the capital also refused to provide information on deaths and injuries, citing various excuses. On July 23, a colleague and I visited different health facilities in Uttara, where students and regular people built a strong resistance and, consequently, faced violent crackdown. We received the same response from almost all hospital officials: they needed permission from higher authorities to provide any information. Whenever we tried to reach those ‘higher authorities’, most of them were unavailable while some asked us to contact them later.

That day we came across personnel of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence and the National Security Intelligence at some of the hospitals, who were also there to collect the same information. We could sense how different the hospital officials’ interaction with them were. However, we did not return empty-handed that day as we found some sympathetic hospital officials who were willing to speak to us. We also found a group of local Awami League and Chhatra League people at a private hospital, looking for protesters undergoing treatment. We kept the collected information on our mobile phones and used different techniques to hide it so that no one could find it easily if our phones were checked.

The internet blackout in the country at different times between July 17 and August 5 made the days all the more challenging. My responsibility at work was to visit the different spots of protest I was assigned to and then make a stop at the DMCH later to collect the information about the injured and the killed. The inability to access the internet not only disconnected me from the events unfolding in the country but it also created an obstacle in doing my job. I could not share information with my colleague who needed it to write daily reports. As an alternative, I described to him what I saw over phone calls and he took notes. That was how we had to work.

Apparel worker Yamin endured a bullet injury on July 27, 2024. His blood-soaked factory ID.  — Nasir-Uz-Zaman

Although the level of street violence varied from day to day, the death toll at the DMCH kept rising, either from new victims of fresh violence or from the critically injured who succumbed to their wounds. Riya Gope, six-years-old, sustained a bullet injury to her head on the rooftop of her home in Narayanganj on July 19. She died while undergoing treatment at the DMCH on July 24. Her lifeless body lay on a trolley outside the emergency mortuary — small, covered with a piece of white cloth. Her father, Dipak Kumar Gope, stood beside her. One moment he was frozen, like the world had stopped moving around him; the next, his cries seemed to shake the corridor. I did not know where to look — at the body of the child, the father or the others, who were either searching for the bodies of their loved ones or waiting to receive them. The sacrifice and the loss of lives in the July uprising did not belong to any one community. It crossed all boundaries of age, gender, occupation, religion, class and even political belief.

That day the police released eight unidentified and unclaimed bodies — aged 25–50 and mostly brought from the Jatrabari area on July 18–20 — from the hospital mortuary to Anjuman Mufidul Islam, a burial service provider. Burying bodies as fast as possible is another state mechanism to manipulate casualty figures, just like preventing hospitals authorities from disclosing information and intimidating people to not speak to the media.

It was a time when hospitals became a place of desperate hope for hundreds of families. Some families came and found their loved ones, in treatment or at the morgue. Some families left empty-handed, unsure whether their loved ones were still alive, had been arrested or had been buried without a name. Many families did not want an autopsy of their loved ones because autopsy became a new form of harassment, as was the case for the family of journalist Tahir Zaman Priyo or Kamrul Hasan, the father of 16-year-old Khalid Hasan Saifullah. It took days for them to get the bodies from the mortuary. Khalid was killed in Azimpur on July 18; some students took his body to the DMCH. His father, Kamrul, found him on that evening, but he was only allowed to take his son home on July 21, after shuttling between the police station and the morgue several times. Autopsies are compulsory in cases of unnatural deaths, in accordance with the law. But hospital authorities showed a lack of seriousness regarding such procedures and turned them into forms of harassment during the period of the July uprising.

It was the first time I had seen such an overwhelming number of corpses and so much blood. The visuals and the smell both can affect one’s psychological state and disrupt everyday life. Inside the emergency department’s morgues, bodies were kept in row after row, shoulder to shoulder, on blood-stained floors. Some bodies were covered with white sheets, some were not; some had their names written on pieces of paper taped to their chests while many remained nameless. The air in those rooms was thick with the strong and suffocating stench of bodies and medicine. While many of those who came to look for their loved ones broke down in shock, some fainted after entering the morgues, failing to bear the sight. Mortuary volunteers and staff had to carry the unconscious people outside amid all that chaos.

After the wholesale arrests and night-time block raids that went on for days, law enforcers and AL goons again launched their violent attacks on protesters on August 4. I struggled to note down the number of bodies taken to the hospital that day. The injured and the dead that were brought in one after another that day by students and the public had wounds from bullets and sharp weapons. The people who brought in bodies of strangers were furious. They came with bodies and left without sharing any information. The reason behind their rage was obvious, it was understandable. Pro-government goons and law enforcers were killing their fellow protesters. Those who carried the bodies often screamed: Why autopsies? What justice? From who? The police? The government? They are the murderers! No media house is publishing the truth!

I initially started noting down the information of the injured, but I had to stop after reaching the number 45. The arrival of dead bodies intensified so much so that I had to concentrate on them instead. Over 250 injured people from the capital’s Science Laboratory, Jigatola, Jatrabari, Banglamotor and Gulistan areas as well as from outside the capital were taken to the hospital till 9:00pm. Protesters took away at least four bodies from the hospital to the Central Shaheed Minar while some people took away some others. Some local people collected donations to hire ambulances and CNGs to send some of the bodies to their home addresses. The experience of witnessing such violence and so many unidentified bodies compelled me to create a new lock-screen wallpaper for my phone that night after returning home. It included my official identity, blood group and an emergency contact number. I set it with a heavy heart, thinking that if something were to happen to me the next day, at least my family would know.

It was the morning of August 5. Some protesters informed me over the phone that police had opened fire at Central Shaheed Minar and areas near the DMCH. I went to Shahbagh, where protesters were gathering near the then Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. The Shahbagh area was cordoned off by a large number of security personnel. They were not allowing people to go towards the Dhaka University campus from Shahbagh. I was able to bypass such blockades using our official vehicle and reached the DMCH in the afternoon. Some people were offering prayers in front of the emergency department’s gate and loudly asking God to save the people from Hasina and to serve justice. As I was moving to and fro, along with some other journalists, trying to collect the information about that day’s injured and killed, some young nurses ran towards us and asked shaky voices: Has Hasina resigned? Is it true?

We could not answer them right then without any confirmation. People were still bringing bodies and injured victims to the hospital. Then the army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman’s address to the nation confirmed that Hasina had indeed fled the country. A group of people who brought some injured victims suddenly became angry with us, the journalists. They were angrily asking what we did during the past days. The aggravated group was about to beat and kick the journalists out of the hospital. I was able to leave the hospital with permission from the office. Thousands of people were already out on the streets celebrating their victory. A new chapter in the history of the country began that day.

Nasir Uz Zaman is a staff correspondent at New Age.