Research design

4 Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir, the BNP secretary general, was elected as MP for Bogra town (Bogra-6 constituency) in the 2018 general elections, showing the symbolic importance of the Bogra town for BNP. Traditionally Khaleda Zia was elected from this constituency but she was in jail at the time of elections (and still at the time of writing). Alamgir however refused to take oath as a protest against the non-free election. In the ensuing by-election BNP’s Golam Mohammad Siraj was elected to take the seat.

Ershad) explains at least partly the relative absence of violence in this city and makes for a good case to understand the conditions necessary to prevent (violent) student politics in an otherwise extremely politicized environment. Khulna University is also by far the smallest University in our sample.

Bogra and Kushtia were selected not only because they see relatively high levels of violence, but because of their role in opposition politics. Bogra town is a traditional stronghold of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)⁴. The Bogra 6 (Bogra town) constituency is home to BNP chairperson and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, while her husband and founder of BNP, Ziaur Rahman, was born in the Bogra 7 constituency. Kushtia and the Islamic University experienced large-scale violence during the 2013 War Crimes Tribunals. The University differs from others due to its Islamic focus and rural location between two districts. It is also bigger than SUST, Sylhet and Khulna University.

1.1.2 Research design

The research results presented here are in one case (Rajshahi) based on the long-term fieldwork of Julian Kuttig (one of the authors). In the other locations a team of 6 researchers (one in each location; most of

6 them local to the study sites), 5 local

supervisors and one international expert (Julian Kuttig) conducted interviews with student activists and leaders (both from the ruling party and the opposition), university (professorial/faculty) staff and general students. Given time concerns, most of our research has focused on the main public university in each research location, with the exception of Bogra, which does not have a public university, and Khulna, where student politics is forbidden in its public university.

In Rajshahi, given the much longer fieldwork period, both university and non-university student politics was researched.

Fieldwork was conducted for 4-5 weeks in each location. Researchers worked with a standardized, yet semi-structured research checklist. This enabled comparison among cases, but also a focus on locality-specific dynamics. Researchers were given a training, on the research topic and methodology, as well as on ethical considerations when researching sensitive subject matter.

Besides fieldwork this report also presents quantitative data on student politics. This data is based on a dataset on political violence in Bangladesh (1991-2018). Data was at all times collected from four different newspapers⁵. To be included in the dataset a coded event had to be 1) violent: resulting in

at least one injured/

death/raped/abducted/held hostage or in property destruction and 2) explicitly political: involving members of at least one clearly delineated political group: political party and all its allied organizations, Islamist organization, or rebel group⁶. This is a minimal definition. Given the fact that not every event of political violence is recorded in these (national) newspapers (as our dataset shows there is almost an oversupply of events) our estimates are conservative.

Data presented here is organized around three main elements: events, wounded and lethal casualties. Events refer to single instances of political violence in our database.

5 The most extensive data was collected from the combination Daily Star, Prothom Alo, Dainik Inqilab and Dainik Ittefaq.

For the initial years also Bhorer Kagoj, Songbad and Ajker Kagoj were used when other papers were not available. The use of four newspaper simultaneously allows for the possibility that the same event is recorded multiple times. To deal with these duplicates a procedure (focusing on day, place and actors involved) was devised to eliminate duplicates.

From a set of duplicates one event was randomly chosen to be included in the dataset used here. This reduced the dataset from 45941 coded events to 37544.

6 For the final period of study, violence between state security forces and ‘criminals’ as part of the war on drugs initiated by the AL-government starting in 2018 also has been included. This explains the sometimes high levels of criminal involvement in the 2008-2018 data.

7 TABLE 2: NUMBER OF STUDENTS, TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF IN MAJOR

UNIVERSITIES⁷

University Students Teaching

Staff Officer staff 3^rd and 4^th class staff

Dhaka University 33360 2268 1043 3040

Rajshahi University 37256 1202 735 1896

Chittagong University 28216 1303 386 1960

Islamic University Kushtia 13636 351 410 502

SUST, Sylhet 10113 500 236 497

Khulna University 7269 410 254 484

In many cases we have used multiple response sets as more than one actor is often involved in one event. Our data on the particular student groups should thus be read with care. Events data show the number of events a group participated in. The number or percentages of wounded and lethal casualties similarly show the number or percentages of wounded and lethal casualties arising from events in which a particular group participated. It does not mean to state that e.g. they were either responsible for killing that number of people, or that so many of their number were killed in these events. It rather reflects the intensity of violence.

Data on factional violence focuses on violence between student groups and other organisations within the same political family. So factional violence is both understood as violence within a particular student group, and as violence between members of the student group and members

7 Based on: University Grants Commission, Bangladesh (2018) Annual report: 2017. Dhaka: UGC.

of e.g. the youth group or party members of the same political party.

It must be stated here that the research is politically highly sensitive. Student organizations are a key wing for political parties and play a central role in the organization of party-states in Bangladesh.

Particularly at this stage, with the Awami League (AL) in their third consecutive term, and its democratic legitimacy being challenged, the AL government does not welcome open criticism of the party and its wings.

We want to stress that the dynamics in student politics cannot be allocated to one specific party but are part of larger historical legacies and political trajectories of nation-state formation. This report is not a critique of any one party but a general overview of the functioning of student politics in contemporary Bangladesh. The behavior of the specific parties is given predominance

8 based instead on the current and historical

influence they have/had in student politics.

It is important to note that the predominance of different parties—giving support to their own student group—has varied at different points in time. While AL is dominant now, previously it was e.g. BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami—

the latter the main Islamist party in Bangladesh—during their rule from 2001 to 2006.