Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Hey, I'm Tamara Kondokar.

I'm a producer with the take, back with another take, where we resurfaced stories from our archives.

Last summer, student-led protests broke out across Bangladesh over a quota system for government

jobs.

But when the government responded with violent force, what started out as a demand for reform

quickly became something much bigger, a movement demanding the end of 15 years of rule by

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. After three bloody weeks of demonstrations, the protesters got their

wish. Hasina stepped down and fled to India. Almost a year later, in one of a number of phone call recordings from last July,

featured in a new documentary and podcast from Al Jazeera Investigates,

Hasina can be heard saying she's given police the orders to use lethal weapons against protesters

and to shoot wherever they find them.

However, her party, the Awami League, denies the authenticity of the recordings.

They say Hasina has never used the phrase lethal weapons

and that she didn't specifically authorize the security forces to use lethal force.

Today we're going back to the beginning of the student protests when the crackdown was

unfolding. This episode is about how the protests began, what the students were demanding,

and how years of authoritarian rule had set the stage for the explosion of dissent.

It originally aired July 23rd, 2024.

All dates and references are from that time.

Today, what sparked the deadly student protests in Bangladesh?

Literally, the whole city is paralyzed, is very tense from the violence from several universities across the country.

...