Students Hold Symbolic ‘Funeral March’ for Road Safety

At the foot of the Raju sculpture at Dhaka University, students led a 'march' with a coffin to commemorate those killed in traffic accidents and implement the nine-point demand for safe roads.

Students took part in the demonstration on Sunday (December 5) at noon. To make the movement meaningful and to express the brutality and cruelty of death on the road, the students placed in front of them a white cloth and a coffin wrapped around the flag of Bangladesh.

Among the nine-point demands of the agitating students are to ensure safe roads across the country, half fare for students across the country on roads, waterways and railways, ensure the safety of women in public transport, stop harassment of students on buses, ensure fair justice for road accidents and accidents and compensate to the victims' family.

At the time, State University student Injamul Haque Ramim said the student-friendly environment had not yet been created. The procession of corpses on the road does not seem to stop. We will continue to demand safe roads and half-pass for students until our demands are met. Half pass only eligible for students of Dhaka city is discriminatory. We demand the government to provide half-fare in rail, bus and launch for students across the country.

Mozammel Haque, a student in the Department of Political Science at Dhaka University, said, "We are here today with this symbolic body as a symbol of the procession of corpses on the road where 18 to 20 people are dying every day."

The agitating students also said, "We are almost facing police obstruction in making safe road movement." We feel that they are preventing us from carrying out these programs in order to perpetuate the ongoing corruption of the police on the roads.

At the end of the demonstration, the students announced the next program to speed up their programs by lighting candles and singing protest songs at the central Shaheed Minar tomorrow at 6 pm.