Around 5 p.m. last Sunday, hundreds of people stormed St. Gregory’s High School and College in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.
The mob injured two staff members at the school gate before ransacking classrooms, a teachers’ meeting room, and the principal’s office.
Photos showed textbooks strewn across floors, plant pots smashed to pieces, cracked windows, and metal filing cabinets ripped open.
Why did a mob rampage through the Catholic school? What’s the context? And what’s the outlook for the future?
What happened?
St. Gregory’s High School, founded in 1882 when Dhaka was part of British India, is one of Bangladesh’s most prestigious educational institutions.
The private Catholic school, established by the Belgian Benedictine Fr. Gregory De Groote, has educated future poets, professional cricketers, chess grandmasters, prime ministers, presidents, and Nobel Prize winners. Alumni are known as Gregorians.
Following the partition of India in 1947, the school found itself in East Pakistan, which declared independence in 1971 and became Bangladesh. Amid the war of independence, Pakistani soldiers killed two St. Gregory’s High School teachers, as well as others associated with the school.
In a Nov. 24 statement, the school said it was attacked in the late afternoon by hundreds of “miscreants” who vandalized its buildings. Students and parents quickly arrived at the school and “helped bring the situation under control.” They were followed by police and military forces, who restored order.
Dhaka’s Archbishop Bejoy D’Cruze told Crux that the attack’s perpetrators were students, protesting in the streets of Dhaka after the death of a classmate at a local hospital, which they accused of negligence.
The students noticed pupils from St. Gregory’s, assumed they were supporting the hospital, and attacked them, the archbishop said. The mob then entered the school and ransacked it.
D’Cruze suggested the school had been “indirectly drawn into” the unrest. But he also seemed to acknowledge some vandals might have specifically targeted the institution.
“We have limitations on the number of students we can admit to our educational institutions, and this causes us to be targeted,” he told Crux. “Our educational institutions serve the majority population, which is nearly 85%. Christian students are very, very few.”
School principal Br. Placid Peter Rebeiro, C.S.C., meanwhile, described the incident as “a premeditated assault,” according to Asia News.
In a Nov. 25 message, he announced the school would be closed until further notice amid a clean-up operation. The same day, the school said it was postponing an admissions lottery for 2025 entrants.
What’s the context?
Bangladesh’s 173 million-strong population is overwhelmingly Muslim. There are roughly half a million Christians, accounting for around 0.3% of the population.
Most of the Christians — approximately 400,000 — are Catholic. Despite its minority status, Catholicism occupies a notable place within Bangladeshi society thanks to Church schools and health centers.
Despite lifting more than 25 million people out of poverty since 2000, Bangladesh remains one of Asia’s poorest and most corrupt nations. It is also one of the world’s most natural disaster-prone countries.
According to the advocacy group Open Doors, Bangladesh is the 26th worst country in which to be a Christian.
“Any churches that actively evangelize among the Muslim majority face persecution — but even historical denominations like the Roman Catholic Church are increasingly targeted by death threats and attacks,” Open Doors said in its 2024 World Watch List report.
This year has been particularly turbulent for Bangladeshis. In July, the country saw a student-led mass uprising that prompted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India. An interim government, led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, is struggling to get the country back on its feet.
Amid the uprising, there were reports of attacks on religious minorities, especially Hindus, stoking anxiety among the country’s non-Muslims.
Dhaka continues to see clashes involving large groups of students. In recent days, students from three educational institutions — Dr. Mahbubur Rahman Mollah College, Shaheed Suhrawardy College, and Kabi Nazrul College — were involved in running battles.
Students from Mollah College took to the streets Nov. 24 following the death of their classmate Avijit Hawlader, who died after receiving what they considered wrong treatment at Dhaka National Medical College. Students gathered outside of the hospital, vandalizing the entrance. They also reportedly targeted Shaheed Suhrawardy College.
The following day, Shaheed Suhrawardy College students armed with sticks raided Mollah College in revenge, joined by members of the affiliated Kabi Nazrul College. Almost every window in the 12-story Mollah College building was broken in the attack.
Law enforcement eventually dispersed the students, but tensions remain high.
