Last Friday, 8th of February, 2013, thousands of people started to gather since morning in Shahbagh's Projonmo Chottor (Generation Square) in solidarity with bloggers and online activists’ ongoing protests. On 3:00PM the mass gathering in Bangladesh capital Dhaka started with singing the national anthem. It is really hard to tell how many people gathered for peaceful protests on that day. Many opined that almost 200,000 people joined in solidarity with the protest for stricter punishment of the war criminals. The Bloggers and online activists Network has been leading these protests continuously since last Tuesday. Many students, teahcers, freedom fighters, civil society leaders and families of the war martyrs joined this protest.

The protesters are sharing their demands and news of different protest events via an informative website titled Shahbag.org. In that site they are also informing about protests across the world in solidarity with their demands. People can get updates following Twitter hashtags #Shahbagh and #Shahbag. Different Facebook pages such as Shahbag Movement and Shahbag Square are sharing breaking news, pictures, opinions and videos. The protests in Shahbag are also being livestreamed intermittently which you can watch. The latest addition is a streaming radio broadcasting the speaches and slogans live.

Below you can find some pictures from the events of Friday. All pictures were taken by Arif Hossain Sayeed and used with permission.

Children participating in a Mass signature petition event.

The protesting crowd's demand “We want capital punishment”

The protesting crowd's demand “We want capital punishment”

An old lady joining the protests

Agitation by the protesting crowd

Protests against poor coverage in international media.

girls in a sit-in protest

protests continued at night

Slogans – The fight will go on

Slogans and placards against war criminals

Innovative protests

Protesting Crowd

Slogan of Protesting Crowd

Children among the crowd

Children also participated in protest

Huge crowd at the protest