DHAKA -- Bangladeshi authorities Saturday eased security around one of the capital Dhaka's most prominent memorials after trying to stop gatherings there amid student unrest.

Students and other Dhaka residents were allowed to enter the Bengali language martyrs' memorial after police barricades were moved away, witnesses said. However, police were posted nearby in case of trouble.

The memorial on Dhaka University's campus is dedicated to seven people who died in a 1952 protest for the use of the Bengali language in what was then part of Pakistan. The site, known as Shaheed Minar, is popular for public rallies.

Police and paramilitary forces have sealed off roads to the memorial for more than two weeks, turning away potential rallies, after violence at Dhaka University and the nearby Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) that left 200 people injured, AFP reported.

The schools were shut down after the protests.

Buet was due to reopen Saturday and Dhaka University in October.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's government has said the government was trying to preserve the sanctity of the memorial.

"There is no ban on going to the Shaheed Minar," local government Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan told the ***Prothom Alo*** daily.

But the "siege" has been criticized by main opposition leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who Thursday said she was giving the government three days to withdraw forces from the memorial.

A group of retired judges, teachers, journalists artists and students has planned to hold a rally at the site Tuesday to defy the heavy security. A spokesman for the "Citizens Group" said the protest would go on and that no permission would be sought.

"In the past 50 years we did not need permission, why should we take it now?" the spokesman said.

The memorial was established in the early 1960s and rebuilt after being bombed by the Pakistani army during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence.