Dhaka:

Bangladesh soldiers patrolled the deserted streets of the capital Dhaka on Saturday and set up roadblocks during a curfew meant to quell deadly students-led protests against government job quotas that have killed at least 110 people this week.

Internet and text message services have been suspended since Thursday, cutting the nation off from the rest of the world as police cracked down on protests that have continued despite a ban on public gatherings.

Overseas telephone calls mostly failed to connect while websites of Bangladesh-based media organisations did not update and their social media handles remained inactive.

“To take a country of nearly 170 million people off the Internet is a drastic step, one we haven’t seen the likes of since the Egyptian revolution of 2011,” said John Heidemann, chief scientist of the networking and cybersecurity division at USC Viterbi’s Information Sciences Institute.

In addition to the deaths, the clashes have injured thousands, according to data from hospitals across Bangladesh. The Dhaka Medical College Hospital received 27 dead bodies between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. (1100-1200 GMT) on Friday.

For five days police have fired tear gas and hurled sound grenades to scatter protesters as demonstrators clashed with security personnel, throwing bricks and igniting vehicles.

The demonstrations – the biggest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected for a fourth successive term this year – have also been fuelled by high unemployment among young people, who make up nearly a fifth of the South Asian nation’s 170 million people.

With the death count climbing and police and other security forces unable to contain the protests, Hasina’s government imposed a national curfew and deployed the military.

The curfew was eased for two hours from noon on Saturday to allow people to shop for supplies and complete other chores, television channels reported. It will last until 10 a.m. (0400 GMT) on Sunday, when the government will assess the situation and decide the next course of action, the reports added.

Those venturing out on the streets had their identification cards inspected by army personnel at different check points, TV footage showed. Troops set up roadblocks and bunkers using sandbags across strategic locations of Dhaka, the centre of the anti-quota protests.

The nationwide unrest broke out over student anger against the controversial quotas for government jobs, including 30% for the families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan.

Hasina’s government had scrapped the quota system in 2018, but a court reinstated it last month. The state appealed against the reinstatement and the Supreme Court suspended it for a month, pending a hearing on Aug. 7.

In the central Dhaka district of Narsingdi, protesters stormed a jail on Friday, freeing over 850 inmates and setting fire to the facility, TV channels reported, citing police. Scattered incidents of arson were also reported on Saturday in some parts of the country.

Hasina dropped plans to leave on Sunday for diplomatic visits to Spain and Brazil due to the protests, the office of Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud said.

Many opposition party leaders, activists and student protesters had been arrested, said Tarique Rahman, the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Police arrested Nahid Islam, a leading coordinator of the students’ agitation, at 2 a.m. on Saturday, the protesters said in a text message.

Reuters could not independently confirm the arrests.

Neighbouring India said nearly 1,000 Indian students have returned home through various land ports and flights since the violence began.

International rights groups have criticised the internet suspension and actions of security forces. The European Union said it is deeply concerned by the violence and loss of life.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Students and job aspirants hold placards during a protest in Dhaka demanding the reinstatement of the Bangladesh government circular published in 2018 that abolished the quota system in government services.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Thousands of Bangladeshi university students threw roadblocks across key highways on July 7, demanding the end of “discriminatory” quotas for coveted government jobs, including reserving posts for children of liberation heroes.

Students in almost all major universities took part, demanding a merit-based system for well-paid and massively over-subscribed civil service jobs.

“It’s a do-or-die situation for us,” protest coordinator Nahidul Islam told AFP, during marches at Dhaka University.

“Quotas are a discriminatory system,” the 26-year-old added. “The system has to be reformed”.

The current system reserves more than half of posts, totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs.

That includes 30 percent reserved for children of those who fought to win Bangladeshi independence in 1971, 10% for women, and 10% set aside for specific districts.

Students said only those quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled people – 6% of jobs – should remain.

Critics say the system benefits children of pro-government groups, who back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s founding leader.

Ms. Hasina, 76, won her fourth consecutive general election in January, in a vote without genuine opposition parties, with a widespread boycott and a major crackdown against her political opponents.

Critics accuse Bangladeshi courts of rubber-stamping decisions made by her government.

The system was initially abolished after weeks of student protests in 2018.

But in June, Dhaka’s High Court rolled that back, saying the cancellation had been invalid.

Wasting their time

Ms. Hasina has condemned the protests, saying the matter had been settled by the court.

“Students are wasting their time,” Ms. Hasina told female activists from her party on Sunday, Bangladeshi newspapers reported.

“After the court’s verdict, there is no justification for the anti-quota movement.”

Protests began earlier in July and have grown in size.

“We will bury the quota system”, students chanted on Sunday in Bangladesh’s second city Chittagong, where hundreds of protesters marched.

In Dhaka, hundreds of students disrupted traffic for hours, police said.

At the elite Jahangirnagar University, at least 500 students blocked the highway connecting the capital with southeastern Bangladesh “for two hours”, local police chief A.F.M. Shahed told AFP.

Bin Yamin Molla, a protest leader, said at least 30,000 students participated in the protests, although the number could not be verified.

Bangladesh was one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence in 1971, but it has grown an average of more than six percent each year since 2009.

Hasina has presided over that breakneck economic growth, with per capita income in the country of 170 million people overtaking India in 2021.

But much of that growth has been on the back of the mostly female factory workforce powering its garment export industry, and economists say there is an acute crisis of jobs for millions of university students.