Dhaka: Bangladesh on Sunday tightened a nationwide curfew and ordered a shutdown of mobile Internet services for the second time in three weeks as renewed protests over the weekend led to at least 50 deaths.
The curfew, starting at 6pm local time, will continue until further notice, according to the home ministry.
The measures were imposed after a new wave of violence on Sunday, where protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina clashed with pro-government supporters.
The confrontations led to 50 deaths across 13 districts on Sunday, according to the Prothom Alo newspaper.
On Sunday, a group set vehicles on fire at a government-run medical university and hospital near the Shahbag square, a popular demonstration site in the capital. Most shops are shut and public transport disappeared from Dhaka streets as the violence spread.
The protesters also launched a disobedience movement, urged citizens to withhold tax or utility bills and asked overseas workers to stop sending remittances home, as part of the nationwide campaign to pressure Hasina and her cabinet to step down.
The ruling Awami League and its supporters held marches across the country on Sunday, seeking to maintain their position against the protesters, according to the party’s General Secretary Obaidul Quader.
Why protests are happening?
The unrest stemmed from a controversial government jobs quota system, and demonstrations forced authorities to impose a curfew as well as a near-complete blackout of the mobile Internet for 11 straight days in July.
Those protests left some 200 people dead.
Curfews and the Internet shutdown is estimated to have a $10 billion impact on the economy with costs expected to climb further, Zaved Akhtar, president of the Foreign Investors’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said late last month. The FCCI represents investors from 35 countries.
Hasina has offered to meet protest coordinators and ordered the release of detained students as crowds swarmed streets across Dhaka on Saturday. “My doors are open. I want to sit with protesters and listen to them. I don’t want any conflict,” she said.
What triggered the protests?
The initial spark for the unrest was a High Court decision on a quota system for awarding government jobs. The system, created in 1972, the year after Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan, allocated 30 per cent of government positions to the descendants of “freedom fighters,” or those who fought on the side of liberation.
That system remained in place until 2018, when widespread protests prompted the courts to abolish it.
But on June 5 of this year, the High Court reversed that decision, clearing the way for the system’s reinstatement.
Opposition parties and other critics have argued that such quotas unfairly benefit the descendants of pro-government supporters and are aimed at fostering loyalty within the bureaucracy and perpetuating the power of the ruling Awami League.
The discontent is fuelled by a broader perception that there are limited opportunities for merit-based public sector jobs and a belief that some Bangladeshis game the system by obtaining fraudulent freedom fighter credentials.
On July 21, perhaps in part to quell the growing unrest, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court ruled that only five per cent of government jobs should be allocated for freedom fighters’ descendants.
The protesters, however, were not placated.
On July 22, Students Against Discrimination, the student group behind the protests, announced a 48-hour suspension of their demonstrations (which it subsequently extended another 48 hours) to allow the government to meet a new set of demands. These included a personal apology by Hasina for the protesters’ deaths; the arrest or resignation of law enforcement agents or government or university officials implicated in the crackdown; and compensation for the victims and their families.
On July 30, after Hasina ignored the students’ ultimatum, the students re-started their protests against the “mass killings, arrests, attacks, and disappearances of students and people.”
