Thousands of students in Bangladesh have taken to the streets over the past few weeks to demand an overhaul of how public sector jobs are distributed. The government had sought to reintroduce quotas that reserve 30% of these jobs for descendants of veterans from Bangladesh’s war of independence with Pakistan in 1971. The quotas, which had initially been scrapped in 2018, are widely regarded as unfair and discriminatory.
The protests started out peacefully on university campuses, but they quickly spread beyond campus grounds and turned violent. Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina deployed the police and military to control the protests, and has now imposed an indefinite national curfew. The country is also facing a communications blackout after the government blocked internet and social media access to disrupt the organisation of the protests.
The violence has led to the deaths of at least 174 people and the arrest of around 2,500 students and political activists. The US and the UN have called for “restraint from all sides” and India has advised its residents living in the country to “avoid travel and minimise their movement outside their living premises”.
