Police imposed a strict curfew with a “shoot-on-sight” order across Bangladesh after 133 people were killed in nationwide civil unrest.
The deadly clashes between police and university students were sparked by the future of civil service hiring rules, on which the country’s top court is due to rule on Sunday (21).
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in Bangladesh yesterday ruled that only a small share of government jobs can be allocated to relatives of veterans who fought in the country’s war of independence. The rest must be allocated upon merit.
Soldiers patrolled parts of Dhaka on Saturday (20) after the protests snowballed into some of the worst in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure. Not only students, but other citizens have also joined in demanding the resignation of the government.
The military has now taken over after riot Police failed to quell the unrest, which started as being against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs. Bangladesh has also been under an internet blackout since July 18, drastically restricting the flow of information to the outside world.
The reason behind the unrest, the civil service jobs allocation system reserves more than half of the posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan. Critics have time and again pointed out that these quotas benefit those loyal to Hasina, who has ruled the country since 2009.
The 76-year-old leader won her fourth consecutive term in January after a vote without genuine opposition. Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to become more powerful and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists. The quota system reserves up to 30 per cent of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in the 1971 war. It is a source of resentment among the youth, who are facing an acute job crisis in a country unable to provide adequate employment opportunities to its population of 170 million. The demonstrations mainly by student groups started weeks ago.
In 2018, the government halted the quotas following mass student protests. But, in June, Bangladesh’s High Court nullified that decision and reinstated the system after relatives of 1971 veterans filed petitions. The Supreme Court suspended the ruling, pending an appeal hearing. (News18)
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