A grievance of Bangladeshi students led to police brutality that killed students and a nationwide strike; the group has threatened to protest again in the same style if its leaders are not released by Sunday.
The violence of the last week claimed at least 205 lives as per the sources of police and different hospitals, making it one of the most severe crises during the tenure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Still, there has been a curfew, army patrols, and thousands of protesters arrested across the country as well as several student leaders.
Student Against Discrimination the group behind the campaign to remove the civil service job quotas said they will suspend their protest if their demands are not met within a week. From hiding Abdul Hannan Masud said that if their leaders, including Nahid Islam, are not released and all charges against them withdrawn, they will continue their activities. He also demanded that those who killed protesters should also be brought to book.
Islam and two other senior members of the police were abducted by plain-clothed detectives from a hospital in Dhaka Friday. Islam had been receiving treatment for any physical ordeal that he underwent during his previous detention and had been afraid for his own life. The home minister said that they were arrested to prevent them from being eliminated but did not reveal if they had been officially arrested or not.
Police claimed more student activists were apprehension; at least 9,000 were detained as the protest escalated. Thus, despite the curfew still being active, it has been relaxed, which may be seen as the government confidently exercising its power to bring order back into people’s lives.
Khalid Maqbool called on the international body to help resolve the issue, while Telecommunications Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak said the mobile internet network will restored later on Sunday, after being cut during the 11-day unrest. Fixed-line broadband connections were restored earlier, but based on the current statistics, the majority of the country’s 141 million Internet users use mobile devices.
The demonstrations stemmed from the issue of reimplementation of a quota system for government jobs that gives over fifty percent of them to specific groups which only aggravated an existing severe youth unemployment in Bangladesh. Opponents claim that the quota system benefits ones that are closely aligned to the ruling party, which is the Awami League. However, the SC diluted the quota system to its favor by cutting out many of the designated seats, however, the protesters wanted complete removal of the quotas.
Marches had been mostly uninterrupted till escalated by the police and students affiliated to the administration last week on the protestors.