Bangladesh Declares Curfew As Anti-Government Protests Escalate

By Kamran Reza Chowdhury and Ahammad Foyez

Bangladesh’s government declared a curfew and will deploy the army nationwide to restore order, the home minister said Friday, as authorities struggled to end days of chaotic protests sparked by a divisive quota system for government jobs.

The violence is the deadliest to strike Bangladesh in more than a decade. BenarNews has confirmed67 deaths on Friday, most of them in the capital, based on information from hospitals. Since the protests began, 99 have been killed and thousands injured.

The army will “help the civil administration to manage the situation,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters. During the curfew, there will be a two-hour window from noon to 2 p.m. for public movement, he said.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, meanwhile, canceled a trip to Spain next week because of the “unprecedented situation,” her office told BenarNews.

University students have clashedfor dayswith security forces and government supporters. Government buildings have been set ablaze, major roads blocked and normal daily life has shuddered to a halt.

Opposition party elements also have joined the fray, according to a prominent Bangladeshi academic, widening the crisis.

The internet has been shut down in Bangladesh since Thursday, mobile communications are slowed to a crawl and hackers have disrupted government websites. The United Nations has called for restraint on both sides and accountability for attacks on students.

“The deployment of the army on the street is an acknowledgement of the failure of the government to contain the situation,” said Ali Riaz, a Bangladesh scholar at Illinois State University.

“Civil administration has failed,” he told BenarNews.

Quota protests

The protests began earlier this month after the country’s High Court in June reinstated a quota that reserves 30% of civil service jobs for relatives of those who fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war. Critics of the quota say it only benefits supporters of Hasina’s ruling Awami League.

“After studying so hard, why don’t I get a chance,” a female student said in a BenarNews video.

“I was on the waiting list but didn’t get the chance. Another one was hired under the freedom fighter quota,” she said, as hundreds of protestors milled behind her on a Dhaka street while smoke billowed from nearby fires.

“It was OK for the first generation. But why should it continue for more generations,” she said.

Protesters have not been appeased by the government’s offers of concessions or its apparent confidence that the country’s top court will overrule the lower court. Student leaders are now demanding justice for dozens of people killed in unrest this week.

Unemployment concerns

Bangladesh, a developing nation home to about 170 million people, has struggled to provide enough jobs for its burgeoning youth population, making the civil service quota a readily combustible source of discontent. Nearly 40% of 15- to 24-year-olds in Bangladesh – about 12.2 million people – are neither students nor employed, according to official data.

“The students’ demands are logical,” said Imtiaz Ahmed, a retired professor of international relations at the University of Dhaka.

“The government belatedly announced that they support reform. If they told it seven days before, the agitation would not be at this stage,” he told BenarNews.

“As happened in the past, the opposition parties have intruded into the movement, to unseat the Awami League. This movement is now not in the hands of students,” he said.

In Dhaka on Friday, a BenarNews journalist witnessed a large deployment of border guards and elite police units, using bullets, tear gas and sound grenades as they clashed with students.

The journalist saw border guards shoot three youths near his home as protesters vandalized a government office nearby and burned its furnishings in the street.

About a dozen government buildings in Dhaka were on fire, according to the BenarNews reporter.

People stormed a jail in the central district of Narsingdi and freed “hundreds” of inmates before setting fire to the facility, jail officials told BenarNews.

A group calling itself "THE R3SISTANC3” hacked the websites of the prime minister’s office, central bank and police.

“Operation HuntDown, Stop Killing Students,” and “It’s not a protest anymore, it’s a war now,” read identical messages displayed on the hacked sites.

On Friday, the United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk called the attacks on student protesters “shocking and unacceptable.”

“There must be impartial, prompt and exhaustive investigations into these attacks, and those responsible held to account,” he saidin a statement.