At least five people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation’s capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota scheme, local media reports said, quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka, the capital, remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons. The clashes spread at Jahangirnagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters, some supporting the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up to 30 per cent of government jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and that government jobs should be merit-based. Some even said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Armed activists of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League, along with its associated student wings, took to the streets nationwide on Tuesday to counter protesters demanding the removal of the quota system in government jobs.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh’s private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as “freedom fighters” — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971, regardless of their current political ideologies.
Dozens injured
Protesters gathered in front of the university’s official residence of the vice-chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party, of attacking their “peaceful protests.” All of the major political parties in Bangladesh have active student wings across the South Asian country.
According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters. But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country’s leading English-language newspaper, Daily Star, that they fired tear gas and “blank rounds” as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangirnagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 people suffered pellet wounds.
Protesters also blocked railways and some highways across the country on Tuesday, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas, vowing to continue demonstrations that began Monday until their demands were met.
Swapon, a protester and student at the University of Dhaka who only gave his first name, said they want the “rational reformation of the quota scheme.” He said after studying for six years, if he can’t find a job, “it will cause me and my family to suffer.”
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gain.
The veterans’ quota scheme was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh’s High Court annulled the decision and reinstated the scheme, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court’s order for four weeks, and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
Protests on heels of disputed election
The quota scheme also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have only protested against jobs reserved for veterans’ families.
Prime Minister Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country’s main opposition party and its allies due to her refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election. Several opposition politicians were jailed in the run-up on grounds supporters say were politically motivated.
Hasina’s party favours keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated, along with most of his family members, in a military coup in 1975.
In 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which shared power with the BNP, openly opposed the independence war and formed groups that helped the Pakistani military fight pro-independence forces.
During the most recent election, BNP leader and Hasina arch-rival Khaleda Zia was under house arrest on corruption charges that her supporters reject. Zia was prime minister between 2001 and 2006.
