DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladesh observed a day of mourning on Tuesday to remember the more than 200 people killed in recent weeks in violence that resulted from student protests against the South Asian country's quota system for government jobs.
After weeks of peaceful protests by students demanding a change in the system – which reserves 30 percent of government jobs for the families of veterans and freedom fighters from the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan – violence broke out on July 15 when activists from the student wing of the ruling party attacked protesters. Security officials opened fire and tried to quell the violence with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The quota protests have posed the biggest challenge to the Bangladeshi government since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won her fourth consecutive election in January, which was boycotted by main opposition groups.
The ruling Awami League party and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have often accused each other of fomenting political chaos and violence, most recently in the run-up to elections that were marred by a crackdown on several opposition politicians.
Government officials – including those in the Bangladesh Secretariat, the highest office where most of the country's ministers and officials work – wore black badges on Tuesday to commemorate those killed in the violence.
Bangladesh is slowly returning to normality after the strict curfew was relaxed in recent days. Authorities also asked all mosques, temples and other religious institutions to organize special prayers for the dead on Tuesday.
Later on Tuesday, Hasina visited a government hospital in the capital Dhaka where many injured people were being treated. She urged hospital authorities to ensure the best possible care.
Also on Tuesday, members of 31 cultural groups attempted to hold a procession in downtown Dhaka to condemn those killed in the violence, but police prevented them from doing so. No violence was reported as singers and other activists took to the streets and protests continued peacefully despite a tight police cordon.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan put the total death toll at 150, while the country's leading Bengali-language daily, Prothom Alo, said 211 people had been killed and thousands more injured since the violence broke out on July 15.
According to media reports, around 10,000 people have been arrested in the past two weeks in connection with clashes during protests and other attacks on state property. Human rights groups called for an end to the arbitrary arrests and critics accused the government of using excessive force to contain the violence.
“The mass arrests and arbitrary detentions of protesting students are a witch hunt by the authorities to silence anyone who dares to challenge the government and a means of further perpetuating a climate of fear,” Smriti Singh, Amnesty International's South Asia regional director, said in a statement on Monday.
“Reports suggest that these arrests are purely political in retaliation for the exercise of human rights,” Singh said.
The government defended its position by saying that the arrests were based on specific charges and that video surveillance footage had been reviewed and evidence presented.
Six of the protest coordinators held in custody by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Criminal Investigation Department released a statement calling off the protests, but other protesters rejected the video statement, saying it was coerced.
They say they will continue protesting until all their demands are met, including a public apology from Prime Minister Hasina.
Police said the six coordinators were taken into custody for their safety and their families met them on Monday. A video was released showing the six having a meal with Dhaka Criminal Investigation Department chief Harun-or-Rashid.
Human rights activists called for the six to be released so they can return to their families.
The protesters do not have a single leader, although the movement has several coordinators across the country. A press release attributed to one of the coordinators, Abdul Hannan Masooud, called for protests outside educational institutions, courts and main roads on Wednesday. The press release could not be independently verified.
Also on Tuesday, Bangladesh's Law Minister Anisul Huq said the government would ban the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir. Hasina and several other cabinet ministers have accused the party and its student wing of playing a role in the violence during the student protests.
Huq said the ruling 14-party alliance led by the Awami League had decided that the Jamaat-e-Islami party and its student wing should be formally banned on Wednesday. Details of the ban were not immediately clear.
The party was a government partner of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party under former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, Hasina's arch-rival, from 2001 to 2006. The party had actively fought for the Pakistani military and against the creation of an independent Bangladesh in 1971.
Protesters said the 30 percent quota was discriminatory and favored supporters of Hasina, whose Awami League party led the independence movement. They demanded that the quota be replaced with a merit-based system.
On July 21, the Supreme Court ordered the 1971 quota for war veterans to be reduced to 5 percent. 93 percent of the remaining civil service positions would then be filled on a merit-based basis, while the remaining 2 percent would be reserved for ethnic minorities, transgender people and people with disabilities. Two days later, the government accepted the ruling and promised to implement it.
The status of the 1971 war veterans remains a controversial issue in Bangladesh because the quota also applied to women raped by Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators during the war of independence – and their children. These women were recognized as “freedom fighters” because of the torture they endured. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina's father, is Bangladesh's independence leader.
Both broadband and mobile data services were restored on Tuesday after a days-long internet outage, but social media platforms such as Facebook remained blocked. Banks and offices opened under a relaxed curfew. Schools and other educational institutions remained closed, with no opening date set, as police continued to grapple with protesters.
