Dhaka: Bangladeshi troops were deployed on the streets to enforce a nationwide curfew on Saturday, after more than 100 people were killed in clashes between police and students protesting government job quotas.
The curfew follows a communications blackout that has cut off 170 million in the country from the rest of the world. Television channels were down and most local news websites were down after the government shut down internet services a day earlier.
“Army members will assist the civil administration under the direction of district administrators and city commissioners,” Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Kamal told Arab News.
In the capital, the military joined riot police and thousands of border guard personnel as the Dhaka Metropolitan Police banned all gatherings amid mounting casualties.
The students have been protesting since early July against a rule that largely reserves government jobs for children of those who fought in the country's 1971 liberation war.
According to calculations based on local media reports, at least 103 people have been killed and thousands injured in the past five days. At least 44 people were killed in Dhaka alone on Friday, amid intense clashes between protesters, government supporters and security forces.
A security analyst, Air Commodore (retd) Ishfaq Elahi Chaudhary, told Arab News that the nationwide military-backed curfew and the level of violence across the country was “something unprecedented”.
He was referring to reports of arson in several administrative offices and vandalism of government vehicles on Friday. On Thursday, the headquarters of the state-owned television station was set on fire.
“We have not seen such vandalism before in a country where many important government establishments have been vandalized and set on fire,” Chowdhury said.
The government scrapped the controversial quota system in 2018 after student protests, but the High Court reinstated it in June, prompting protests.
The appeal is expected to be heard in the Supreme Court on Sunday morning.
Under the quota system, 56 percent of public service jobs are reserved for specific groups, including women, marginalized communities and children and grandchildren of freedom fighters — for whom the government earmarks 30 percent of the posts.
These quotas, which reserve millions of government jobs, directly kill the youth.
The country's unemployment rate is highest among people between the ages of 15 and 29 – more than a quarter of Bangladesh's population – who account for 83 percent of the total unemployed.
