At least 5 killed in fresh Bangladesh student protests amid telecoms disruptions
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Anti-quota supporters clashing with police and Awami League supporters at the Rampura area in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 18, 2024.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
NEW DELHI – At least five people died in Bangladesh on July 19 in fresh protests against quotas for government jobs, as telecoms links were widely disrupted and TV news channels went off the air.
The authorities had cut some mobile telephone services the previous day to try to quell the unrest
The government offered no immediate comment on the severed communications, but the new protests defied its order barring all public meetings and processions indefinitely after dozens were killed in violence this week.
“I call upon all leaders, activists, and common people... to stand by these tender-hearted students, provide them with all support, and carry this movement forward,” Mr Tarique Rahman, the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), posted on X.
Many opposition party leaders, activists, and student protesters had been arrested in a bid to give “political colour” to the movement, he added, but Reuters could not verify his statement about the arrests.
Five people were killed in clashes on July 19, Inspector Bacchu Mia at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s police outpost told AFP.
The English-language website of Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo said train services had been suspended nationwide as protesters blocked roads and threw bricks at security officials.
Police fired tear gas to scatter protesters in some areas, Reuters journalists said, as security forces and protesters swarmed capital Dhaka, where there was little traffic on July 19, a weekly holiday in the Muslim-majority nation.
The nationwide agitation, the biggest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected in 2024, has been fuelled by high unemployment among young people, who make up nearly a fifth of a population of 170 million.
But some analysts say the violence is now also being driven by wider economic woes, such as high inflation, growing unemployment and shrinking reserves of foreign exchange.
The protests have opened old and sensitive political fault lines between those who fought for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 and those accused of collaborating with Islamabad.
The former include the Awami League party of Ms Hasina, who branded the protesters “razakar”, using a term that described independence-era collaborators.
Telecoms disrupted, websites hacked
Internet and overseas telephone calls were crippled on July 19, while the websites of several Bangladesh newspapers did not update and were also inactive on social media.
A few voice calls went through, but there was no mobile data or broadband, a Reuters journalist said, adding that even text messages were not being transmitted.
News TV channels and state broadcaster BTV went off the air, although entertainment channels were operating as normal, he said.
Some news channels displayed a message blaming technical problems, and promising to resume programming soon.
But there were no flight disruptions at the main international airport, aviation website Flightradar24 showed.
The official websites of the central bank, the prime minister’s office and police appeared to have been hacked by a group calling itself “THE R3SISTANC3”.
“Operation HuntDown, Stop Killing Students” read identical messages splashed on the sites, adding in crimson letters: “It’s not a protest anymore, it’s a war now.”
Another message on the page read: “The government has shut down the internet to silence us and hide their actions.”
This week’s unrest has killed at least 50 people, according to an AFP count of victims reported by hospitals.
Protesters want the government to stop setting aside 30 per cent of government jobs for the families of those who fought for independence from Pakistan.
Bangladesh’s Supreme Court, which has set an Aug 7 date to hear an appeal by Ms Hasina’s government against a high court order in June to reinstate the quota system scrapped in 2018, has suspended the lower court’s order until the hearing.
On July 18, the government said it was willing to hold talks with the protesters, but they refused, saying, “Discussions and opening fire do not go hand in hand.”
Reeling from the ripple effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, Bangladesh received a US$4.7 billion (S$6.3 billion) bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in January 2023.
In June, it got immediate access to IMF loans of about US$928 million for economic support and about US$220 million to fight climate change. REUTERS, AFP
