Bangladeshi students are protesting government job quotas
According to police, violent fights between supporters of Bangladesh’s ruling party and demonstrators opposing job quotas for coveted government jobs have injured at least 100 people. The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service positions, amounting to hundreds of thousands of government employment, for specified groups, notably children of warriors in the country’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan.
According to police, violent fights between supporters of Bangladesh’s ruling party and demonstrators opposing job quotas for coveted government jobs have injured at least 100 people. The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service positions, amounting to hundreds of thousands of government employment, for specified groups, notably children of warriors in the country’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan.
According to critics, the System facilitates the offspring of pro-government groups that assist Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who gained her fourth consecutive term in a boycotted opposition election final January.
The quotas had been temporarily suspended via Bangladesh’s pinnacle courtroom last week, but protesters have threatened to continue their demonstrations until the quantities of this system they oppose are completely eliminated.
Hundreds of anti-quota demonstrators and students who support the ruling Awami League party engaged in hours-long violence on the Dhaka University campus on Monday, according to witnesses and police. They threw rocks, fought with sticks, and beat each other with iron rods. Some launched petrol bombs, while others wielded machetes, according to witnesses quoted by the AFP news agency. “They fought with sticks and hurled rocks at one another,” Mostajirur Rahman, a police official, told AFP. 26-year-old injured student Shahinur Shumi claimed the demonstrators were caught off guard.
