After waging a brutal struggle for job quota reform, Bangladeshi students now demand justice for those who fought for change.

By Regina Johnson

After weeks of violent protests where nearly 200 protestors were killed and an estimated 2,500 were arrested, some calm has returned to the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, following the Supreme Court ruling on quota reform.

The Supreme Court ruled on 21 July that only 7% of civil service jobs would be reserved for the quota instead of nearly 60%.

Following the court’s decision, Students Against Discrimination, who organised the protest, issued a 48 hour moratorium on activities on 22 July. It is unknown if the organisation is going to extend that decision or restart protests.

The government has eased curfew restrictions allowing citizens to go out for seven hours a day. Offices, factories and shops have started to reopen, and the streets are bustling again with traffic. However, universities are still closed, internet access is limited and mobile and social media sites are still blocked.

PM Hasina continued to blame political opponents for the violence as she took a tour of the damaged city on Thursday.

Quota policy

The job quota policy was first established in 1972 by then-Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Initially, it was an interim policy designed to set aside civil service jobs for the families of the freedom fighters who helped Bangladesh win its independence from Pakistan.

The policy was expanded in 1997 and again in 2010 to include the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters. In 2018, without parliamentary discussions or votes, PM Hasina scrapped the policy following student protests. However, the Supreme Court reestablished the quota program in early June after ruling it was illegal for the Hasina government to scrap the policy.

Frustrated by high unemployment and a lack of well-paying jobs, thousands of protestors, led by university students, took to the streets on 1 July after the unpopular policy was reinstated on July 15. They charged that the system was unfair and discriminatory and favoured the ruling class. Protestors demanded that more civil service jobs be offered based on merit.

A peaceful protest turned violent after members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the ruling party, backed by police, killed six protesters and injured several others.

Instead of acknowledging her lapse in following due process, and recognising the validity of the student claims PM Hasina instituted a nationwide curfew, closed all public and private universities indefinitely, and shut down the nation’s internet on 17 July. Two days later, she sent the Bangladesh Army in to quell the protest.

“Shibir (the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party), Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BN) and Jamaat are all behind the incidents of vandalism and murders,” PM Hasina told Parliament on July 22.

The prime minister went on to say that she was forced to impose the curfew to protect the lives and property of the citizens.

Despite the information blackout, news and images of the violent crackdown trickled out of Dhaka, making the outside world aware of the student deaths and arrests.

Amnesty International, the UK-based non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, said that it was able to verify the brutality of the government crackdown through videos, witness testimony, and photographic analysis.

Student activists are demanding that PM Hasina publicly apologise and accept responsibility for the death of protestors. Some are even calling for the prime minister to step down. Student activists are seeking the resignation of several ministers within the government, the firing of police officers, the reopening of universities, an end to the curfew, and the immediate return of internet service.

“The demands are not new, but were absent from the ones presented by the government through coordinators under duress,” photojournalist Shahidul Alam in Dhaka told Sapan News. “One of the coordinators had been abducted and tortured before the staged demands were made.”

“Authorities must immediately conduct a prompt, independent, and impartial investigation into the deaths and hold all those found responsible fully accountable. Victims of unlawful police violence must receive full reparations from the state,” said Amnesty International in a 21 July statement.

The question is not whether the student activists will return to the streets, because they have made it clear that they will if their demands are not met. The question is whether the government of Bangladesh, ostensibly a democracy, has learned any lessons about how to deal with dissent.

Regina Johnson is the coordinating editor with Sapan News. She has extensively reported on America’s energy policy at S&P Global, Washington, D.C. She has also covered the financial advisory market and written human interest stories about parenting, education, and women in business. Her stories were published in LATINA Style Magazine, Advisors Magazine, Inkstick Media, and Thrive Magazine

Lead image: Activist Rahnuma standing in front of police with a poster that says ‘Killer Hasina’. Photo by Shahidul Alam