Six students dead, why are Bangladeshi students protesting?

DHAKA, July 17 — Bangladesh has shut schools nationwide after the deaths of six people in protests demanding the government scrap its preferential hiring rules for prestigious civil service jobs.

AFP explains why students around the country are protesting and how weeks of demonstrations escalated into violence:

What are Bangladesh’s civil service job quota rules?

Bangladesh has more than 1.9 million civil servant posts, according to a 2022 report by the country’s public administration ministry.

More than half of the people hired to these jobs are not selected on merit but under affirmative action rules prioritising women, residents of less developed districts and other disadvantaged cohorts.

The most contentious aspect of this quota system is the reservation of 30 per cent of posts for children of freedom fighters who fought in the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

The current rules were introduced in 1972 by independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Earlier protests by students in 2018 prompted Hasina’s administration to cut down the quota scheme.

But last month the High Court ruled that this change had been unlawful and ordered the government to reintroduce the freedom fighter category it had abolished.

Why are the quota rules opposed by students?

Bangladesh was one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence in 1971 and suffered a devastating famine three years later.

Its economy has grown dramatically in the decades since, thanks largely to a thriving textile industry that supplies the world’s leading fast fashion brands and accounts for around US$50 billion (RM233 billion) in yearly exports.

But the country still struggles to provide adequate employment opportunities for its burgeoning population of about 170 million people.

More than 40 per cent of Bangladeshis aged between 15 and 24 were not working, studying or training, according to government statistics from 2022 — altogether 18 million people.

Economists say the jobs crisis is especially acute for millions of university graduates.

Civil service posts offer a chance at stable lifetime employment but students say the quota system is abused to stuff government posts with loyalists of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party.

They want the quota system dramatically scaled back to only apply to ethnic minorities and people with disabilities, with the remaining 94 per cent of positions selected purely on merit.

How have the protests unfolded?

Protests began on July 1 with university pupils blocking major roads and railway lines in big cities around the country to draw attention to their demands.

They have continued nearly every day since, with high school students also joining the rallies, despite Bangladesh’s top court suspending the quota system on July 10 for one month and urging demonstrators to return to class.

Police attempted to disperse rallies the following day, firing rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, but failed to suppress protests in the capital Dhaka.

Monday saw the start of fierce clashes between anti-quota demonstrators and the student wing of the Awami League, with more than 400 people injured across two Dhaka universities.

Police crackdowns and clashes between rival student groups killed six people across Dhaka, Bangladesh’s main port Chittagong and the northern city of Rangpur.

How has the government responded?

Prime Minister Hasina has condemned the protests as pointless, saying this month that the students “are wasting their time” given that the rules have already been suspended.

But with no sign of the demonstrations abating, her government has escalated its efforts to quell the campaign.

On Tuesday the education ministry ordered all schools, universities and Islamic seminaries nationwide to shut down until further notice, and deployed the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh force to keep order in several cities.

Police that night raided the headquarters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, arresting seven members of its student wing and claiming they had found a cache of Molotov cocktails and other weapons.

Protesters have vowed to continue demonstrations despite the crackdown, while rights groups and the United Nations have urged the government to protect students from violence. — AFP