As the violent conflicts between students and police persist, a High Security Alert has been issued for the entire country.
There is nearly complete internet outage in the capital city of Dhaka, and phone lines are also down.
Several thousand demonstrators rushed the state broadcaster BTV on Thursday night, breaking windows, lighting fixtures, and destroying furniture. They also set some of the building on fire.
Bangladesh’s communication minister stated that all transmissions had ceased and the majority of staff members had departed the capital building.
Earlier, a statement on BTV’s official Facebook page warned that “many” people were trapped inside the building and requested assistance from the fire department to put out the fire.
On Wednesday night, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made an appearance on the network and made an appeal for peace following several days of violent protests that had claimed the lives of at least 32 people and may have injured hundreds more.
Students have been staging protests in favor of changing the system that gives relatives of those who fought in the nation’s 1971 war for independence from Pakistan a third of public sector jobs. The students are demanding merit-based hiring, claiming that the current system is discriminatory.
Commissioner Habibur Rahman claimed the police in Dhaka banned all public gatherings for the entire day on Friday.
There were reports of a breakdown in the nation’s telecommunications networks on Friday morning, with barely a few voice calls functioning and neither mobile data nor broadband available. Most international calls were not connected.
Facebook and WhatsApp, among other social media sites, were not loading.
Student demonstrators demanded that mosques across offer funeral prayers for the dead and said that they would continue to call for a nationwide shutdown on Friday. With over a quarter of the 170 million people in the country unemployed or undergrad, the widespread unrest is the largest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was re-elected earlier this year.
Following similar demonstrations in 2018, the quota system was eliminated; but, in June, the High Court restored it, declaring that its removal was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court put a one-month hold on the quotas on July 10 in order to consider the issue.
Protesters and opponents claim that the quota system separates Bangladesh into two groups, with the politically connected elite benefiting from birth.
Beginning on July 1 at the esteemed Dhaka University, the protests eventually extended to other universities and cities across the country through nearly daily street gatherings that included blockades of trains and roadways.
On July 15, when demonstrators inside the Dhaka University campus were allegedly attacked by members of the Bangladesh Chatra League, the student arm of the ruling Awami League party, the rallies turned violent.
Since then, there have been further violent altercations between security personnel, demonstrators, and proponents of the government. Bangladesh has responded by deploying its paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion, which the US sanctioned in 2021 in response to “widespread allegations of serious human rights abuses.”
Smaller demonstrations have been staged by Bangladeshi students in other locations, such as Times Square in New York, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, and Copenhagen in Denmark.
In a Thursday briefing, a State Department official stated that the US was “continuing to monitor the reports of violence from the ongoing protests in and around Dhaka.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all parties to exercise moderation and urged the authorities to look into any violent incidents.
“To address the ongoing challenges in Bangladesh, the secretary-general encourages the meaningful and constructive participation of youth.” Violence is never the answer, according to Dujarric.
