Fresh protests are roiling Bangladesh, just weeks after a deadly government crackdown dispersed a student movement that began as demonstrations over a preferential quota system for public-sector jobs and widened to express deeper discontent.
In its efforts to break last month’s protests, which started peacefully but turned violent after students were attacked, the government detained student leaders, rounded up about 10,000 people and accused tens of thousands more of crimes such as arson and vandalism.
A curfew and communication blackout quieted things down, and a court ruling on the quota system gave the students a significant concession on their initial demands. But the crackdown now seems to have made people even angrier, and to have halted the protests only temporarily.
Their revival, once the curfew and communications blackout was eased, was a call for accountability for the deaths of more than 200 people in the crackdown. It is adding to what is already the biggest challenge Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has faced in her 15 years as the country’s leader.
“There’s a storm inside my chest,” a group of protesters gathered near Dhaka College chanted on Saturday. “I’ve bared my chest, go ahead and shoot.”
Salimullah Khan, a university professor who has joined the protests since they resumed, said there was anger over the killings, and no trust that the same authorities who administered the crackdown would deliver justice.
“How can you ask a killer to bring justice to a murder?” he said. “These killings were state sponsored, carried out by state forces and their collaborators.”
The protests began largely peacefully in early July, after a Dhaka court reinstated quotas for more than half of all civil service jobs, which are highly sought after. Ms. Hasina in 2018 had paused a system that gave preference to, among others, descendants of people who fought for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.
Students called the quotas discriminatory. But anger over this issue was also expressive of broader unhappiness with an economy that has stagnated in recent years, and an increasingly authoritarian governing party in which cronyism was entrenched, analysts said.
Ms. Hasina’s initial response to the protests was dismissive, fueling a perception that she favored reinstating the quotas as an offering to her supporters after winning a fourth consecutive term in January. When the protests grew angry and violence flared, she struck a more conciliatory note, and then a Supreme Court ruling reduced the quota-reserved jobs to 7 percent of the total, down from 56 percent. But by then the crackdown had already resulted in the deaths of students.
“The door of Ganabhaban is open,” Ms. Hasina said on Saturday, referring to her official residence. “I want to sit with the agitating students of the movement and listen to them. I want no conflict.”
During the several days that the crackdown, the curfew and a communication blackout kept the protesters dispersed, Ms. Hasina’s lieutenants put some arrested student leaders on camera while in police custody, reading a statement declaring the end of their movement.
But the moment the government eased up on the restrictions, the protesters began demanding justice for their peers who had been killed, wounded or arrested. Once the student leaders were freed, they said they had been forced to make that statement, and they repeated their call for mass gatherings.
The students have created a nine-point list of demand that includes a public apology from Ms. Hasina and the resignation of her close lieutenants. They are also calling for “complete noncooperation movement,” starting Sunday, until Ms. Hasina gives into their demands.
The protests began in larger numbers after congregational noon prayers on Friday, the start of the weekend in Bangladesh. Late in the afternoon, clashes between the protesters and security forces were reported across the country. At least two people were killed, including one police officer.
The numbers appeared only to have grown on Saturday.
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