The protests escalated dramatically late on Sunday night, with thousands of students across the country leaving their dormitories to demand the immediate elimination of quotas. On Monday, university campuses turned into battlegrounds, with heavily armed BCL activists clashing with students protesting the quota system. Hundreds of students were injured.
A brutal crackdown killed 1000 students and injured 12,500 of civilians and students. The human rights groups accused the Rapid Action Battalion of rape and extra-judicial killings.
The incident was one of many similar tense altercations that have played out across Bangladesh’s universities in recent days. Students have protested against a recent High Court decision to reinstate a controversial quota system in government jobs.
This quota system was abolished in 2018 following widespread protests, and its reinstatement has fuelled widespread anger and frustration among many young Bangladeshis seeking government jobs, who believe the quotas have hurt their chances.
In the capital’s Dhaka University (DU), the ground zero of quota reform protests, the situation was bleaker on Monday than on previous days.
Wearing helmets and wielding sticks and iron rods, hundreds of BCL members, many reportedly from outside DU, assaulted protesters throughout the campus. Students were left bruised and bloodied. “We were peacefully marching in the DU campus, but all of a sudden the Chhatra League activists attacked us with sticks and even machetes,” one female DU student told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity.
A group of Awami League supporters even stormed the emergency department of Dhaka Medical College Hospital in the evening, where injured students were taking treatment. The attack caused widespread panic among doctors, nurses, patients and visitors, and disrupted medical services at the country’s leading medical facility.
Earlier that Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had also referenced Razakars — collaborators with the Pakistani Army in 1971, when up to three million people were killed and millions more were displaced, including to India, during the creation of Bangladesh.
“If the grandchildren of freedom fighters don’t receive quota benefits, should the grandchildren of Razakars?” Hasina said.
Hasina’s remark offended protesting students and job seekers who have been demonstrating against the 30 percent quota reserved for family members of freedom fighters from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. They believe this quota unfairly limits their opportunities and are suspicious of the accuracy of the beneficiary list.
Quota systems in government jobs were originally introduced to ensure representation and inclusion. Established in 1972 for freedom fighters, the quota system was discontinued but reinstated in 1996.
Currently, 56 percent of government jobs are reserved for specific groups, including the largest share of 30 percent for freedom fighters’ descendants, women, minorities and people from districts lagging on socio-economic indices.
That includes 30% reserved for children of those who fought to win Bangladeshi independence in 1971, 10% for women, and 10% percent set aside for specific districts.
Students said only those quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled people — 6% of jobs — should remain.
Several news reports of serious corruption and illicit wealth accumulation by Bangladeshi civil servants, including a prominent actor behind the country’s deepening authoritarianism, former police and chief of the elite Rapid Action Battalion Benazir Ahmed, a serving bureaucrat, and a National Security Intelligence official, have been making the rounds in the last several months.
The protests and the news stories about corruption have come just a few months into Sheikh Hasina’s fourth continuous term as prime minister after yet another heavily machinated vote exercise. Seemingly solidly in power since 2009 and completely in command of the state machinery, Hasina’s party won elections virtually uncontested against an enfeebled opposition whose members have been heavily persecuted.
But if so solidly in power, why is the AL government still unable to tackle the protests or muffle the corruption revelations?
The two developments – the protests against the quotas and revelations of corruption – deny the rulers’ claim to authority and complete control. The corruption revelations point to mutual back-scratching, embezzlement, and corruption in high places – circles that support authoritarianism and violations of civil and political rights for financial gain and illicit wealth accumulation. They both express a similar sentiment – an objection to the ruling party’s claim to be a legitimate ruler.
Instead, both underline a continued widespread desire to have a say and a space to say it, to hold the powerful accountable. These are expressions of democratic resilience that continue to exist in Bangladesh after 15 years of democratic backsliding and autocratic rule.
Over these years, Sheikh Hasina has stirred the country toward authoritarianism, where critics, dissenters, and opposition activists came under severe repression, including imprisonment in phantom cases, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances. While ruling party activists and leaders go largely scot-free despite evident corruption and street violence against opposition activists, the latter are forced to appear in court, go into hiding, or are imprisoned.
According to a New York Times report, many opposition activists have been slapped with over 400 cases each. Police shut down opposition rallies. Critics such as journalists Shahidul Alam and Rozina Islam have been imprisoned. A culture of fear grips society where news outlets apply self-censorship to remain safe.
Despite dominating the state, the government has been unable to establish control over society even after 15 years in power.
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