Demonstrators say the quota system advantages the kids of pro-government teams and demand or not it’s scrapped.
Violent clashes between folks loyal to Bangladesh’s ruling occasion and demonstrators protesting towards job quotas for coveted authorities jobs have wounded a minimum of 100 folks, police say.
The quota system reserves greater than half of well-paid civil service posts, totalling a whole lot of 1000’s of presidency jobs, for particular teams, together with youngsters of fighters within the nation’s 1971 warfare of independence from Pakistan.
Critics say the system advantages youngsters of pro-government teams who again Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who gained her fourth consecutive term in a normal election in January that was boycotted by the opposition.
Bangladesh’s high court docket final week briefly suspended the quotas, however protesters have promised to proceed their rallies till the elements of the scheme they oppose are scrapped utterly.
Police and witnesses stated a whole lot of antiquota protesters and college students backing the ruling Awami League occasion battled for hours on Monday on the Dhaka College campus, hurling rocks, combating with sticks and beating one another with iron rods.
Some carried machetes whereas others threw petrol bombs, witnesses stated in a report by the AFP information company. “They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at one another,” police official Mostajirur Rahman informed AFP.
Nahid Islam, nationwide coordinator of the antiquota protests, stated their “peaceable procession” was attacked by folks carrying rods, sticks and rocks. “They beat our feminine protesters. At the very least 150 college students had been injured, together with 30 ladies, and circumstances of 20 college students are severe,” he stated.
Injured scholar Shahinur Shumi, 26, stated the protesters had been taken abruptly.
“We had been holding our procession peacefully,” she stated from her hospital mattress at Dhaka Medical Hospital. “Abruptly, the Chhatra League [ruling party’s student wing] attacked us with sticks, machetes, iron rods and bricks.”
‘Reform quota system’
Native media studies stated the protests by 1000’s of scholars throughout Bangladesh started on Sunday night time and continued into Monday after Hasina stated the quotas had been a matter for the highest court docket.
Hasina additionally reportedly in contrast the protesters to Razakar fighters, who collaborated with the Pakistani military throughout the warfare for independence.
College students on Sunday night time marched in a dozen universities and continued into early on Monday, protesting towards Hasina’s feedback and the quota system.
Police on Monday stated a whole lot of antiquota college students from a number of personal universities joined the protests in Dhaka and halted visitors close to the US embassy for greater than 4 hours.
“Some 200 college students squatted and stood on the highway,” deputy police commissioner Hasanuzzaman Molla informed AFP.
Throughout a information convention at her official residence, Hasina, 76, criticised these opposing the quotas for the descendants of the nation’s freedom fighters, native media studies stated.
However the protesting college students stated solely the quotas supporting ethnic minorities and disabled folks – which reserve 6 % of the federal government jobs – ought to stay.
“We wish a reform of the quota system,” a feminine scholar from Dhaka College stated, asking to not be named for worry of reprisal.