(Dhaka) Order was restored in Bangladesh on Monday, according to the army, after more than 500 arrests and three weeks of repressed student protests that left 163 dead.
Protests against civil service recruitment quotas, which are accused of favouring those close to the ruling party, have degenerated into the worst wave of violence since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power 15 years ago.
A curfew was imposed, soldiers patrolled the streets of cities in the South Asian country with the world’s eighth largest population and order has been restored, the military said.
PHOTO ANIK RAHMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police officers search men during a curfew in Dhaka on July 21.
“Law and order are under control after the deployment of the army,” army chief General Waker uz Zaman said in a statement.
“We are suspending the protests for 48 hours,” announced Nahid Islam, leader of the main movement organizing the protests, Students Against Discrimination, asking the government “to lift the curfew during this period, to restore access to the internet and to stop attacking student protesters.”
Since Thursday, an internet outage across the country has significantly limited the transmission of information abroad.
“We did not want a quota reform at the cost of so much blood, so much murder, so much damage,” he told AFP.
He himself was hospitalized after being beaten by individuals he said were plainclothes police officers.
At least 163 people died in the clashes, including several police officers, according to an AFP tally of casualties reported by police and hospitals.
PHOTO ANIK RAHMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Clashes between protesters and police took place in Dhaka on July 18.
Sporadic violence
Sporadic violence continued on Monday, with four people taken to Dhaka Medical Hospital with gunshot wounds, an AFP reporter said, but the death toll was far lower than in previous days.
“At least 532 people have been arrested following the violence,” Dhaka police spokesman Faruk Hossain told AFP.
“Among them are leaders of the BNP,” the Bangladesh National Party, a party belonging to the opposition, he added.
Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, 83, on Monday urged the international community to do everything it can to end the violence.
“I urgently call on international leaders and the United Nations to do everything in their power to end the violence suffered by those exercising their right to protest,” the economist said in a statement.
On Monday evening, M’s spokesmanme Hasina told AFP she had approved a government order implementing the Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court on Sunday revised downwards the quotas for recruitment in the civil service, without however abolishing them, after their reintroduction in June.
Ali Riaz, a professor of politics and Bangladesh specialist at Illinois State University, called the current violence the “worst massacre by a regime since independence.”
Repression criticized
Diplomats in Dhaka criticised the brutal crackdown on protests during a meeting with Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud, diplomatic sources said on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The minister summoned the ambassadors for a briefing on Sunday and showed them a 15-minute video that several sources said focused on the damage caused by the protesters.
But US Ambassador Peter Haas said Mahmud was presenting a one-sided version of events, a senior diplomatic official told AFP.
“I am surprised that you did not show the footage of the police shooting unarmed protesters,” he said, according to the source.
A U.S. embassy official confirmed the ambassador’s comments, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr Mahmud did not respond to a question from a UN official about the alleged use of armoured vehicles and helicopters bearing UN markings to suppress the protests.
Bangladesh is one of the largest contributors to United Nations peacekeeping operations worldwide.
A BNP spokesman, A.K.M Wahiduzzaman, told AFP that “several hundred BNP leaders and activists have been arrested in recent days” across the country.
With around 18 million young people unemployed in Bangladesh, according to government figures, the reintroduction of the quota system has had a profound impact on graduates facing a severe employment crisis.