At least four people, including three students, were killed and more than 100 others injured on Tuesday as protesters demanding reforms of the quota system in government jobs clashed with police in major cities in Bangladesh.
The authorities on Tuesday called out the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) troops in four major cities after hundreds of policemen in riot gear overnight fanned out in public university campuses across the country.
The clashes erupted on Monday as activists of the ruling Awami League’s student front confronted the protestors who insist the existing quota system was largely debarring the enrolment of meritorious students in government services.
According to media reports, the violence killed a university student in northeastern Rangpur, one in the capital Dhaka and two people in southeastern Chattogram, one being a student and another a pedestrian.
The protestors blockaded highways and railway routes in four major cities of central Dhaka, northwestern Rajshahi, southwestern Khulna and the major port city Chattogram.
Students of the premier Dhaka University took the lead in the latest one-week-long protests for recruitment in first- and second-class government jobs, demanding seats to be filled based on talent reforming the existing quota system.
The protestors said they were staging peaceful demonstrations on Monday at two public universities in Dhaka and its outskirts when they were attacked by student activists from the ruling party armed with sticks, rocks, machetes and Molotov cocktails.
Under the existing system, 30 per cent of jobs are reserved for children and grandchildren of 1971 Liberation War veterans, 10 per cent for administrative districts, 10 per cent for women, five per cent for ethnic minority groups and one per cent for physically handicapped people. The student protest appears to be the first major demonstration against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government since she won a fourth straight term in January.
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