Universities and other educational institutions were shut down across Bangladesh Wednesday after riots earlier on Tuesday claimed six lives.
Violent protests had broken out in the country’s capital, Dhaka, on Tuesday, July 16, over the allocation of government jobs.
The Dhaka University which was at the centre of the violence, suspended classes immediately and the government later asked that all other universities shut down by Wednesday.
The University Grants Commission said the measure was necessary to protect students.
Authorities have confirmed that no fewer than six people were killed in the violent demonstrations on Tuesday when student protesters clashed with pro-government student activists and with police.
The violence was reported around Dhaka, the southeastern city of Chattogram and the northern city of Rangpur.
The Police establishment in Dhaka raided the headquarters of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on suspicion that the party played a part in the violence.
The police arrested seven members of the party’s student wing in connection with two buses that were torched in the course of the riot on Tuesday.
Protests had started late last month over a quota system that reserves 30 percent of government jobs for relatives of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
At present, 56% of government jobs in Bangladesh are reserved under various quotas, including 10% for women, 10% for people from underdeveloped districts, 5% for Indigenous communities, and 1% for people with disabilities; but it is the 30 percent for families of veterans that irritate students.
The demonstration demanding an end to quota was peaceful until it turned violent on Tuesday when protesters at Dhaka University clashed with police and counter-protests organized by the student wing of the governing Awami League party.
Apart from the six who died, about 100 other people were injured when the violence spread overnight from Dhaka first to Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, and then to other parts of the country.
The complaints of the protesters include the argument that the veterans’ families quota is too discriminatory and benefits supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose Awami League party led the country’s independence movement.
Most people in Bangladesh prefer government jobs because they are considered more stable and with higher pay than private sector jobs.
The quota system was temporarily halted in 2018 after a court order which was itself a result of earlier mass student protests that year, but last month, Bangladesh’s High Court nullified that earlier court decision, annoying students who face high youth unemployment rates.
