Bangladesh student group calls 48-hour halt to protests
The Peninsula
Dhaka: A Bangladeshi student organisation behind recent protests against government employment quotas said Monday it was halting demonstrations for 48...
Dhaka: A Bangladeshi student organisation behind recent protests against government employment quotas said Monday it was halting demonstrations for 48 hours.
"We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours," Nahid Islam, the top leader of main protest organiser Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed.
"We demand that during this period the government withdraws the curfew, restores the internet and stops targeting the student protesters."
What began as demonstrations against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs has snowballed into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure, with at least 163 people killed in clashes, according to an AFP tally.
On Sunday the country's Supreme Court pared back the hiring quotas for specific groups, including one for the children and grandchildren of "freedom fighters" from Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.