Bangladesh students mourn classmates killed in job quota protests

• Protesting students demand end to quota system.
• Student leader vows protests to continue come what may.
• Amnesty International, US condemn this week’s clashes.
  

Bangladeshi students on Wednesday mourned classmates killed in protests over civil service hiring rules, a day after the government ordered the indefinite closure of schools nationwide to restore order.

Six people were killed Tuesday in clashes around the country as rival student groups attacked each other with hurled bricks and bamboo rods, and police dispersed rallies with tear gas and rubber bullets.

It was the most violent day so far in weeks of rallies demanding the end of a quota system for lucrative government jobs that opponents say unfairly benefits members of Bangladesh’s ruling party.

Protesters had planned to gather to stage a public funeral ceremony for the dead at the capital Dhaka’s main university but were stopped by riot police, who blocked entrance roads with barbed-wire barricades.

"Our protests will also continue no matter how much violence they can unleash on us," Chamon Fariya Islam, a student at the prestigious Dhaka University, told AFP.

Around 200 students attempted to march to the site of the ceremony before police threw a stun grenade to disperse them, following hours of unrest on the campus.

Students at the university spent Tuesday night scouring dormitories and expelling pro-government classmates in what they said was a bid to end the violence.

Members of the student wing of the ruling Awami League party had clashed with demonstrators over the previous two days, resulting in at least 400 injuries on Monday.

"When students were killed yesterday, it caused massive anger," Dhaka University masters student Abdullah Mohammad Ruhel told AFP.

"It was like a domino effect. The female students started kicking out the Awami League students first, then the male dormitories followed."

Others on campus told AFP that all members of the governing party’s youth wing had been ordered to leave their dorms, and those that had refused were dragged out.

The government told every school, university and Islamic seminary in the country to shut their doors until further notice late Tuesday, soon after deploying paramilitary forces in several big cities to restore order.

Police later raided the headquarters of the country’s main opposition party in central Dhaka, arresting seven members of its student wing.

Detective branch chief Harun-or-Rashid told reporters that officers had found weapons at the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) offices.

"We have found more than 100 Molotov cocktails here, five or six bottles of petrol, around 500 sticks and seven firearms," he said.

Internet users around Bangladesh reported widespread outages of Facebook, the main platform used to organise the protests.

Online freedom watchdog Netblocks said "multiple internet providers" in Bangladesh had completely restricted access to the social media platform in the wake of Tuesday’s crackdown.

Protests nonetheless continued around the country on Wednesday, with hundreds of students blockading a railway line in the central city of Narayanganj.

‘Don’t have any hope’

Near-daily marches this month have demanded an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 war.

Critics say the scheme benefits children of pro-government groups that back Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 76, who won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

"If you are a university student in today’s Bangladesh, you would know how dangerously uncertain your future is," Asif Saleh, the director of one of Bangladesh’s largest charity BRAC, wrote on Facebook in response to the unrest.

"My inbox is flooded with requests seeking jobs. If I go to a village, fathers will tell me, ‘I spent so much to educate my son, but he can’t get work.’"

Rights watchdog Amnesty International and the US State Department have both condemned this week’s clashes and urged Hasina’s government not to crack down on peaceful demonstrators.

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday also called on the government "to protect the demonstrators against any form of threat or violence".