Death toll rises and telecommunications are blocked

Students, who have been protesting for days to demand the abolition of quotas in public contracts, set fire to the headquarters of state television and other government offices in response to the harsh police crackdown. Thirty-two people died yesterday alone. The protest is serving as a catalyst against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, re-elected in January but in a vote boycotted by the opposition, which accuses her of authoritarianism.

Milan (/Agencies) – Dhaka woke up today with the Internet and much of its telecommunications interrupted, after having experienced the most dramatic hours of the crisis yesterday. protests that have been taking place for days The riots have been sparked by student protests over the issue of quotas for government jobs. The AFP news agency reports 32 deaths in the past 24 hours alone, bringing the total number of fatalities in the unrest that began on July 7 to 39. Clashes have been reported in at least 26 districts, almost half of the country’s districts.

Students responded to the harsh police crackdown by setting fire to several government offices in a chain of violence. Among the buildings set on fire in Dhaka was the headquarters of the state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, from whose frequencies Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had made an appeal to the nation. The security forces themselves complain of attacks on their vehicles and say they will use all means to restore order. The disruption of telecommunications is of great concern, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the situation: even local news sites are inaccessible.

As We wrote a few days agoThe protests were sparked by the issue of public contracts – tens of thousands of jobs in a country of 170 million people – where a 30% quota is still reserved for descendants of fighters in Pakistan’s 1971 liberation war, as well as for the protection of minorities and the disabled. An issue that remains a hot topic in a country where the Prime Minister is still the daughter of Mujibur Rahman, the founding father and first president of Bangladesh.

The student protests are intertwined with long-simmering discontent in the country over the increasingly authoritarian nature of Hasina’s government. Tensions were already high at the end of last year, with the opposition’s unheeded demand for a “super-partisan” government to manage the country’s affairs. elections held on January 7. An election that saw the fourth consecutive time Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League reconfirmationbut with a massive boycott of the polls by movements linked to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main antagonistic force, whose leader Khaleda Zia has been detained since 2018 accused of corruption. International observers and some Western governments have also accused the government in Dhaka of using security laws to muzzle any form of dissent.

The quota issue has thus become the catalyst for opposition to Sheikh Hasina in recent hours. And the Prime Minister’s accusation that the students are “ghosts of the Razakars”, the collaborators of the Pakistani army in the 1971 war, has further inflamed tempers. But the internal balance in Bangladesh – especially the question of the protection of Hindu, Buddhist and Christian minorities in a country with an overwhelming Muslim majority – remains an extremely delicate issue. And as we reminded a few days ago, in the Eighth anniversary of the Dhaka massacreIslamic radicalism remains a latent threat that could find an important ally in the country’s chaos and violence.