Three killed in Bangladesh clashes over jobs quotas

Three people have been killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued on university campuses over a government jobs quota system.

Two of the dead were students and the third was a pedestrian, the local media reports said.

The deaths were reported on Tuesday after an overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.

Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30 per cent of governmental jobs.

They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based.

Some even said the system benefited groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Some cabinet ministers criticised the protesters, saying they played on students’ emotions.

Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper reported that two persons including a pedestrian were killed as they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.

Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily reported that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.

Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.

While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh’s private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative.

Each year, some 3000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.

Protesters gathered in front of the university’s official residence of the vice-chancellor early on Tuesday when violence broke out.

Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party, of attacking their “peaceful protests”.

According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.

But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country’s leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and “blank rounds” as protesters attacked the police.

He said up to 15 police officers were injured.

More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital.

He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.

On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country’s leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital.

More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.

On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.

Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.