Sheikh Hasina Cracks Down On Students, At Least 110 Killed in Violence

Since July 5 Bangladesh has been in the grip of massive violence. University students, across the country, have risen in revolt, and are facing police bullets and violence reportedly unleashed by the ruling party’s supporters.

With the death toll mounting to more than 110, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina deployed the army on Friday. The police have also clamped a country-wide curfew.

The charred remains of hundreds of vehicles are clogging roads in Dhaka. All universities and educational institutions have been shut. Newspapers have gone out of circulation. The government has shut down the internet and telecommunication systems.

“To take a country of nearly 170 million people off the Internet is a drastic step, one we haven't seen the likes of since the Egyptian revolution of 2011," John Heidemann, chief scientist of the networking and cybersecurity division at USC Viterbi's Information Sciences Institute told ‘Reuters’.

The root cause of the agitation is a controversial quota system for recruitment to white collar jobs in the government.

The university students’ objection is not to the quotas as such, but to the quantum of quotas, especially for the descendants of freedom fighters.

Students have been saying from the beginning that they are for reasonable quotas for disadvantaged groups like women, the disabled and ethnic minorities who deserve a helping hand.

But Sheikh Hasina, who gets offended whenever anybody questions the wisdom of her father and founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, would not countenance diluting the quota that he had assigned to freedom fighters’ families and their descendants.

The quota for this category is a whopping 30%.

In addition to the 30% quota for freedom fighters’ families, Mujib introduced 10% reservation for women who were victimised in the war; and 40% for people from under-represented districts. This left only 20% for meritorious candidates.

After Mujib’s assassination in 1975, and the removal of his Awami League from power, the government reduced the quota for people from under-represented districts to 20%.

This increased the quota for merit-based candidates to 40%.

Because the quota for women who were victimised in the war went unfilled largely, in 1985, the quota for them was thrown open to all women. The district-based quota was reduced to 10%. The government created a new 5% quota for the indigenous (tribal) communities of Bangladesh.

These measures increased the quota for merit-based candidates to 45%.

By 1997, 26 years after the Bangladesh Liberation War, the freedom fighters’ population had decreased. Therefore, Sheikh Hasina who had come to power by then, extended the quota to the children of freedom fighters.

In 2008, the Bangladesh Public Service Commission said that the quota system was flawed and called for reforms. But in 2010, when Hasina was back in power, the quota for freedom fighters’ families was extended to include their grandchildren also!

On top of that, the Bangladesh Public Service Commission added a 1% quota for disabled candidates in 2012.

These decisions “decreased” the merit-based jobs quota to 44%.

However, despite the 30% quota for children and grandchildren of freedom fighters, actual recruitment in that category never exceeded 10%.

On March 8 2018, the Bangladesh High Court rejected a petition challenging the legality of the entire quota system. On March 21, 2018, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stated that she intended to keep the quota for descendants of freedom fighters, thus triggering a student agitation, the first of its kind since the language (Bengali) agitation in 1952.

As a result of the March 2018 agitation, Sheikh Hasina issued an executive order removing all quotas from the Bangladesh Civil Service.

This came as a shock to students because they were demanding a reform of the quota system, not abolition of all quotas. But Hasina stuck to her decision and in July 2020, the decision to abolish the quota became officially effective.

However, a descendant of a freedom fighter and six others challenged the abolition in the High Court in 2021. On June 5 2024, the Court nullified the government notification abolishing all quotas. Thus, all quotas in Bangladesh Civil Service recruitment were restored.

The government filed an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Thereupon, students of public and private universities and colleges in Bangladesh launched the “2024 Bangladesh quota reform movement”.

The quota reform movement demanded not the abolition of the entire quota system, but the promulgation of a system which is fair, rational and socially and economically relevant.

The Appellate Division then issued an order which halted the High Court’s verdict till the Appellate Division finished its hearing on the government’s appeal.

Sheikh Hasina, appealed to the students to wait till the Appellate Division gave its verdict.

But the agitating students said that they want the government to discuss the matter with the stakeholders, and come to an executive decision on a rational and socially justifiable quota system which will also do justice to merit. They wanted the government to take responsibility and not leave the matter to the judiciary.

It is said that Sheikh Hasina does not countenance the removal of a large quota for freedom fighters’ families because she considers it to be her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s sacred legacy.

She rejects the protesters’ argument that the quota system creates a two-tier Bangladesh where a politically connected elite benefits by their birth, much as in the caste system.

The protesters acknowledge that the freedom fighters and many women had sacrificed a lot for freeing Bangladesh. A quota for them was logical in the past, but not now, two generations down the line.

The quota for freedom fighters is now seen as discrimination and also as a method of generating supporters for Hasina’s Awami League.

Protests escalated when Sheikh Hasina refused to talk to the students, calling them “Razakars” (pro-Pakistan storm troopers who killed freedom fighters and raped women after the Pakistani army launched a crackdown in March 1971).

The students swore that they would not talk to her, or stop the agitation unless she apologised for the insult.

But an unrepentant Hasina unleashed stick-wielding members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the ruling Awami League, on student protesters, including girls. She also deployed the Rapid Action Battalion, which was sanctioned by the US in 2021 after “widespread allegations of serious human rights abuses.”

Hasina appears oblivious to the existence of massive unemployment among the university-educated in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been experiencing GDP growth, but without employment generation.

Given the fact that the private sector is not expanding, the government continues to be the principal employer. But the government recruitment is vitiated by the quota system which severely limits opportunities for meritorious candidates.

The quota system became increasingly irksome as employment prospects for the university educated kept shrinking. The latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) showed that 46% of the unemployed youth were university graduates.

Around 500,000 to 600,000 young men and women compete for 600 to 700 government jobs amidst quota barriers.

“Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are essential building blocks to any thriving democracy, and we condemn the recent acts of violence in Bangladesh,” a United States State Department spokesman said when asked to comment on the violence in Bangladesh.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for restraint on all sides and urged the government to investigate all acts of violence, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“The secretary-general encourages the meaningful and constructive participation of youth to address the ongoing challenges in Bangladesh. Violence can never be the solution,” Dujarric said.