DHAKA, Bangladesh (news agencies) — Deadly clashes between police and demonstrators demanding a change to job quotas in Bangladesh have left the streets littered with bullets and marked with smears of blood. Scores of people have died.
Students, frustrated by shortages of good jobs, have been demanding an end to a quota that reserved 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971.
Bangladesh’s top court on Sunday scaled back that quota and ordered that the veterans’ share be cut to 5%, with 93% of jobs to be allocated on merit. The remaining 2% will be set aside for members of ethnic minorities and transgender and disabled people.
The protests have posed the most serious challenge to Bangladesh’s government since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a fourth consecutive term in January elections that were boycotted by the main opposition groups. Universities have been closed, the internet has been shut off and the government has ordered people to stay at home.
The protests turned deadly on Tuesday, a day after students at Dhaka University began clashing with police. Violence continued to escalate as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and hurled smoke grenades to scatter stone-throwing protesters.
Bangladeshi authorities haven’t shared any official numbers of those killed and injured, but at least four local newspapers on Sunday reported that over 100 people have died.
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