Bangladesh restores mobile internet after 11-day blackout to quell protests

Meanwhile, the home minister says at least 147 people were killed during the violence over government job quotas.

Bangladesh has restored mobile internet, 11 days after a nationwide blackout was imposed to contain deadly protests over quotas in government jobs.

The South Asian nation’s 4G mobile internet services resumed on Sunday, hours after Zunaid Ahmed Palak, the state minister for telecommunications and information communication technology, made the announcement.

“We have decided to restore the 4G network connectivity from 3pm [09:00 GMT] today,” the state minister said, following a meeting with internet service providers (ISP) and other stakeholders in the capital Dhaka.

Social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, however, remain restricted. The broadband internet connectivity was restored on Tuesday, but a vast majority of internet users in Bangladesh rely on mobile devices to connect with the world.

On July 17, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government had suspended mobile internet services, deployed the army and imposed a curfew after tens of thousands of students hit the streets, demanding reforms in the quota system which reserved 30 percent of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in the 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.

The protests – one of the biggest upheavals of Hasina’s 15-year tenure – remained largely peaceful until the demonstrators were attacked by the police and pro-government student groups last week.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Sunday said at least 147 people were killed during the violence, in the government’s first toll, published a day after the main protester group, Students Against Discrimination, gave its own preliminary count of at least 266 dead.

Speaking to reporters in Dhaka, Khan said the deceased included students, police, activists, and people from various professions, adding that further investigation is under way to determine the total death toll.

Independent estimates put the toll at more than 200.

Home Minister Khan told reporters that police operated with restraint and only fired on demonstrators to protect government buildings. He added that police had only abducted some protesters for their own safety.

“Despite the killing of their fellow officers, they showed extreme levels of patience,” he said. “But when they saw that the properties could not be protected, then police were forced to open fire.”

Students threaten more protests

The students opposed to the quota system have called it discriminatory and began their peaceful protests after a High Court bench in June reinstated the quotas that were abolished in 2018.

With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move to restore the quotas deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League party.

Amid the protests, the country’s Supreme Court cut the 30 percent quota for veterans’ descendants to 5 percent, and the quota for ethnic minorities, transgender people and disabled people was limited to 2 percent. But the top court fell short of the protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

 

Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place, more than a week after they were imposed. Schools and other educational institutions remain closed until further notice.

In a bid to restore normalcy, the government relaxed the curfew for 11 hours (6am to 5pm) in Dhaka as of Sunday and set new timings for office work from 9 am to 3 pm for the next three days, according to the Home Ministry, the dpa news agency reported.

Meanwhile, a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters, including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium, but vowed to renew it if their leaders are not freed.

The group’s chief Nahid Islam and others “should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn”, group member Abdul Hannan Masud told reporters in an online briefing late on Saturday.

“Otherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests” from Monday, Masud said.