Three die in fresh Bangladesh student protests amid telecoms disruptions: ‘it’s a war’

The protests are fuelled by government job quotas, economic woes, growing unemployment and shrinking reserves of foreign exchange: analysts

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Protesters clash with the police in Dhaka. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:21pm, 19 Jul 2024Updated: 7:48pm, 19 Jul 2024

Three people died in Bangladesh on Friday in fresh protests against quotas for government jobs, media said, as telecoms links were widely disrupted and television news channels went off the air.

Authorities had cut some mobile telephone services the previous day to try to quell the unrest, initially sparked by student anger against controversial quotas, but Friday’s wider disruption was not linked to a global cyber outage.

The government offered no immediate comment on the severed communications, but the new protests defied its order barring all public meetings and processions indefinitely after nearly two dozen people were killed in violence this week.

“I call upon all leaders, activists, and common people … to stand by these tender-hearted students, provide them with all support, and carry this movement forward,” Tarique Rahman, the exiled acting chairman of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), posted on social media platform X.

Many opposition party leaders, activists, and student protesters had been arrested in a bid to give “political colour” to the movement, he added, but Reuters could not verify his statement about the arrests.

Friday’s deaths were reported, with no details, by the English-language website of Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo, which also said train services had been suspended nationwide as protesters blocked roads and threw bricks at security officials.