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Jeddah - Yasmine El Tohamy - DHAKA: Hundreds of protesting Bangladeshi students have been injured in clashes with pro-ruling party groups, the country’s largest hospital said on Tuesday, in the wake of campus rallies against public sector job quotas.
The students have been demonstrating since early July against a quota system under which 30 percent of well-paid government jobs are reserved for the families of those who fought in the 1971 liberation war against Pakistan that resulted in Bangladesh’s independence.
The movement to reform the system started in 2018, forcing the government to issue a circular canceling the quota, but last month a high court order nullified it.
Students have been rallying since the announcement of the court’s ruling and on Monday and Tuesday morning clashed with members of the youth wing of the ruling Awami League party.
In the capital Dhaka alone, at least 234 were injured.
“A total of 234 students received treatment at our hospital following the students’ clashes on Monday,” Brig. Gen. Asaduzzaman, director of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, told Arab News.
“At the moment, six of the injured students are admitted to our hospital. We have kept them under observation as some of them got head injuries ... among the injured, there are students from different educational institutions, including Dhaka University.”
The protests escalated on Sunday, after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina undermined demonstrators by saying: “If the grandchildren of freedom fighters do not receive benefits, who would get it? The grandchildren of razakars?”
The word “razakar,” a deeply offensive term in Bangladesh, means someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force and refers to those who collaborated with the Pakistani military during the 1971 war.
“The comparison with the collaborators agitated the protesting students very much. It’s not right that all the families who don’t belong to freedom fighters’ families are all collaborators,” Mohammad Nahid Islam, coordinator of the Students Against Discrimination group, which is part of the protests, told Arab News.
“Till last week, students from 35 public universities joined the protests with us across the country ... now, the protests spread over almost all educational institutions.”
Islam said that the students did not seek the abolishment of the quota system but its reform, so that it continues to protect marginalized groups but does not disproportionately distribute public service jobs prioritizing the descendants of the 1971 fighters.
“At the moment, the third generation of the freedom fighters are enjoying the quota benefits, which is 30 percent. We are demanding the reformation of the quota system, limiting it,” he said.
“We are demanding the reform by reserving some quota for the underprivileged population. We are demanding job recruitment on the basis of merit.”
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