Bangladesh has been under a nationwide internet blackout since Thursday amid massive protests that turned violent last week.
Bangladesh will restore its broadband internet services Tuesday evening after a five-day shutdown, the country’s telecoms minister said. The internet was shut down as the protest, which began in early June, over the employment quota turned violent in Bangladesh last week. A nationwide internet blackout has been there since Thursday, which has drastically restricted the flow of information.
The decision to restore the broadband internet came after a Bangladeshi student group leading demonstrations suspended protests on Monday for 48 hours. The group’s leader said the students did not want reform “at the expense of so much blood.”
Nahid Islam, leader of the main protest organiser’ Students Against Discrimination’, told AFP, “We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours…” We demand that during this period, the government withdraws the curfew, restores the internet and stops targeting the student protesters.” The suspension of protests was extended for 48 more hours on Tuesday, AFP reported.
At least 173 people have died, and the number of arrests during days of violence in Bangladesh passed the 2,500 mark on Tuesday, news agency AFP reported. The report added that police officials in Dhaka, Chittagong, and other locations gave AFP further details of detentions, which brought the total held to 2,580.
The protests erupted as students raised concerns over a specific job reservation system in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government had scrapped quotas in 2018 that had reserved 56 percent of state jobs for various categories of people, including 30 percent for families of those who fought in the country’s 1971 war of independence. However, a high court ruling had reinstated the quotas last month, triggering the student protests.