Bangladesh to restore internet services amid unrest; 173 dead, over 2,500 held so far: What is happening now?

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.

Students were furious because quotas left less than half of state jobs open to merit amid an unemployment crisis, particularly in the private sector, making government sector jobs with their regular wage hikes and perks especially prized.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh scaled back the number of reserved jobs for specific groups, including the descendants of "freedom fighters" from Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

The Supreme Court did not abolish the reservation system but cut the veterans' quota to 5 per cent from 30 per cent. As many as 93 percent of jobs will now be allocated on merit and the remaining 2 percent will be set aside for members of ethnic minorities and transgender and disabled people.

The unrest has posed a new headache for Hasina as her government has sought to fix the struggling economy after securing a $4.7 billion International Monetary Fund bailout last year.

(With inputs from agencies)