DHAKA – Bangladesh has suspended some mobile internet services, with police firing tear gas at student protesters as violent clashes over civil service hiring quotas continue to rock the country.
The nationwide protests, which have killed at least nine people and injured more than 500 this week, showed no signs of abating on Thursday, with authorities blocking mobile services across most of the South Asian country.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak, the junior information technology minister, said mobile internet had been “temporarily suspended” owing to “various rumours” and the “unstable situation created” on social media.
Services would be restored once the situation returned to normal, he added. Two days earlier, internet providers had cut off access to Facebook – the protesters’ key organising tool.
Yesterday morning, police fired tear gas canisters at students near BRAC University in the capital, Dhaka. Tear gas was also deployed against stone-throwing students who blocked a main highway in the southern port city of Chittagong.
“The situation is still volatile and restless,” said Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka. “We know the protests are spreading in different parts of the city and … I’ve got reports of protests in other parts of the country.”
The unrest continued after students called for a nationwide shutdown last Wednesday evening, with the support of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose headquarters have been raided by police.
Shops and offices were open in Dhaka but there were fewer buses on the streets as the students’ shutdown call appeared to draw a limited response.
Students have been demonstrating for weeks against a quota system for government jobs that they say favours supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party, which led the country’s independence movement.
Under the system, a third of jobs are reserved for family members of veterans who fought for the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Angered by high youth unemployment, with nearly 32 million people – almost one-fifth of the total population of 170 million – out of work or education, students are pressing for a system based on merit.
The protests escalated after violence broke out on the campus of Dhaka University on Monday, with protesting students violently clashing with police and the student wing of Awami League. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

Photo: Protesters lie on the ground at Dhaka University campus. (EPA)