Bangladesh’s July demonstrations are much larger and more violent than in 2018 | Factsheet

Thousands of students took to the streets across Bangladesh in early July after a High Court verdict reintroduced controversial quotas in government jobs¹Under the quota system, more than half of Bangladesh’s much-coveted government jobs were reserved for protected groups such as women and ethnic minorities, including 30% for relatives of veterans who had fought in the country’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. As the AL led the independence movement, quotas served as a form of patronage for those affiliated with the party. See:  Al Jazeera, ‘What’s behind Bangladesh’s violent quota protests?,’ 16 July 2024; The Economist, ‘Protests in Bangladesh put an end to a corrupt quota system,’ 21 April 2018 on 5 June. The latest demonstrations come six years after the Awami League (AL) government’s 2018 decision to abolish the quotas, which also followed a nationwide student mobilization. Though the demonstrations began as a mainly peaceful movement at universities, they descended into violence in mid-July amid clashes between protest groups and police, with international media reporting over 200 fatalities and thousands of injuries. Police have arrested more than 2,000 people in connection with the violence.²Julhas Alam, ‘Bangladesh crawls back to normalcy after violent clashes that killed nearly 200 people,’ Associated Press, 25 July 2024 On 18 July, authorities blocked internet access and the next day implemented a nationwide curfew and deployed the army with shoot-on-sight powers.

While information is still limited due to continuing restrictions on internet access, here’s what we know so far: 

• The recent protests have been much larger and more violent — in the face of lethal pushback from the authorities — than the anti-quota demonstrations in 2018. This suggests that the protesters are reflecting deeper political discontent. 

• The current demonstrations grew nationwide and turned violent in mid-July after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina referred to protesters as Razakar sympathizers, using a highly charged term that refers to collaborators during the 1971 war of independence.³Kelly Ng, Subhajyoti Ghosh, and BBC Bangla, ‘Bangladesh PM blames political foes for violence,’ 23 July 2024 Police launched a brutal crackdown, firing both rubber and live bullets at demonstrators. In some cases, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the AL’s student wing, attacked demonstrators with weapons, further escalating violence.
• The rhetoric around the violence is highly partisan: The government accuses the opposition parties of co-opting the student-led movement. It mainly blames the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its student wing, the Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatra Dal (JCD); many of those arrested are BNP leaders.⁴Redwan Ahmed and Hannah Ellis-Petersen, ‘Bangladeshi students allege police torture after protests crackdown,’ 23 July 2024 ACLED data show that until 19 July, the BNP has explicitly participated in 3% of anti-quota demonstrations, and JCD in 1%.
  
• On the other side, the demonstrators blame police and the BCL for instigating the violence.⁵Al Jazeera, ‘What’s behind Bangladesh’s violent quota protests?,’ 16 July 2024 The student and youth wings of political parties in Bangladesh wield enormous power. The BCL, in particular, has a history of disrupting anti-government student demonstrations, functioning as vigilante enforcers of the government’s writ.⁶Brad Adams, ‘Bangladesh Ruling Party Activists Kill Student after Facebook Post,’ Human Rights Watch, 10 October 2019; Shahidul Alam, ‘In Bangladesh, protests are no longer about the quota system,’ Al Jazeera, 23 July 2024 ACLED records show that the BCL was involved in 15% of all political violence events in Bangladesh in the last five years. 

As of writing, an uneasy relative calm prevails on the streets. While the Supreme Court struck down the majority of the quotas and adjusted others on 21 July after the peak of violence and property damage, student groups have issued fresh demands, calling for the curfew to be completely lifted and universities reopened, and for justice and accountability for violence against demonstrators. The AL government faces an economic downturn marked by rising inflation and unemployment, and charges of authoritarianism, as the government has violently repressed political opponents many times during the AL’s 15 years in power. Strong-arming protesters and deflecting popular anxieties as opposition propaganda may only go so far in quelling further unrest.