Bangladesh Telecom Disruptions Amid Student Protests Over Job Quotas

Telecommunications in Bangladesh were disrupted due to student protests against government job quotas. The death toll from the unrest has risen, and authorities have cut mobile services. The protests are driven by high youth unemployment and demands to end job reservations for families of 1971 war veterans.

Telecommunications were widely disrupted in Bangladesh on Friday amid violent student protests against quotas for government jobs. Nearly two dozen people have been killed this week.

French news agency AFP reported that the death toll in Thursday's violence had risen to 32. Reuters reported 13 deaths earlier in the week, but could not immediately verify the higher number. Authorities cut some mobile services on Thursday to quell the unrest, but the disruption spread across the country on Friday morning, according to Reuters witnesses in Dhaka and New Delhi.

Telephone calls from overseas were mostly not getting connected, and internet calls were also failing. Websites of several Bangladesh-based newspapers were not updating, and their social media handles were inactive.

Only some voice calls were working, with no mobile data or broadband available. Even SMSes or mobile-to-mobile text messages were not going through, a Reuters photographer in Dhaka reported. The nationwide agitation, the largest since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's re-election earlier this year, has been fueled by high youth unemployment. Nearly a fifth of Bangladesh's 170 million population is out of work or education.

Protesters demand the state stop reserving 30% of government jobs for the families of 1971 war veterans. Although Hasina's government scrapped the quota system in 2018, a high court reinstated it last month. The government appealed, and the Supreme Court suspended the high court order, pending a hearing on August 7.