The latest count suggests the death toll from the current spate of protracted battles among the quota movement agitators, law enforcers, and armed cadres of ruling party students’ front has surpassed a hundred.
Most unfortunately, many of these lives lost are of young students -- college and university-goers. Bangladesh has never witnessed bloodshed of this magnitude, of such intensity, in what ought to be peacetime in apparent democracy.
Now that the government has imposed a nationwide curfew and deployed members of our armed forces in aid of civil administration to bring a very volatile situation under control, the priority must be to listen to the long-neglected youth voice.
We have to remember that the students who have long stood for bringing reform to the discriminatory quota system in government jobs haven’t postponed their movement program. Rather, all they have given is an interim respite, with high hope that the government would positively respond to their demands.
Now, much depends on the goodwill of the government -- how they are going to negotiate with the students’ demands formally placed before a three-strong ministerial body, mandated by the head of the government.
The future is nowA sincere and wholehearted response to their demands can give the quota movement protesters much-needed confidence that this time, the government is genuinely paying heed to their cause.
A quick flashback in what happened in 2018 will remind us about how students had to endure months of repression at the hands of law enforcers and students loyal to the government just for asking for a rational quota reform.
At that point, as high as 56% of job quotas were reserved for the freedom fighters’ wards, ethnic minorities, women etc and only 44% left for pure merit-based consideration.
As a result of the students’ movement, the government abolished all quotas, which the students never asked for. All along, they had been asking for rationalizing quota, and never sought quota abolishment.
So, in 2018, the government’s circular abolishing all quotas was not a prudent step, to say the least.
And today, when the prospect of the quota returning to its old form has once again resurfaced, students, who are essentially the future job aspirants, find it discriminatory.
As three of the co-coordinators of the quota movement placed their 8-point demand before the three ministers, they made it clear, once again, that a certain minimum percentage of quota can still be there -- they’re talking about 5%.
Two days ago, a government minister hinted of keeping the quota at 20%. If the students and the government keep the current channel of dialogues open, there can always be common ground they can expect to reach.
But quota percentage apart, the other demands of the protesting students need immediate and serious attention and consideration by the government. If we don’t want to see any recurrence of the incidents that the nation has witnessed over the past four/five days, this cannot be ignored.
After the deaths of so many of their peers, many of the agitating students are also finding themselves getting embroiled into cases centring different violent incidents that have happened over the past few days.
So they want the government assurance that the cases filed against the students would be withdrawn, and the students will not face any kind of political or academic harassment.
They want their campuses to be rid of the current heavy presence of law enforcement agents and the resumption of academic activities. They seek justice for instigation by some top government functionaries and the unleashing of terrors by cadres of ruling party-affiliated student and youth fronts.
If the curfew and army deployment is considered as an immediate measure to restore public order, the government’s sincere efforts to meet students’ 8-point demand should be the most essential follow-up measure to ensure that peace is a tangible target.
Reaz Ahmad is Executive Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
This opinion piece was first published in the print edition of Dhaka Tribune on July 21.
