Bangladesh police fire tear gas, rubber bullets at student protesters

AFP | Dhaka

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

Bangladesh police yesterday fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse university student protesters demanding the scrapping of quotas they say are rigged to support pro-government job candidates.

The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts, totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs, for specific groups including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war.

Students launched protests earlier this month, demanding a merit-based system, and have continued demonstrations despite Bangladesh’s top court suspending the quota scheme this week. Officers forcibly dispersed around 150 students in the eastern city of Comilla after they attempted to blockade the main highway to the capital Dhaka, police inspector Syed Fazle Rabbi told AFP “Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them,” he said.

Comilla Medical College Hospital director Sheikh Fazle Rabbi told AFP that 11 protesters had been injured, with two since discharged. None of the injured had been hit by rubber bullets. Police in Dhaka tried in vain to stop thousands of young protesters from blocking roads around the megacity for the second time in as many days.