Garment factories and banks reopened in Bangladesh on Thursday after authorities eased a curfew imposed to contain deadly clashes sparked by student protests over public service employment quotas.
Last week’s violence killed at least 186 people, according to AFP tolls reported by police and hospitals, during some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.
Thousands of soldiers are patrolling cities around the South Asian country to maintain order, and most Bangladeshis remain without internet nearly a week after a nationwide shutdown was imposed.
But with calm returning to the streets after several days of rampant chaos, the country’s economically vital textile factories resumed operations following government approval.
“We were worried about the future of our company,” the 40-year-old worker at the Hatun factory, who gave only one name, told AFP.
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Despite the disruption, Hatun said she supported the student protesters’ demands for reform of government hiring rules and was shocked by last week’s violence.
“The government must implement all its demands,” he said. “Many of them were killed. They were sacrificed for generations to come.”
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The garment industry generates $50 billion in annual export revenue for Bangladesh, employing millions of young women to sew clothes for H&M, Zara, Gap and other leading international brands.
“All garment factories have reopened today across the country,” a spokesman for the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association told AFP.
The curfew was eased on Wednesday to allow some trade to resume, but remains in place for most Bangladeshis for 19 hours each day.
Banks, the stock exchange in the capital Dhaka and some government offices also opened from 10:00 am. to 3:00 p.m. to meet the daily break in the stay-at-home order, government spokesman Sibley Sadiq told AFP.
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The student group that led this month’s protests suspended demonstrations until at least Friday, with one leader saying they did not want the reform “at the cost of so much blood”.
Police have arrested at least 2,500 people since the violence began last week.
Hasina’s government says the stay-at-home order will be further relaxed as the situation improves.
With about 18 million young people in Bangladesh unemployed, according to government figures, the reintroduction of the quota regime in June — which had been suspended since 2018 — has deeply upset graduates who are facing an acute job crisis.
The Supreme Court on Sunday reduced the number of reserved jobs, but stopped short of protesters’ demands to abolish it altogether.
Source: AFP