Bangladesh will restore the country’s mobile internet later on Sunday, the telecommunications minister, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, said, more than a week after a nationwide blackout imposed to contain deadly unrest.
According to AFP, Palak told reporters the network would be restored at 3:00 pm (0900 GMT), following the restoration of fixed line broadband connections on Tuesday.
On Monday, July 22, In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a wave of protests against job quotas led to clashes, resulting in the detention of at least 532 people, including opposition leaders.
The arrests, which included senior leaders from the Bangladesh National Party and the Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, came after days of unrest.
Among those arrested were BNP leaders Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury and Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, as well as former national football captain Aminul Huq, who is also a senior BNP figure. Mia Golam Parwar, the general secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami, was also taken into custody.
The clashes resulted in significant casualties, with at least three policemen killed and around 1,000 injured, 60 of them critically. BNP spokesman A.K.M Wahiduzzaman reported that “Several hundred BNP leaders and activists were arrested in the past few days” nationwide.
The protests began as a response to the government’s job quota system, which reserved a certain percentage of positions for specific groups. The opposition parties argued that this system is unfair and limits opportunities for others.
Details later…
