Dhaka (National Times) A Bangladeshi student group has vowed to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week\u2019s violence killed at least 205 people, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina\u2019s 15-year tenure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed, and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members of Students Against Discrimination, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group\u2019s chief Nahid Islam and others \u201cshould be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn\u201d, Abdul Hannan Masud told reporters in an online briefing late Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Masud, who did not disclose his location because he was in hiding from authorities, also demanded \u201cvisible actions\u201d be taken against government ministers and police officers responsible for the deaths of protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOtherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests\u201d from Monday, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were on Friday forcibly discharged from a hospital in the capital Dhaka and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier in the week Islam told AFP that he was being treated at the hospital for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention and said he was in fear for his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters Friday that the trio were taken into custody for their own safety but did not confirm if they had been formally arrested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police told AFP on Sunday that detectives had taken two others into custody, while a Students Against Discrimination activist told AFP that a third had been taken on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide since the unrest began according to Prothom Alo, Bangladesh\u2019s largest daily newspaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a curfew imposed last weekend remains in force, it has been progressively eased through the week, in a sign of the Hasina government\u2019s confidence that order was gradually being restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Telecommunications minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak told reporters the country\u2019s mobile internet network would be restored later on Sunday, 11 days after a nationwide blackout imposed at the height of the unrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fixed line broadband connections had already been restored on Tuesday but the vast majority of Bangladesh\u2019s 141 million internet users rely on their mobile devices to connect with the world, according to the national telecoms regulator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jobs crisis With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters\u2019 demands to scrap the quotas entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks by police and pro-government student groups on demonstrators last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dhaka (National Times) A Bangladeshi student group has vowed to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody on Sunday. Last week\u2019s violence killed at least 205 people, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>Protests began this month over the reintroduction of a quota scheme reserving more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n