Dhaka, Jul 28 (EFE).- Bangladesh on Sunday restored mobile internet services in the country more than a week after blocking them amid deadly student protests against a government employment quota system.
“We are reopening mobile internet at 3:00pm today. We have asked all four mobile operators to reopen the 4G mobile network and give 5GB of data as a bonus to all users for three days,” junior minister for information and communication technologies, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, told reporters at a press briefing in Dhaka.
The restoration of mobile internet services comes five days after the government reopened broadband internet services on Tuesday.
The resumption of internet services was one of the key demands of the protesting students in the wake of the clashes.
Palak said on Friday that some social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok, would remain unavailable until the government receives a satisfactory reply over an alleged disinformation campaign on the platforms.
He said that the government had invited representatives from the platforms to a meeting on July 31 for an explanation.
Access to the platforms will be restored if they promise to “act responsibly,” the junior minister said.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, announced in May that it had removed 50 accounts and 98 pages linked to Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” ahead of the Jan. 7 general election.
The minister accused Meta of not taking similar action against pages linked to the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
The country was plunged into crisis in mid-July when the student protests turned violent.
The government blamed the BNP and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami for the violence during the student protests.
The protests began in early July after the High Court ordered the government to restore the 30 percent employment quota reserved for the descendants of combatants from the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
Protesters argued that the quota system was discriminatory and benefits supporters of the ruling Awami League, while the government defended it as a way to honor veterans of Bangladesh’s war of independence.
The protests escalated on July 15, with the first deaths reported the following day.
A curfew at midnight was imposed on July 19, with the army being called in to control the situation.
Bangladesh issued its first official death toll on Sunday, saying that 147 people have been killed in the clashes.
Local media put the death figure at over 200, which EFE could not verify independently.
Hospital, police, fire service, and family sources confirmed to EFE that at least 194 people died during the clashes between July 16 and July 21.
The Student Movement Against Discrimination, a platform of protesting students, has said 266 people were killed during the protests.
Students´protesters have also alleged that police have detained at least five of their leaders, some from hospitals, in the past few days.
The police have said that they were taken into custody to guarantee their security.
“They have been taken into custody for the sake of their safety. We will request their families not to worry about them,” Harun Or Rashid, head of Dhaka’s detective police, told reporters on Sunday.
In an apparent bid to calm the escalating street violence, on July 21 the Supreme Court watered down the quota system, allowing 93 percent of jobs to be available for the general merit category, with only 5 percent reserved for relatives of freedom fighters. EFE
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