Bangladesh student leader calls 48-hour halt to protests

A Bangladeshi student organizer on Monday suspended for 48 hours the protests against employment quotas that have spiraled into deadly violence.

“We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours,” Nahid Islam, the top leader of the main protest organizer Students Against Discrimination, said. “We demand that during this period the government withdraws the curfew, restores the internet and stops targeting the student protesters.”

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Sunday scrapped most of the quotas on government jobs that have sparked student-led protests in which at least 114 people have been killed in the South Asian country, local media reported.

The court’s Appellate Division dismissed a lower court order that had reinstated the quotas, directing that 93 percent of government jobs will be open to candidates on merit, without quotas, the reports said.