Bangladesh curfew eases: What’s opened, what’s still shut

Some businesses have reopened, but mobile internet and social media sites are still blocked. Universities remain shut.

Bangladesh has started to relax a curfew that it imposed after days of deadly clashes between student protesters demanding reforms to a job quota system and a combination of law enforcement officials and members and supporters of the governing party’s youth wing.

Deaths, arrests, and shoot-at-sight orders against those violating the curfew had left the nation of 170 million people gripped in tension, while a telecommunications blackout had cut Bangladesh off from the rest of the world.

Here’s what things currently look like in the South Asian country:

The protests that started early in July called for the reform of the South Asian country’s quota system, where 30 percent of government jobs were reserved for descendants of veterans who fought for Bangladesh in the 1971 war.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court scaled back the quotas. The 30 percent quota for veterans’ descendants was cut to 5 percent while limiting a 2 percent quota for ethnic minorities, transgender people and disabled people, leaving 93 percent of the jobs based on merit.

Two days later, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government issued a letter welcoming the ruling.

While the protesters agreed that the Supreme Court order and the government’s subsequent acceptance fulfilled their early demands of reforming the quota system, they now have renewed demands after more than 150 student protesters were killed and nearly 2,700 arrested, according to local media.

The protests turned violent on July 15 after members of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of Hasina’s Awami League party, allegedly attacked the protesters. Police cracked