Tens of thousands of students blocked the main streets of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, on Thursday, demanding that quotas for civil service jobs be abolished and those jobs given to candidates on the basis of merit. The protests broke out after a Dhaka court recently reinstated quotas for government jobs, which were abolished by a government order in 2018 following another countrywide student protest. The appellate division halted the new ruling for four weeks on Wednesday, but that did not quell the demonstrations. Protesting students blocked entry and exit points as well as key intersections in Dhaka, one of the world’s most crowded cities, causing major traffic congestion. Students broke a police barricade in Dhaka’s Shahbag area on Thursday evening to conduct a large sit-in.

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Locations: Bangladesh’s, Dhaka, Dhaka’s Shahbag