Bangladesh student leader calls 48-hour halt to protests

A Bangladeshi student organisation behind recent protests against government employment quotas said Monday it was halting demonstrations for 48 hours.

"We are suspending the shutdown protests for 48 hours," Nahid Islam, the top leader of main protest organiser Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed.

"We demand that during this period the government withdraws the curfew, restores the internet and stops targeting the student protesters."

What began as demonstrations against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs has snowballed into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure, with at least 163 people killed in clashes, according to an AFP tally.

On Sunday the country's Supreme Court pared back the hiring quotas for specific groups, including one for the children and grandchildren of "freedom fighters" from Bangladesh's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

"We started this movement for reforming the quota," Islam said. "But we did not want quota reform at the expense of so much blood, so much killing, so much damage to life and property."

Islam was hospitalised after being picked up by unidentified individuals he alleged were plain-clothes police on Sunday night and beaten, he said.

He blamed the actions of the authorities for the escalation of the protests.

We are not sure how many people were killed. The government is completely controlling the media," he said.

"People are expressing their anger at the government."

Nobel winner urges world to 'end violence'

Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus urged the international community on Monday to stop the deadly violence that has wracked his country since students started protesting against civil service hiring rules.

"I urgently call on world leaders and the United Nations to do everything within their powers to end the violence against those who are exercising their rights to protest," the 83-year-old said in a statement.

"There must be investigations into the killings that have taken place already," he added in his first public comments since the unrest began.

The respected economist is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank but has earned the enmity of longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has accused him of "sucking blood" from the poor.

Yunus was last month indicted in a corruption case, the latest charges to proceed against him that supporters say are politically motivated.

"Bangladesh has been engulfed in a crisis that only seems to get worse with each passing day," he said. "High school students have been among the victims."