In Bangladesh, under the cover of Internet and mobile censorship, the government has deployed the military and murdered protestors. Though a court has since scaled back the quota system that first kicked the protests off, there have been dozens of recorded deaths, and the Internet continues to be taken down after five days of protests. While some fixed-line Internet connectivity is back, mobile Internet and social media access is still down, preventing the world from fully seeing which atrocities are being committed - though some images are now coming to the fore. The student protestors behind the movement have vowed a 48-hour pause - but also said they are not retreating from the movement, even under torture. This grave episode of state repression and Internet censorship will hold lasting resonance.

The Bangladeshi government has been building a surveillance state that allows it to use the Internet to maintain its control. In the past, it has also shut down certain regions—though this will be the first time it has shut down the entire country. While maintaining an open Internet in terms of access to Western Internet platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Bangladesh has also restricted many freedoms (including the use of Bitcoin), shut down the Internet in different regions, and created a surveillance state that tracks dissidents and arrests them for expressing themselves online.

This has led to independent calls to decentralize the Internet and provide Starlink to Bangladesh—a call that has been left unanswered by Elon Musk so far. "There are fires in stadiums, there are fires in metro stations. So the people who have been deprived of their fundamental rights—democratic rights—have taken to the streets now," says Zulkarnian Saer Khan, an investigative journalist who has been covering Bangladesh for decades.

This comes amid unrest after the elections, which swept the ruling Awami League party into power for the fourth consecutive term. The protests started due to the government's enforcement of a quota system that had previously allocated 30% of stable civil-service jobs to relatives of veterans of Bangladesh's independence war with Pakistan.

Internet is still down in Bangladesh despite apparent calm following deadly protests

Bangladesh remained without internet for a fifth day and the government declared a public holiday Monday, as authorities maintained tight control despite apparent calm following a court order that scaled back a controversial system for allocating government jobs that sparked violent protests.

This comes after a curfew with a shoot-on-sight order was installed days earlier and military personnel could be seen patrolling the capital and other areas.

The South Asian country witnessed clashes between the police and mainly student protesters demanding an end to a quota that reserved 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. The violence has killed more than a hundred people, according to at least four local newspapers. Authorities have not so far shared official figures for deaths.

"And all these elections have been heavily rigged because the government themselves conducted the elections. There were no opposition parties. Meantime, they introduce laws like [the] Digital Security Act, Cybersecurity Act, just to muzzle the press, just to persecute the critics." observed Zulkarnian.

"While Facebook and Twitter are browsed from Bangladesh, the government employs spyware and other devices to monitor and try to control the Internet tightly - and people are arrested for expressing themselves online. "Bangladesh has heavily invested in spyware and surveillance technologies over the past few years," says Zulkarnian, and he continues.

"Bangladesh- it's a classic example of a surveillance state. There, the government will eavesdrop on your phone line. They will hear your text message, they will read your text message, and they will try to hack into people's computers. Journalists and their Facebook and Twitter are very normally randomly hacked. Their email accounts are compromised sometimes."

As the Internet continues to stay dark in Bangladesh and verifying the number of dead and atrocities committed gets harder - through deliberate design - watching what happens in Bangladesh is something people around the world can do. The outlet Netra News is reporting on events in Bangladesh in English, as well as Bangla Outlook English. There are tweets still coming from journalists recording and compiling information about the bloodshed, from Zulkarnian to David Bergman to Muktadir (who is posting live photos of military movements around the capital) - many of whom are trying to document figures on the killed and wounded before the government attempts to erase those figures. Shafiqul Alam, the bureau chief of AFP (which has a special deal to access the Internet), has been sharing updates on his Facebook. It's through journalists like them that we've learned that there are likely more than 180 deaths and with one journalist reporting nearly 200 dead.