By Saimum Parvez
In just one month, Bangladesh has witnessed an unprecedented uprising, a state-run massacre, the fall of a dictator and mob violence. The ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India after protestors flooded Dhaka’s streets. An interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, will be in power until new elections are held.
More than450 peoplewere killed by police, paramilitary forces and the Awami League student wing during the weeks of unrest. There was violence after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government left Bangladesh without an effective government for several days. Attacks on minorities took place, many motivated by their perceivedpolitical allegianceto the Hasina government.
As pressure mounts over the mass killings, amurder investigationhas been opened against Sheikh Hasina over the police killings of protestors. A UNfact-finding teamwill visit Bangladesh in late August to set up a probe into the deaths.
The excessive force used to counter the student-led movement turned it into a massacre. As of 30 July, at least266 students and protesterswerekilledand thousands criticallyinjured.
To cover up and legitimise the mass killings, the ousted Sheikh Hasina regime propagatedfalse narratives. Hasinablamed the oppositionBangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami and their student wings for the violence. Pro-Hasina groups even claimed the movement had links to Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
Though this strategy had worked for the Hasina regime in the past, this time the overwhelming number and variety of protesters made it obvious that this was an organic movement. Labelling urban middle-class educated youths ‘extremists’ was never likely to gain any traction. There was also simply too many videos and photographic evidence, even after the internet black-out, and too much bloodshed, that the government was unable to cover their abuses with an unsubstantial, flimsy blame game.
Thousands of university students began peacefully protesting in early July 2024 after a High Court ruling restoring quotas in government jobs. With a struggling economy, government jobs were the only secure option left for thousands of unemployed youth. Theunemployment rate increasedfrom 7.74 per cent in 2004 to a staggering 15.74 per cent in 2023. But more than 50 per cent of government jobs were reserved for several specific groups via the quotas, including 30 per cent for the descendants of those who had participated in Bangladesh’s 1971 war for independence from Pakistan.
Students contended that after more than fifty years of independence the quota was unfair and mostly benefitted Hasina regime loyalists. Instead of engaging in dialogue with the protesters, Sheikh Hasina called the protesters ‘Razakars’ — a derogatory label for collaborators who fought on the side of Pakistan during the 1971 war.
Protests spread quickly to all the major public universities. Soon, students at private universities,collegesand evenschoolsjoined the protests. Bangladesh witnessed an unprecedented scale of protests and security officials were overwhelmed. Even with theindiscriminate useof live ammunition, tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, shotgun pellets and machetes, the combined force of police, paramilitary, and ruling party activists could not disperse protesters. Many disgruntled members of the opposition political parties, garment workers and manual labourers also joined the protests.
Unarmed students werekilled on the streetsin brutal fashion. Automatic weapons from helicoptersfired indiscriminatelyat the crowds. The government shut down the internet and all telecommunications, severing ties with the rest of the world. The government deployed the army and imposedshoot-on-sightcurfew orders. Many protesters’ whereabouts are still unknown, making it impossible to know how many were killed in the crackdown.
Bangladesh has atroubling historyof repression against anyone who opposed Sheikh Hasina. The last three national elections in Bangladesh, held in 2014, 2018 and 2024, werefar from free and fair. In recent years the Hasina government had used excessive force to suppress several other movements, including thegarment workersmovement demanding wages, the first phase of thequota reform movement in 2018and aroad safety movementof school students in 2018. Increasing inflation, price hikes, endemic corruption and a dismal record on freedom of expression had made many people disgruntled with the regime.
What started as a quota reform movement erupted withpent-up frustrations. Threatened by the outrage of the protesters, the Hasina government soon realised that pro-government forces would not be able to contain the protest. When police and paramilitary forces failed, the Hasina regime deployed the military. But the indiscriminate killings created what Sheikh Hasina was afraid of — grounds for mass revolt.
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh reduced the quota on 21 July, allocating just 5 per cent of government jobs for descendants of freedom fighters. But the court gave the government the power to change this quota. Despite theabduction and tortureof severalstudent leaders, protesters rejected the ruling and vowed to continue until the perpetrators of the massacre were put on trial. This distrust also stemmed from students’ experience of the first quota reform movement in 2018, when Sheikh Hasina promised to scrap all quotas, only to restore them in 2024 through the judiciary.
The heightened security presence and the imposition of a curfew failed to stabilise the situation. The quota reform protest turned into amass movement against a dictator.Eventually Hasina fled to India, putting an end to more than two decades ofauthoritarian rule.
According to interim leader Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh has achieved itssecond liberation. But thefuture of Bangladeshwill depend on how quickly and efficiently the interim government can put the country on the right track by promoting democracy and ensuring a people’s mandate.
