By: Nava Thakuria
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned from her post yesterday, August 5, and left the violence-wracked country for refuge with the support from the Indian high commission in Dhaka, leaves New Delhi to cope with the political fallout over what an interim government will look like given the possibility of the return of the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party. An anti-India, pro-China government could destabilize security on the neighbors’ shared border. “New Delhi cannot afford to have another front open,” the Indian Express wrote, particularly with continuing tensions with Pakistan. Both Nepal and the Maldives Islands have also recently come under increasing Chinese sway and Delhi has also lost influence in Afghanistan to both China and Pakistan.
The chief of Bangla armed forces, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address to the nation and appealed to everyone in the country to restrain from violent activities. Reuters reported that crowds stormed unopposed into the opulent grounds of the prime minister’s residence, carrying out looted furniture and televisions. One looter balanced a red velvet, gilt-edged chair on his head. Another held an armful of vases. Elsewhere in Dhaka, according to the report, protesters climbed atop a statue of Hasina’s late father, state founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and began chiseling away at the head with an axe.
Unconfirmed reports say that Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the low-income microlender Grameen Bank, who is currently visiting Paris, could be asked to form a caretaker government to guide the election commission to conduct a national election within a few months to hand over power. The octogenarian banker-turned-social thinker has faced continuing personal harassment from Hasina over a number of fictitious legal charges. In a conversation with Asia Sentinel, he insisted on quality debates over the turmoil faced by his country as calls grew to make him the country’s leader.
There is concern in Delhi that with its best friend out of power, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi now finds a potential crisis on his hands with the possibility that a government could take over with help from benefactors in China and Pakistan. Ruling party leaders including some ministers in Hasina’s cabinet alleged that the anti-government movement was hijacked by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party along with radicalized Jamaat-e-Islami workers to topple the government. They claimed that so-called agitators with the endorsement of BNP leaders indulged in violent activities. BNP chief Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman, who has been living in exile for years, was also accused of hatching a conspiracy against the government.
The security of India’s northeastern states, almost cut off from the main body of the country geographically Bangladesh, depends on its strategic presence in that country. Hasina’s concession of goods transit and her crackdown on Assam’s militant groups operating in Bangladesh were crucial. Five Indian states – West Bengal, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Assam – share a 4.096-km-long international boundary with Bangladesh. China has an equal interest, given Bangladesh’s strategic position on the Bay of Bengal and its access to the Indian Ocean Region from Africa to Indonesia. It is also vital due to its proximity to the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints that links the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea.
The world’s longest-serving female prime minister, the 76-year-old Hasina had seemed unassailable after 15 years of rule, her second stint over the past 30 years, having long since vanquished her lifelong rival Khaleda Zia, the former prime minister whom she jailed after Khaleda lost an election battle to her. After Hasina fled, Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin ordered Khaleda’s release from prison hours later. But violence has shaken Bangladesh for weeks, taking the lives of at least 300, over a controversial decision by the country’s highest court on a quota of government jobs reserved for families connected to early freedom fighters. The violence was at first driven by university protests against the quota reservation system, with students and young people multiplying national outrage with the ruling Awami League which spread into the general population.
Hasina’s long leadership, aided by considerable help and stewardship from the International Monetary Fund, was marked by significant economic, largely secular growth that made it the world’s second-biggest garment producer, employing hundreds of thousands, but was also characterized by widespread political repression and human rights sanctions against her security forces. Khaleda’s BNP repeatedly boycotted elections including the most recent one in January.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for an impartial probe into alleged human rights violations across Bangladesh. He also called on Dhaka to restore full Internet access to enable free communication for all including the media persons in accordance with international law. The UN rights chief urged the government to disclose full details about the crackdown on protests. Amnesty International also claimed that police used lethal and less-lethal weapons against student protesters. At least three journalists have been killed. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists charged that dozens of journalists covering anti-government protests had been attacked and called on the country’s interim government to urgently ensure the safety of the media. Business Standard newspaper reporters Miraz Hossain and Jahidul Islam were beaten in the capital Dhaka by supporters of the Jubo League, the youth wing of the Awami League, Hossain told CPJ. In addition, the Dhaka offices of multiple pro-Awami League broadcasters including Somoy TV, Ekattor TV, and DBC News, were vandalized on Monday.
The London-based human rights organization argued that the continued verification and analysis of video and photographic evidence provides a grim picture. The egregious human rights records of the Bangla government and Rapid Action Battalion, which has been deployed to police the protests, provides little reassurance that the protesters’ rights would be protected in the absence of active international monitoring with internet and communication restrictions still partially in place.
Though it began with a peaceful protest demonstration on the prestigious Dhaka University campus demanding the reservation quota for the dependents of freedom fighters’ families (who fought against the brutal Pakistani forces) to be abolished, it spread quickly to other university campuses and cities to emerge as a national outrage against the Hasina government. The general population, who are seemingly unhappy with the Hasina regime that achieved the fourth consecutive victory on 7 January 2024 national elections with no opposition candidates on the field, joined the movement.
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