Bangladesh's government overthrown by protests, P.M. flees to India

August 5, 2024 5:32 PM

Following weeks of anti-government protests over job quotas, in which hundreds of protestors have been killed, Bangladesh's Prime Minister has ended her stretch as the longest-serving female head of government in the world by fleeing to India.

Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh's Prime Minister since 2009, head of one of the dominant political families in Bangladeshi politics, and daughter of the populous South Asian nation's first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, resigned and fled the capital on Monday.

Following her departure, President Mohammed Shahabuddin, after meeting with political representatives and army leaders, announced plans to form an interim government, release jailed protestors, free imprisoned former P.M. Khaleda Zia, and lift curfews.

posted by Nerd of the North (28 comments total)

Apologies for the skimpiness of this write-up but despite the fact that Bangladesh has more people than Russia, Mexico, or Japan, news coverage of it in the west is next to non-existent except when there is a crisis. And what little we do receive is often pretty agenda-driven, so I have tried to stick to very basic facts.

There is surely more to be said about how this will affect relations with its neighbors, or whether it will jeopardize the slow economic progress Bangladesh has been making, or how vulnerable religious minority populations (such as Hindu citizens of majority Muslim Bangladesh or mostly-Muslim Rohingya refugees who have fled Myanmar) will be affected and I encourage anyone with good sources to share them here.

I just felt that a sudden regime change in the world's eighth most populous nation deserved a chance at discussion and feared the news would be swamped by the Olympics or American political coverage.

[edited to add: Mods - if someone comes along with a better write-up I won't be at all put out if this one disappears.]
posted by Nerd of the North at 5:39 PM on August 5 [39 favorites]

Why has Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled?

posted by lalochezia at 5:42 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

The Awami League is nominally a leftist party but they've been increasingly right-wing and authoritarian for the past several years, including pursuing close ties with Narendra Modi in India and jailing their political opponents on pretty flimsy pretexts. One reason news out of the student protests has been somewhat scarce is that Hasina's government turned the internet off for the whole country a few weeks ago; it was briefly back on toward the end of July and then turned off again. I have no idea whether it's back up now or not.
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:53 PM on August 5 [11 favorites]

>leftist party but they've been increasingly right-wing and authoritarian

boy that's a surprise!
posted by torokunai at 6:01 PM on August 5

Why do I feel Modi and the BJP is at least partially to blame for this?
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:02 PM on August 5 [4 favorites]

Nerd of the North, thank you so much for bringing this to the front page.

I hope people who have good insights into the situation there will share them with us here.
posted by kristi at 6:02 PM on August 5 [5 favorites]

As someone who has recently read a Bangaladesh Wikipedia article, this is my time to shine!

Seriously though, for a well cited left perspective, the Progressive International notes torture, "shoot-on-sight" orders, and general villification of protesters as Pakistani cats' paws. The protests seem to have achieved their main goal of reducing this odd (to me) government job quota left for veterans of the independence war with Pakistan in 1971.

80 percent of Bangaladesh's GDP is private and since 2009 their economy has been on a general IMF/World Bank capitalist liberalization trend, with substantial GDP growth. For a different angle, an Indian subreddit is posting headlines about Muslim protesters attacking Hindu families. I can't tell exactly what's going on in the videos.
posted by Hume at 6:15 PM on August 5 [5 favorites]

I just felt that a sudden regime change in the world's eighth most populous nation deserved a chance at discussion and feared the news would be swamped by the Olympics or American political coverage.

Appreciated, definitely!
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:22 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

'... demonstrators and once-unthinkable scenes of vandalism, with some protesters hammering away at a large statue of Mujib, Hasina’s father and the spiritual figurehead of the nation.'
posted by clavdivs at 6:25 PM on August 5

Hasina's government turned the internet off for the whole country a few weeks ago; it was briefly back on toward the end of July and then turned off again. I have no idea whether it's back up now or not
Netblocks reported that internet appears to have been down again yesterday & is back again now:
"Update: Internet connectivity remains available in #Bangladesh amid reports Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has fled the country, bringing an end to her combined total of 20 years in power; hundreds of killings at student protests were masked by telecoms blackouts in recent weeks"
posted by HearHere at 6:30 PM on August 5 [4 favorites]

Economist last week had a good archive about the unrest that led yesterday to the PM's ouster.

The grievance that brought the students to the streets came in June, when the High Court ordered the government to restore a long-dropped quota setting aside 30% of jobs in government for family members of veterans who had fought in the country’s bloody war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. This is a particularly egregious example of jobs for the boys: consider that the roots of the ruling party, the Awami League (AL), are in the independence movement and that Sheikh Hasina makes much of being the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who headed the movement and was the new country’s leader until his assassination in 1975.

This means that the quota is tailored to benefit AL members. Two-fifths of young Bangladeshis do not have regular employment, so it hit a nerve. Around 400,000 graduates already have to compete every year for just 3,000 government jobs in a precarious employment market.

This on the back of a lot of corruption and authoritarianism. I don't fully trust The Economist to be objective on this kind of reporting, their free market bias intrudes. But it's more informed than anything I've seen in US media.
posted by Nelson at 6:41 PM on August 5 [13 favorites]

The US commended the army for its "restraint"

Respectfully, that seems like a very polite way of saying "Thanks for not doing another coup."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:02 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

Why do I feel Modi and the BJP is at least partially to blame for this?

What's been interesting to me is how quickly, naturally, and even reflexively I'm seeing in Indian discursive spaces (on roughly along both wings of the political spectrum) the idea that this is a CIA-aggravated plot. Which has a lot of historical salience but it's also quite typically Indian in how it patronizes the Bangladeshi public imo.
posted by cendawanita at 7:04 PM on August 5 [11 favorites]

I will at least say I'm nervous because we're somewhat having a reprise of what's happened in Egypt (and swap Israel for Pakistan) and hearing (unvetted) news that the stakeholders the interim govt/military is inviting are only right-wing parties isn't assuaging my nerves.
posted by cendawanita at 7:08 PM on August 5 [6 favorites]

For a different angle, an Indian subreddit is posting headlines about Muslim protesters attacking Hindu families. I can't tell exactly what's going on in the videos.

Just quoting representative a (to my viewpoint) tweet more local to the area:
Angshuman Choudhry: 'I, like many of my progressive friends, have no qualms in saying that Hindu minorities in Bangladesh need to be protected from attacks by Islamist mobs.

But can the Indian RW make a similar call to protect Indian Muslims from Hindutva mobs? Doubt it. That’s the difference.'

The persistence and prevalence of Indian troll farms and just general too online hindutvas in VARIOUS conflicts globally is going to make trying to understand the developments in an actual neighbouring (Muslim-majority) country even more fraught. I'm struggling too, and not to mention Pakistanis are just as interested.

Anyway, Nazmul Ahasan: Bangladesh’s Muslim clerics are voluntarily guarding a Hindu temple in Cumilla after reports of attacks on Hindu communities and their places of worship prompted politicians and protest leaders to call for 'resisting' those committing violence.

Photo by Billah Mamun/Facebook

(Disclaimer: I've never been to Guam.)
posted by cendawanita at 8:50 PM on August 5 [14 favorites]

I'm getting a lot out of that Progressive International article linked above. I'd never heard of PI - thanks to @Hume I now do!

'The killings, the beatings, the willful violence by the state apparatus and BCL and the impunity of it all has resurrected the spectres of student power - an indomitable force that has shaped Bangladesh’s history since 1947. The Language Movement (Bhasha Andolon) of 1952 was led by students; echoes of the martyrs Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and Shafiur invoked with those killed on July 15. The spirits of 1969 uprising against Ayub Khan, the 1971 liberation war, 1987 protests against the military dictator HM Ershad, the return to democratic governance in 1990, the Road Safety Protests of 2018 - invocations abounded in physical and ethereal spaces.

Even Sheikh Mujib’s legendary calls for liberation and resistance against the Pakistani Army in 1971 - “Ghorey Ghorey Durgo Gore Tulun” (Build a fortress at every home), “Rokto jokhon diyechi tokhon aro debo” (Now that I have bled I will continue to do so), “Ebarer shongram, shadhinotar shongram” (This fight is the fight for liberation) - made their rounds across social media; speeches overlaid with images and videos of defiant student protestors against the government’s violent repression.'
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 10:06 PM on August 5 [2 favorites]

For a different angle, an Indian subreddit is posting headlines about Muslim protesters attacking Hindu families. I can't tell exactly what's going on in the videos.


Indian subreddits will always be mostly about muslims raping and killing hindus.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:23 PM on August 5 [4 favorites]

PBS NewsHour story on the resignation from Monday. PBS news hub for recent Bangladesh stories.
posted by JDC8 at 10:24 PM on August 5 [1 favorite]

Mod note: A couple deleted. Let's try to avoid "I'm not at all familiar with this nation, but I've looked up a couple of statistics in Wikipedia and CIA factbook, and can now explain this crisis" type commenting. There are people here who really are much more informed on the country and geopolitical situation and can provide more nuanced guidance. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:56 PM on August 5 [13 favorites]

Pending whatever outcomes from the meeting today with the military, the student protestors have put forward economist Muhammad Yunus to be head or chief advisor for the interim government (sample reporting - this one has more background for those unfamiliar; Reuters wire story was quite terse)
posted by cendawanita at 11:08 PM on August 5 [3 favorites]

I'm an expat Bangladeshi, but not an expert Bangladeshi, if that makes sense, so I feel kind of bad to be the first Bangladeshi (it seems) to weigh in here. I really hope someone turns up who has more insight, ideally someone who currently lives there.

Really glad to see this posted on Metafilter. After almost a month of following the news from home via friends' messages and social media rather than mainstream news coverage, I had no expectation of it ever turning up here.

Some articles I found helpful to understand the situation myself:

Bangladesh's Spin Doctors Are Wrong-Footed by Their Own Doosra

How Bangladesh Fell Into An Information Blackout

It's an extremely nuanced scenario. The country has been doing well economically under Hasina, until recently; right now, there is mass youth unemployment. We have not had access to free and fair elections for a long time. Hasina did not provide any outlet for civil disagreement and the country has been a hotbed of cronyism and nepotism. There was talk of her government having access to Israeli-purchased spyware to track people's phones.

I can't describe how it felt to see the footage of uniformed police beating young people, to call home to hear gunshots outside my family's apartment, or to not be able to communicate with them at all because of the government imposed internet blackout.

The fact that Hasina responded by perpetuating violence against children and young people and then by just up and leaving does not feel to me like a leader who ever had the best interests of her people at stake.

At the same time I am extremely worried about the vacuum her departure has left and what other corrupt people might emerge. I'm worried about my family getting caught up in the breakdown of law and order that some people are seeing. The protests arose out of a principle but a lot of what is going on now is sheer lawlessness and vandalism.

There's been a lot of talk about Awami League (Hasina's party)-planted plans to sow sectarian violence and a lot of pictures circulating on social media of civilian volunteers standing guard against Hindu temples to protect them from vandalism. (Hindus are a minority in Bangladesh.)

It's the definition of mixed emotions.
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:31 AM on August 6 [31 favorites]

From David Bergman half hour ago:
BREAKING: Formal confirmation that Muhammad Yunus has agreed to be head of the interim government.

Lamiya Murshed, Executive Director of the Yunus Centre told me that she recently spoke to Yunus, who is currently in Paris, and that he told her:

"I have agreed to the request of the student leaders to be head of the interim government. I told the student leaders 'I did not want to do this. it is not what I do, but that how can I refuse their request after all that you have done'."

Yunus was speaking to the student leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud. Murshed said that Yunus would be flying back to Bangladesh soon.

It is now understood that the Chief of Army Staff and the President are agreeable to Yunus taking this position, and a meeting between them and Nahid is currently taking place.
posted by cendawanita at 5:42 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

This link from Al Jazeera (which is an article receiving regular live updates btw) says Parliament was dissolved.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:02 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

Bergman again: The terrible error that ended Sheikh Hasina’s rule over Bangladesh gives some further insight. There is a paywall but I was able to access the whole article without needing to register.
posted by unicorn chaser at 6:04 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

This link from Al Jazeera

Just wanted to point out that if you follow AJ on social media (I follow AJEnglish on Insta), you'll get pretty good coverage of South Asian, Middle Eastern, and sometimes African news, with a spattering of western coverage. I've been getting my Bangladeshi updates from them.
posted by numaner at 7:16 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

A Nobel laureate will head Bangladesh's interim government after unrest ousted Hasina, official says - Minneapolis Star Tribute* / Associated Press, Julhas Alam and Sheikh Saaliq

An economist and banker, [Yunus] was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work developing microcredit markets. Yunus has been hailed for bringing thousands out of poverty through Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983, and which makes small loans to businesspeople who wouldn't qualify for regular bank loans.

...

Amid the celebrations, student Juairia Karim said it was a historic day. ''Today we are getting what we deserve,'' she said. ''Everyone is happy, everyone is cheerful.''

...

'Hindus are very afraid,'' Charu Chandra Das Brahmachari, leader of the Bangladesh branch of a Hindu movement, told the IANS news service. ''Hindus are very afraid that they could be attacked anytime. This is because whenever the government falls, minorities are affected.''

...

Opposition politicians have publicly called on people not to attack minority groups, while student leaders asked supporters to guard Hindu temples and other places of worship.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Tuesday urged people to exercise restraint in what it said was a ''transitional moment on our democratic path.''

''It would defeat the spirit of the revolution that toppled the illegitimate and autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina if people decide to take the law into their own hands,'' Tarique Rahman, the party's acting chairman, wrote on X.

''I think the next leader of the country should learn from the students that if anyone becomes corrupt, a traitor, or takes any action against the country, they will face the same fate," said Mohammad Jahirul Islam, a student in Dhaka.

* The Star Tribune is not my first thought for international news, but I was reading about Gov. Tim Walz's hotdish, and the article on Bangladesh was featured in the sidebar. I was glad for the update.
posted by kristi at 2:26 PM on August 6

I wanted to share another article by a Bangladeshi economist which is pretty well-written and gives background I have not seen elsewhere on the role played by students in the uprising and by government-affiliated student wings in the long-running suppression of freedom of speech and thuggery that has been characteristic of not only Hasina's government but those preceding.

Bangladesh’s students paid a high price for a freedom that may not last (Times Higher, not paywalled)
posted by unicorn chaser at 1:55 AM on August 7 [2 favorites]

I wanted to share another article by a Bangladeshi economist which is pretty well-written

Too late for editing. Something about my own phrasing doesn't sit right with me for some reason. It's just a well-written piece.
posted by unicorn chaser at 2:07 AM on August 7