Finally Hasina too loses footing
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Bangladesh's Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina has finally abdicated after trying to quell the high-profile student and youth protests against the state violence that denied equality of opportunity and social justice in a country where unemployment and poverty are rampant. Sheikh Hasina left the country as the student movement, which started as a non-cooperation strike against the move to introduce 30 per cent reservation in government services for the descendants of freedom fighters, began a Dhaka March on Monday and attempted to storm the Prime Minister's official residence, Ganabhaban. Hasina's escapade was after calling hundreds of protesters terrorists, killing them in a brutal manner and ordering them to be dealt with harshly. According to reports, they escaped to India by helicopter and will move to London. As the protest which erupted against the government swelled into violence against the Awami League, and the opposition also started retaliating in a similar manner to the intervention of the police and the army, the army took control of the capital. Addressing the nation on Monday evening, Chief of Army Staff General Waker-uz-Zaman announced that an all-party interim government would soon be in place and would ensure justice by investigating the killings that accompanied the student agitation. At the same time, the ring leaders of the student movement have stated that the military rule in Bangladesh is not acceptable and that a government supporting fascism is not acceptable either.
The student uprising that shook Bangladesh started in early July. Campuses were in turmoil after a court order reintroduced the decision to reserve 30 per cent of the country's government jobs for the descendants of those who participated in the 1971 Bangladesh independence struggle. Due to strong protests, the court restored the reservation, which had been cancelled in 2018. At a time when the youth are suffering due to inflation and rampant unemployment, the government reserved 50 per cent of the jobs and reserved three-quarters of that for the descendants of the freedom fighters. The students allege that this reservation in the name of freedom struggle is being used as a means of inducting Awami League cadres, who were its main organizers, into government service. It affirms the privileges and rights enjoyed by the ruling Awami Party in its fourth term. As a result, everyone except the ruling party came out in support of the student strike. Teachers, lawyers, various bureaucrats, writers and artists all came out against the government's nepotistic decision. After a week, the Supreme Court suspended the reservation move, but the students filled the streets with the demand that quotas should be given up permanently. They brought the country to a standstill with agitation. Instead of listening to the demands of the protestors, the Hasina administration grown up to ridicule and threaten them, not only the army and the police but also incited the ranks of its own student organization, Bangladesh Chhatra League, to suppress the protest.
It can be said that Hasina has pushed the country into a civil war, as alleged by the country's Left Democratic Alliance. She tried to escape by blaming Khaleda Zia's Bangla Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which were the main opposition parties. Jamaat-e-Islami was banned at the height of the agitation against her regime. However, none of this could stop the student agitation and the anger among the people. Left parties, including Hasina's earlier allies, declared their support for the Non-Cooperation Movement and asked workers and women to take to the streets until the government resigns. This Sunday alone, around 100 people were killed in Dhaka and its suburbs. Hasina fled the country as thousands flocked to the capital in response to student agitation leaders' announcement that they would march on Dhaka on Monday. Sheikh Hasina, celebrated as a symbol of democracy when she assumed power moved towards dictatorship when events changed and she got well-entrenched in power. She was in her fifth term as prime minister and won her fourth consecutive term in January in a vote boycotted by the opposition. Hasina has come under fire from international agencies such as Human Rights Watch for suppressing dissent. The international community warned her every time she went ahead with labelling her political opponents one by one as terrorists and putting them in prisons, subjecting them to severe torture, setting up kangaroo courts and sentencing them to death. Everyone outside the ruling party says that Hasina's reign has been tied to a single agenda of consolidating her position in power. The proof of this is the various sectors of employment that have been plunged into the protests in the last one or two years. Amidst these disturbances, the move to pledge government services to the kin was enough to spark the agitation. Giving shoot-at-sight orders to the army and the police and leaving her ranks to go wild with weapons, Hasina followed the usual style of a dictator. Finally, she followed the same path in her fall.
