The movement is hailed as a Gen Z revolution, spurred by young Bangladeshis\u2019 anger at years of injustice
\nDHAKA
\nStudent demonstrators who ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have rejected calls from Bangladesh\u2019s two main political parties for quick elections and are considering creating their own party to cement in place reforms, according to interviews with four protest leaders.
\nTheir hope: to avoid a repeat of the last 15 years, in which Hasina ruled the country of some 170 million with an iron fist.
\nThat was until June, when a handful of students \u2013 most in their early-to-mid 20s\u2013began organising demonstrations against a law reserving coveted government jobs for certain segments of the population.
\nWithin weeks, Hasina\u2019s government was swept away by an upswell of popular anger at the brutality of its crackdown on anti-quota protesters. At least 300 people were killed in the single largest bout of violence since Bangladesh\u2019s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
\nThe movement was hailed as a Gen Z revolution, spurred by young Bangladeshis\u2019 anger at years of jobless growth, allegations of kleptocracy, and shrinking civil liberties.
\nAn interim government headed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus\u2013which includes two student leaders in senior positions\u2013now runs the country.
\nFor most of the past three decades, Bangladesh has been governed either by Hasina\u2019s Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of her rival Khaleda Zia, both of whom are in their 70s.
\nStudent leaders are discussing forming a political party to end the duopoly, said Mahfuj Alam, who chairs a committee tasked with liaising between the government and social groups such as teachers and activists.
\nA decision would be made in about a month, the 26-year-old law student told Reuters, adding that protest leaders wanted to consult widely with citizens before deciding on a platform.
\nDetails of the students\u2019 plans for their movement\u2019s political future have not previously been reported.
\n\u201cPeople are really tired of the two political parties. They have trust in us,\u201d he said, at the gates of Dhaka University\u2019s Arts Faculty.
\nTahmid Chowdhury, another student coordinator who helped bring down Hasina, said there was a \u201chigh chance\u201d they would form a political party. They were still working out their program, though he said it would be rooted in secularism and free speech.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have any other plan that could break the binary without forming a party,\u201d said the 24-year-old graduate student in world religion.
\nThe student leaders in interim government have not specified what policies they intend to pursue, beyond sweeping institutional changes\u2013such as reforming the electoral commission handpicked by Hasina\u2013to avoid another spell of authoritarian rule.
\n\u201cThe spirit of the movement was to create a new Bangladesh, one where no fascist or autocrat can return,\u201d said Nahid Islam, 26, a key protest organiser who sits in Yunus\u2019 cabinet. \u201cTo ensure that, we need structural reforms, which will definitely take some time.\u201d
\nThe government is not considering calls from the Awami League and BNP to hold fresh polls as early as fall, said Islam, who holds the telecommunications portfolio.
\nThe regime change has forced out the chief justice, the central bank governor and the police chief who oversaw the crackdown on the students, among other officials.
\nA spokesperson for Yunus, who has said he is not keen on holding elected office, did not return a request for comment. Touhid Hossain, a career diplomat serving as Yunus\u2019 de facto foreign minister, told Reuters the students had not discussed their political plans with the technocrats.
\nBut he added: \u201cthe political scenario is going to change because we have basically excluded the young generation from politics.\u201d
\nYunus, an 84-year-old economist whose microcredit programs helped lift millions globally out of poverty, wields moral authority but there are doubts over what his administration can achieve.
\n\u201cWe are totally in uncharted waters, both legally and politically,\u201d said Shahdeen Malik, a constitutional expert. \u201cThe powers of this interim government are not defined because there is no constitutional provision.\u201d
\nReuters interviewed more than 30 people, including key student leaders, Hasina\u2019s son and adviser Sajeeb Wazed, opposition politicians and army officers to assess the divisions left in the wake of the protests and the prospects for the new government.
\nHasina, whose son said she hopes to return to Bangladesh, couldn\u2019t be reached for comment.
\n\u201cThe political parties are not going anywhere. You cannot wipe us out,\u201d Wazed told Reuters from the United States, where he lives. \u201cSooner or later, either the Awami League or the BNP will be back in power. Without our help, without our supporters, you are not going to be able to bring stability to Bangladesh.\u201d
\nCollaborators
\nOn July 19, as Hasina\u2019s supporters and police battled student demonstrators, authorities detained three of the movement\u2019s most important leaders: Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Mojumder.
\nMojumder told Reuters that he was sedated and beaten by law enforcement. The treatment, he said, solidified his view that Hasina had to go.
\nThe new police chief Mainul Islam did not respond to Reuters\u2019 questions for this story.
\nPrevious protests had fizzled when leaders were detained but this time demonstrations raged on. Expecting to be arrested, the core of about two dozen coordinators had formed a structure in which they were supported by layers of other student-activists, said Islam, a veteran of previous protests.
\nMissteps by Hasina, meanwhile, fuelled public anger against her.
\nWhile the students had protested for more than a month, they were largely limited to public university campuses. Then, on July 14, Hasina held a news conference.
\nHalf an hour in, she half-smilingly referred to the demonstrators as \u201crazakars\u201d. The pejorative describes people who collaborated with Pakistan during the 1971 war, which she contrasted with descendants of freedom fighters for whom many government jobs would be reserved.
\nThe comment ignited furious mass protests.
\nAt Dhaka University, male demonstrators were joined by female students who broke out of their five halls of residences, whose gates are locked in the evenings, said Umama Fatema, 25, a female student coordinator.
\nThe next day, the Awami League\u2019s student wing moved to suppress demonstrations and clashes erupted, with sticks, iron rods and stones for weapons.
\n\u2018Stop the voilence\u2019
\nThe escalation in violence that week expanded the demonstrations from public campuses to private institutions, said Nayeem Abedin, a 22-year-old coordinator at the private East-West University. \u201cWe had a responsibility to come out to the street for our brothers,\u201d he said.
\nStudents at such institutions typically come from Bangladesh\u2019s middle class that expanded rapidly during the robust economic growth that Hasina oversaw over much of her term.
\n\u201cIt felt like a turning point,\u201d said Islam. \u201cPrivate university students joined in, and unexpectedly, so did many parents.\u201d
\nAt least 114 people were killed by the end of that week, with hundreds more hurt. The scale of the crackdown shocked even some in the Awami League elite.
\n\u201cI also told my mother: \u2018no, we need to immediately tell Chhatra League not to attack, stop the violence,\u2019\u201d said Wazed, without providing further details. \u201cWe suspended the police officers that shot at students.\u201d
\nAt least two officers were suspended in early August after a video depicting the killing of a student went viral online. The student leaders plan to prosecute police and paramilitary accused of abuse.
\nOn July 21, Bangladesh\u2019s Supreme Court, whose judges were effectively appointed by Hasina, ruled that 93% of state jobs should be open to competition, meeting a key demand of the students. The demonstrations continued to grow.
\nHasina declared an indefinite curfew on Aug. 4, a day after at least 91 people were killed. The army told the prime minister that evening it would not enforce the lockdown.
\n\u201cThe army chief didn\u2019t want more bloodshed,\u201d said one serving officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn\u2019t authorised to talk to media. \u201cPeople from all walks of life were joining.\u201d
\nThe next day, as crowds marched to her official residence, Hasina fled to India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The movement is hailed as a Gen Z revolution, spurred by young Bangladeshis\u2019 anger at years of injustice DHAKA Student demonstrators who ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have rejected calls from Bangladesh\u2019s two main political parties for quick elections and are considering creating their own party to cement in place reforms, according to interviews with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":68949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68978,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68967\/revisions\/68978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}