Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and left the country on Monday, after at least a hundred people died in clashes with her supporters and the police on Sunday in protests called by the country’s student movement. The organization Students Against Discrimination had called for a march to Dhaka for today, defying the curfew imposed the day before by the authorities, with the intention of pressuring Hasina to resign, which has happened, after the protesters even entered the palace that houses the headquarters of the country’s government. The veteran leader, who in January won a fourth consecutive term in a controversial election, has already landed in the eastern Indian city of Agartala, according to sources cited by CNN.
With thousands of people marching in the centre of the Bangladeshi capital, the army has announced that it is taking control of the country. The army chief of staff since 23 June, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, gave a speech in which he assured that he would meet with the country’s president, Muhammad Shahabuddin Chuppu, to form an interim government. “We will resolve the crisis before tonight,” said the general, who also announced the lifting of the curfew imposed from 6pm (2pm in mainland Spain) on Sunday and the restoration of internet communications, which had been limited.
The capital woke up on Monday to the sight of army tanks and police vehicles roaming the streets, which were also patrolled by numerous officers on foot. There was hardly any civilian traffic, except for a few motorcycles and the city’s characteristic three-wheeled taxis. The clashes in the Bangladeshi capital, as in many other parts of the country, had transformed the city on Sunday into a war zone due to violent clashes between protesters and Hasina’s supporters, many of whom were carrying sticks and metal objects.
At least 96 people were killed and hundreds injured in Sunday’s clashes in this country of 170 million people, According to local media such as the The Dhaka TribunePolice fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse tens of thousands of protesters, as they did in the previous bloody protest on 19 July, which also left more than 100 dead, many injured and several hundred arrested. In total, around 300 people have died since the start of the protests, at least 32 of them children, “and many more were injured and arrested,” UNICEF laments.
Bangladesh, the world’s eighth most populous country, has been engulfed in violence since July, when student protests began over high youth unemployment and anger at the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate a quota system that reserved 30 percent of government jobs for families of fighters in Pakistan’s 1971 war of independence, and another 30 percent for women and minorities. The protesters considered this allocation discriminatory, since only 40 percent of recruitment was based on merit. On July 21, the high court heeded their main complaint and overturned the system, raising the percentage of government jobs allocated on merit to 93 percent, reserving 5 percent for relatives of fighters and the remaining 2 percent for ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
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But the Students Against Discrimination movement took to the streets again last week to demand that the prime minister publicly apologise for the violence against protesters, restore internet connections, reopen university campuses and release those arrested in the protests. The escalation of tension made Sunday one of the most violent days since the start of the social outbreak, with a high death toll, including at least 13 police officers. In response, the organisers announced a march to the capital on Monday. “The government has killed many students. The time has come for the final response,” said the coordinator of the protest, Asif Mahmud, in a statement on Facebook late on Sunday. “Everyone will come to Dhaka, especially the surrounding districts. Come to Dhaka and take a stand on the streets,” he encouraged in the text. The Bangladeshi army had, for its part, urged citizens to obey the curfew rules.
“Excessive” force
The prime minister’s centre-left party, the Awami League, has been denouncing on its social media and channels for weeks an opposition plot to topple Hasina’s cabinet by encouraging violence. However, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on Monday in a statement for the government to stop “attacking those peacefully participating in the protest movement” and to release those detained “arbitrarily”. “Continued efforts to suppress popular discontent, including through the excessive use of force and the deliberate dissemination of misinformation and incitement to violence, must cease immediately,” he added.
The unrest in recent weeks, which has led the government to shut down internet services on several occasions, is the worst the country has seen in the 20 years that Hasina has been in power (1996-2001 and 2009-2024). The 76-year-old prime minister won a fourth consecutive term in office in January in elections that were boycotted by the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Hasina’s critics, along with human rights groups, have accused her government of using excessive force against protesters, both through the police and the military, which was deployed on the streets to control the protests. An analysis of photographs and videos by Amnesty International confirmed that the police “unlawfully used lethal weapons against protesters”, among other abuses such as limiting communications.
The violence was not limited to the streets of Dhaka, the capital. At least five people died in the eastern district of Feni, the superintendent of Sadar hospital, Abul Khair Miazi, told EFE. The head of the Kishoreganj administration, Abul Kalam Azad, said that three people died, including two burned to death “when the house of a leader of the Awami League (government) was set on fire.” One of the districts where the most fatalities were recorded was Sirajganj. Five people died in the region, according to the head of health services, Mohammad Jahangir Alam, in addition to the 13 members of the security forces, who died in a police station.
Hospital sources confirmed dozens of dead and wounded in several districts of the country, including the capital and Bogura, Pabna and Magura. Some of them, like the two who died in Munshiganj district, were shot, according to the superintendent of the health centre where they were treated, Abu Hena Muhammad Jamal.
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