by Eugene Walker
This has become a mass movement against a dictator. The prime minister (Sheikh Hasina) has been ruling for 15 years and has spent so much time strengthening her grip over state mechanisms that she thinks she has become invincible. She has become a monster.
–Hasan, an injured protester in Dhaka
What started as a student protest at universities against exclusionary quotas for coveted civil service jobs in the government has, in embryo, become a mass movement threatening the government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Her initial reaction was boot-heel violence against the students via the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite unit of Bangladesh’s police forces. That resulted in the killing of more than 200 and the injuring of thousands and now the jailing of more than 10,000!
YOUTH FACE DIRE LIFE CONDITIONS
Student protest in Dhaka faces police repression. Photo: Rayhan9d, CC BY-SA 4.0
Not only had the quota system been manipulated against students, but young people as a whole have been facing dire conditions of life. Some 41% of youth are classified as “inactive,” meaning they are not in schools, working, or in job training. Some 66% of university graduates are unemployed. The quota system makes finding jobs more difficult for most, since it reserves 30% of civil service jobs for documented descendants of fighters in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Hasina’s authoritarian response to the protest transformed a movement focused on quota reform into an expression of profound discontent about life in Bangladesh. The Student Alliance of Bangladesh—representing Bangladeshi students and others, not alone in the country but in other parts of the world—put forth a set of five demands:
- Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and all members of the cabinet must resign immediately, and the current parliament must be dissolved.
- A neutral interim/provisional national government must be formed comprising all political parties and eminent citizens.
- A judicial commission must be established to ensure the trial of all the murders committed in the ongoing movement.
- A national commission must be formed to logically reform the quota system in all sectors. [Student protesters support continued quotas for minorities, women, and people with disabilities, but want a sharp reduction in the quota for descendants of freedom fighters, which favors Hasina’s party.]
- The provisional national government must organize a free and fair national election as soon as they amend the constitution and reform the electoral system.
Prime Minster Hasina has long taken dictatorial actions. As Bangladeshi political analyst Mubashar Hasan noted: “Violent crackdowns on dissent have been the key trademark of Sheikh Hasina’s government for over a decade. These protests are a sign of the struggle between democracy and Hasina’s move towards complete totalitarianism.”
THE REVOLT REACHES NEW STAGE
As a report in The New York Times noted: “[T]he crackdown also follows a well-established tactic under Ms. Hasina’s 15-year rule: using every opportunity to crush her political opponents by rounding up their leaders and dismantling their mobilization.”
What becomes key is whether this mass movement can grow and force authentic change. Despite Hasina ordering more murderous attacks, the protests have resumed with the students being joined by other sectors of the population en masse. The call now is not about quota removals (which has already occurred) but about the removal of Prime Minister Hasina and her entire government as the struggle deepens to demand self-determination for the people of Bangladesh.
A month earlier, Sheik Hasina looked invincible. But shortly after this article was published, she was forced by the youth revolt to resign and she fled the country. The movement continues!