By Mujib Mashal
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s life, as well as her politics, had been defined by an early trauma at once personal in its pain and national in its imprint.
In 1975, her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s charismatic founding leader, and most of their family were massacred in a military coup. Hasina, who was abroad at the time, was forced into exile in India.
Her eventual return and elevation to prime minister embodied Bangladesh’s hopes of a better, more democratic future. She was celebrated as a secular Muslim woman who tried to rein in a coup-prone military, stood up to Islamic militancy and reformed the impoverished country’s economy.
But in time, she changed. She grew more authoritarian, crushing dissent and exuding an entitlement that treated Bangladesh as her rightful inheritance. Then, on Monday, the years of repressive rule finally caught up with Hasina, and her story came full circle: She resigned under intense pressure from a vast protest movement and fled once again into exile.
Student-led protesters enraged at her deadly crackdown on their initially peaceful movement stormed her official residence and plundered nearly everything inside. They defaced her portraits and tore down statues of her father around the city, and attacked the homes and offices of her party officials.
Hasina’s hasty exit comes just months after she had secured a fourth consecutive five-year term in office and thought her grip on power was unbreakable. In her wake she leaves a Bangladesh plunged back into the chaos and violence that have marked the country from the beginning, when her father helped bring the nation into being.
Beyond the immediate jubilation among the protesters over her departure are more worrisome questions.
For now, this country of 170 million appears leaderless. Law enforcement agencies that killed at least 300 protesters have been discredited. The animosities between Hasina’s party and the opposition are unlikely to fade soon, and revenge for years of harsh suppression under her will be on the minds of many. There is also fear that a streak of Islamic militancy in Bangladesh society could resurface in the political vacuum.
“We are finally free of a dictatorial regime,” said Shahdeen Malik, a prominent constitutional lawyer and legal activist in Dhaka, the capital. “Earlier, we had military dictators. But this civilian dictator was more dictatorial than previous military dictators.”
Malik said that Hasina, during an initial term as prime minister in the late 1990s, was a breath of fresh air. Bangladesh’s politics had been marked by coups, counter-coups and assassinations. Hasina was democratic, and her party was trying to act with more accountability.
But after her return to power in 2009 — following electoral defeat, exile and an attempt on her life that left more than 20 dead — she appeared driven by darker instincts. In her opponents she saw an extension of the forces that had caused her lasting trauma.
The student protest that began last month was over a seemingly small issue: a quota system that gave preferential treatment in government jobs. But the anger was a manifestation of the wider economic stress.In response to the demonstrations, Hasina, 76, turned to the repressive playbook that had thwarted all previous challenges. This time, though, it would lead to her downfall.
At first, she dismissed the students, describing them as the descendants of those who had betrayed Bangladesh in the war of independence that her father had won. When that angered the students, she resorted to a crackdown.
She sent her party’s aggressive youth wing to target what had been peaceful protesters. When clashes broke out, she sent more force into the streets — the police, the army and even the Rapid Action Battalion, an anti-terrorism unit that has been accused of torture and disappearances.
Her situation turned precarious once the streets turned to carnage late in July, with more than 200 people, most of them students and other young people, killed. She deepened the crackdown — declaring a curfew, cutting off the internet, rounding up 10,000 people into jails and accusing tens of thousands more of crimes. The protest movement appeared dispersed.
“Ultimately, of course people will be silenced if this goes on forever,” Naomi Hossain, a scholar of Bangladesh at the School of Oriental and African Studies, said as the crackdown intensified. “How long can you keep protesting when your friends are being gunned down? But the cost may be so high that, you know, all support” for Hasina is lost.
When the curfew and the communications blackout eased, it quickly became clear that the protest movement had not been snuffed out and that it had expanded to seeking accountability for the earlier bloodshed.
On Sunday, the protesters gathered in their largest numbers yet. When Hasina responded once again with force, and nearly 100 people were killed in the deadliest single day of the protests, it became clear that the fear she had long engendered had been broken.
When the protesters Sunday called for a march on her residence the next day, her response seemed defiant — she called on the nation “to curb anarchists with iron hands.”
In the early hours Monday, the roads leading to her residence in Dhaka were heavily barricaded. The internet was shut down and public transport halted. Security forces tried to hold back the large crowds at the city gates.
But by midday, it became apparent that those tactics were meant only to buy time for what was happening behind the scenes. Hasina had resigned and was leaving the country, and the army chief was in consultations with the political parties over an interim government.
Grainy cellphone videos showed Hasina getting out of a black SUV at a military air base, where a helicopter was waiting. She departed for India, where she is expected to stay before moving on to another destination, most likely London.
The army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, addressed the nation, announcing the end of her rule. He promised “justice for all the murders and wrongdoings.”
For the protesters, jubilation was immediate. They poured into the streets and stormed her residence — to take selfies and souvenirs. One protester walked away with a plant, another some chickens and yet another a single plate. One had a giant fish from the prime ministerial pond.
But signs of lingering anger were evident as night fell. Protesters pulled down statues of Hasina’s father, set fire to the museum erected in his name (at the house where he had been assassinated) and attacked the homes of her ministers and party officials. There were also reports of attacks against the homes and places of worship of minority Hindus, raising fears that the Islamic elements she had contained might be emboldened.
“It will not be enough for Sheikh Hasina to flee,” Nahid Islam, one of the student protest leaders, who was detained twice during the crackdown and tortured, said after the prime minister fled. “We will bring her to justice.”
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