With authoritarian Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gone, there’s hope for change in Bangladesh – but it must come with justice for the many human rights violations committed by her government.

The power of protest

Hasina, in power for 15 years, was forced out by mass protests that first mobilised in June in response to a court decision to reinstate a job quota policy. The quota reserved 30 per cent of government jobs for the descendants of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war. The independence movement was led by the Awami League, long the ruling party; the quota would have effectively reserved plum jobs for ruling party loyalists, and the court that reinstated it was seen as doing Hasina’s bidding.

Many students saw this as unfair and – in a context of economic downturn, soaring inflation and high youth unemployment – a threat to their futures. Tens of thousands took to the streets in protest, blocking major roads.

The government’s response to the peaceful protests was characteristically callous. Security forces and members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the Awami League’s youth wing, launched a deadly crackdown. Police fired live ammunition and Chhatra League mobs attacked protesters with clubs, rods and sticks. They even assaulted injured students receiving hospital treatment.

The government also deployed the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion, notorious for its human rights abuses. As a result, an estimated 440 people were killed, mostly shot by the police, and thousands injured. Several were left blinded by pellet guns. On the deadliest day, 4 August, more than a hundred people are believed to have lost their lives.

Rather than compromise, Hasina doubled down, calling protesters terrorists and likening them to people who collaborated with Pakistan in the 1971 war, an act of vilification that further encouraged mob violence. She claimed the political opposition and Islamist groups were inciting violence.

The government imposed a curfew, backed by a shoot-on-sight order, and blocked access to mobile internet and social media, which had been vital in mobilising and coordinating protests. Over 10,000 people were arrested, many of them students who’d attended protests, and detainees were reportedly tortured. Injured protest leaders were snatched from hospital. Journalists covering the protests were also subjected to violence.

But the government’s violent repression had the opposite effect to that intended. It turned the protest movement into one demanding justice Hasina could never deliver. Protests paused when the Supreme Court scrapped most of the job quotas, but resumed when Hasina refused demands for justice over the protest killings. Now protesters called for nothing less than Hasina to go. They got their wish. On 5 August they marched on the capital, Dhaka, forcing her to resign.

Hasina has fled the country, initially to India. The army announced the formation of an interim government and held talks with protest leaders and other people from civil society. Another key demand of the protest movement was quickly met: the interim administration will be headed by one of Bangladesh’s best-known figures, Mohammed Yunus.

Yunus is well aware of how repressive the government was. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work on microcredit with the Grameen Bank, but the Hasina administration saw him as a threat. It slapped him with numerous criminal charges, convicted him on a trumped-up labour law offence and ousted him from his organisation.

Now he’s at the helm at a critical time for his country, tasked with ending repression and impunity. He carries the hopes of many Bangladeshis for a better future.

Track record of repression

The brutal repression of recent protests was no isolated incident. It was emblematic of a government that routinely used fear and violence to get its way.

Hasina made much of her claim to have made Bangladesh an economic success story, based particularly on the garment industry. That boast became increasingly tenuous, with an economic downturn leading to the government going to the International Monetary Fund in January. But Bangladesh’s international reputation as a booming economy meant the government faced little international criticism, even as it grew more authoritarian – including through unleashing violence against garment workers protesting about low wages.

Hasina’s government increasingly suppressed civic and political freedoms. This was the reason that last December, the CIVICUS Monitor – our collaborative research project that tracks the health of civic space in every country – downgraded Bangladesh to closed, the worst category.

The repressive trajectory worsened in the months running up to the general election on 7 January. The authorities waged a blatant campaign of intimidation against government critics, activists and protesters, subjecting them to threats, violence and arrests. At the government’s urging, court cases against opposition members were accelerated, resulting in a reported 800-plus convictions between September and December 2023. Opposition activists were reportedly tortured to extract confessions.

The government banned protests and police used rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades against a rare opposition protest in October 2023, while Chhatra League mobs also routinely mobilised to commit violence. Journalists were smeared, attacked and harassed, including when covering protests and in retaliation for questioning Awami League politicians.

The inevitable outcome of an election that wasn’t remotely free or fair was a fourth term for Hasina, with the main opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), boycotting the vote over Hasina’s refusal to give way to a caretaker administration to manage the election.

Hasina had returned to power in Bangladesh’s last reasonably free and fair election in 2008, but every vote since was marked by increasingly blatant irregularities and pre-election crackdowns. For the January election, Awami League supporters ran as pseudo-opposition candidates to try to make it look like a competition.

But unhappiness with the election’s largely ceremonial nature was amply communicated by a huge drop in turnout, down over 39 percentage points to only around 42 per cent. Before people protested, the first sign of trouble for Hasina was that they stayed home.

New possibilities

Now attention turns to what kind of Bangladesh could emerge. Two student leaders – Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud – have joined the interim government. Other members include human rights activist Adilur Rahman Khan – founder of the deregistered civil society organisation Odhikar and a former political prisoner –  and women’s rights campaigner Farida Akhtar. The chief justice, seen as a Hasina loyalist, has agreed to quit. Parliament has been dissolved, a necessary step towards holding fresh and, it’s to be hoped, genuine elections.

These are all encouraging signs, but much may depend on what the military does next. If it weren’t for the intervention of military leaders who reportedly told Hasina they wouldn’t fire on civilians who breached the curfew, she might still be trying to hang on. But now it’s crucial that the army respects the process and stands back so democracy can return.

Established politicians could present an obstacle. Politics in Bangladesh has long been a family business. Hasina is the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, while BNP leader Khaleda Zia, just released from the house arrest she’d lived under since 2018, is the wife of her party’s first president, Ziaur Rahman. Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy has said the family intends to stay involved in politics. But the conditions are surely ripe for the emergence of a new cadre of leaders untainted by the corrupt old politics and its cycles of factionalism and violence, who can offer something that speaks to the hunger for change protests have made clear.

For any optimistic scenario to materialise, there must be peace. There’ve been some disturbing outbreaks of looting and violence targeted against the Hindu minority, who’re associated with support for the Awami League. In turn, Awami League supporters are blamed for some of the violence, committed under the guise of protest movement unrest, aiming to delegitimise the movement.

Much disinformation is circulating, including from sources in India, which the Awami League has friendly relations with. Protest leaders and Yunus have called for peace. Students have formed volunteer groups to help protect potential sites of violence, such as minority places of worship, and clean up the debris in their neighbourhoods.

There must be peace, but there must also be justice. Those behind state violence – against protesters and in all the acts of repression that preceded the protests – must be subject to independent scrutiny and held to account. Political prisoners must be released. To help build a better Bangladesh, the interim government must start on the right path by lifting all restrictions on civil society. Bangladesh’s new leaders must make sure civil society can play its full part in restoring rights and developing democracy.

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