Like so many of Sheikh Hasina’s political rivals, Amir Chowdhury was in jail the day that the prime minister fled Bangladesh.
Chowdhury, a senior leader in the opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP), had been picked up by police three weeks earlier, in July, as mass protests began to engulf the country and a violent crackdown began in response. It was Chowdhury’s third stint in prison since Hasina took power 15 years ago and began a campaign to destroy his party.
This time it was university students, not opposition parties, who started the protests. As their movement began to gather momentum and public anger swelled against Hasina, the BNP and other parties also took to the streets, alongside garment workers, farmers, lawyers and intellectuals.
The state hit back at protesters, using beatings, teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, but the protests swelled, escalating into a fully fledged revolution calling for the end to Hasina’s autocratic rule. Thousands were arrested and over 1,000 people were killed over the course of three weeks, one of the bloodiest episodes in Bangladesh’s history.
On 5 August, Chowdhury became aware that the prison cells around him, filled with arrested students and BNP members, were abuzz. Some had smuggled in radios and were listening to the news as it began to be reported that Hasina had fled in a helicopter as almost a million people had marched towards her residence.
“When we heard she had gone,” said Chowdhury, “it was like a bomb blast in the jail.” The next morning Chowdhury and swathes of fellow prisoners were freed.
With just over a month since Hasina’s regime collapsed, Bangladesh now stands at a crossroads. At the request of the triumphant student leaders, Mohammed Yunus, the Nobel Laureate and former political rival of Hasina, agreed to return to the country from the US to head an interim government, tasked with restoring democracy. Many of the advisers Yunus has appointed were once deemed enemies of the state by Hasina, including prominent NGO heads, lawyers, journalists, activists and students.
A giddy optimism still grips the streets of the capital Dhaka. People spoke gleefully of a “second independence for Bangladesh”, of the relief of the overnight return of freedom of speech and no longer having to fearfully look over their shoulders as they discussed politics.
Sitting in a hotel lobby in Dhaka, renowned human rights activist Nur Khan Liton recalled that, until a few weeks ago, he had been under constant police surveillance and could never have imagined being able to hold meetings freely in public. BNP leaders, many of whom were slapped with hundreds of criminal cases, revelled at no longer spending their days sitting in courtrooms or jail cells.
Yet the country still has yet to return to normality and remains in a state of insecurity. For the past month, hundreds of factories have been shut down due to mass protests, bringing the lucrative garment industry to an economically devastating halt.
Police – routinely used by Hasina’s regime to terrorise civilians and commit abuses – still remain largely absent from the streets, fearing attacks by civilians. Several police stations have been set on fire and in many instances, civilians have taken to calling student groups rather than the police to help resolve incidents or report injustices.
This week, in what many saw as a bid to get the law and order situation under control, the interim government granted the military special powers to carry out policing duties, including arrests and search warrants. While the government insisted the measure was only temporary, lasting two months, the move was viewed with some concern.
Analysts say the roster of ambitious democratic reforms that Yunus and his advisers have promised are complex – involving rebuilding key state institutions from scratch – and are likely to take years to implement. For students at the forefront of the revolution, several of whom now sit at Yunus’s right hand, the task at hand is a complete overhaul of everything from the police to the judiciary, the banks and the electoral system to ensure that authoritarianism can never take hold again. Many also spoke of the necessity of changing the constitution, which Hasina had amended.
“It’s a huge and complicated process,” said Rezwan Ahmed Refat, a protest coordinator who is studying law at Dhaka university. “The main challenge is that many of the fascist systems that Hasina put in place are still there. We have a long way to go with reforming the government secretariat, the police and the judiciary. Until these institutions are independent, then nothing will change.”
‘These reforms will take time’
Refat said that while Yunus still had a powerful mandate from millions who took to the streets, if the government did not move faster and clearly lay out the specifics of their reform agenda soon, students would not hesitate to protest once again.
Privately, several prominent figures voiced concern that the interim government appeared to be “lost” and trying to take on too much. Few however wanted to speak publicly, not wanting to be seen to undermine Yunus.
After the public highs following Hasina’s departure, the government admitted that the weight of expectation was enormous and the pathway to reform was fraught with challenges, particularly as Hasina left the country in deep economic crisis. According to government advisers, tens of billions of dollars have been illegally laundered out of Bangladesh by Hasina’s so-called “cronies” since 2014, and the scale of the corruption and losses are still only just becoming apparent.
Touhid Hossain, the newly appointed foreign affairs adviser, called for patience, stating that the outlines of exactly what the interim government meant by reform was “still being finalised” and would probably “crystallise in the next few months”.
Hossain emphasised that he, like others in the new government, stepped up simply to implement a new vision of Bangladesh that the youth have sacrificed their lives for. Yunus himself is already 84.
“Once we do the job, we will hold the elections,” said Hossain. “Politicians will come in and run the country and we will fade away. None of us has any ambition to hold any post in the future government.”
Nonetheless, one of the biggest questions is just how long they intend on staying in power. While initially it was suggested it would be just a few months, many now believe it could be up to five or six years, in order to give them time to overhaul the country’s key institutions. Activists tasked by the government to look into issues such as enforced disappearances said it would take them 18 months minimum just to do their initial investigations.
“I would not speculate on timeframe, but I don’t think that it is going to be over in three or six months. These reforms will take time,” said Hossain.
For now, political parties, namely the BNP, have agreed to step back and let the interim government implement reforms with their tacit support, namely in the hope that Yunus’s strong connections with the US and other western countries will encourage much-needed foreign economic assistance into the country.
“If this transition government does not succeed, it will not only destroy the government, it will destroy Bangladesh,” said Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior BNP leader.
Yet the BNP pushed back at the suggestions of the unelected interim government lasting several years. It is widely acknowledged that with Hasina’s Awami League party in tatters, with most of its leaders in hiding or abroad, the BNP would sweep any election. Analysts said BNP’s impatience to return to power could be a cause of unrest down the line, with the first protests taking place this week. Others warned that an ongoing political vacuum could enable more extremist Islamist elements, already present in Bangladesh, to take greater hold.
But on the streets, most remained hopeful for the future. Gazi Jakaria, 35, was among about 400 people who was partially blinded during the protests after he was shot at by police and then held in jail for several weeks with no treatment. “I have no regrets about making this sacrifice to bring down Hasina,” he said. “We went out into the streets to fight for change and that’s what Yunus’s government is doing so I am happy. We can’t fix everything overnight.”
