Students are out in force on the streets of Dhaka, no longer protesting but working to put a city back together after the dramatic events of the past few days. After Monday’s resignation of Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, subsequent looting and pockets of violence meant the initial jubilation quickly turned to concern.
There were reports that the offices of the ruling Awami League party, as well as homes and businesses of the minority Hindu population, were being attacked.
During the past two days, students have been out cleaning up roads and wreckage, while groups of volunteers have formed to protect the religious sites of minorities.
“We’re living in extraordinary times,” one volunteer says, while clearing glass and debris from a destroyed police box at a busy intersection in the city’s Mirpur neighbourhood.
“Protests can lead to unintended consequences, but they’re driven by a cause. Now, it’s our responsibility to help restore normalcy. We’re just doing our part.”
Nearby, students direct Dhaka’s notorious traffic, as police officers have deserted traffic posts or been deployed elsewhere. Holding up handmade signs saying: “Stop! Follow the traffic rules,” the students encourage pedestrians to keep to pavements and footbridges, and motorcyclists to wear helmets.
“Our protests might have ended, but our duty to the nation persists,” says 19-year-old Faiza.
The students are keen to protect their movement’s integrity, something that endeared it to Bangladeshi society and mobilised wider support for the protesters, who many in the country are saying have pulled off a gen Z-led revolution.
“I was there from the very first moment and have stayed with the movement because the quota law was against our rights, it was illogical. Students working by our own merit were being denied jobs,” says Ashin Roy, a 22-year-old student at Dhaka University.
“We really felt food good that everybody supported us and in the end, democracy has won,” says Roy. “We celebrated like we got our victory back, just like in 1971, but now I’m worried that the situation in my country is very bad, that minorities are being oppressed. I want an election now so the people can choose leader who truly works for us.”
After weeks of protests and a government response that killed almost 300 people, the military took charge on Monday and has included student leaders in negotiations at the presidential palace, accepting their demand to include the 84-year-old Nobel laureate and entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus to head an interim government.
The wait is an anxious one – there is hope for a break from a political order that has for decades been defined by bitter rivalry between the two established political parties.
“I have no faith in an army-backed interim government,” says Tamanna Islam, 25, an engineering student at a Dhaka university. “I do not trust the military. The revolution should lead to a new interim government that is supported – but not controlled – by the military.”
She says students have been trying to maintain order, including establishing neighbourhood groups in response to attacks on Hindus and other minority groups, but they want to return to their studies.
“We reject the old, corrupt political parties and the religious extremists,” she says. “Hopefully, existing parties will realise that their traditional corrupt practices are no longer viable. Our country has tremendous potential that should not be squandered under unworthy leadership.
“We’ve ousted this regime and will do so again if the new leaders fail to meet our expectations. I hope that future parties will engage with students and civil society to avoid repeating past mistakes.”
Students at Dhaka University began protesting in early July over a quota law that allocated almost a third of government jobs to the families of people who fought for independence in 1971. Other students from other universities joined them but the crackdown was swift.
Student leaders were arrested, an internet blackout was imposed, police used live bullets and the Awami League launched mob attacks. Nearly 300 people were killed, prompting anger that mobilised many others to join the protests.
“The violence against the students woke me up – anybody who was standing for the movement would say the same thing,” says Esrat Karim, 35, the founder of Amal Foundation, a community-development nonprofit.
“I saw people from all walks of life, from a baker to street children to industrialists, coming to the streets to show solidarity with the movement. Anyone with a minimal conscience would do that because this level of killing was intolerable.”
She says the student movement has made her hopeful for the future of the Bangladesh and proud of the generation who will one day lead it.
“The courage they have, the level of dignity, their conscience – hats off to them,” she says. “People tend to think badly of gen Z, they call them self-centred, but actually they are very giving, very conscious, and now they’ve overturned the government. There’s nothing they can’t do.”
Badiul Alam Majumdar, 78, the founder of the civil society organisation Citizens for Good Governance, describes them as “heroes”.
Majumdar witnessed independence from Britain and then from Pakistan, as well as the resistance to military rule in the 1980s. Like many, he likens the outcome of the protests to Bangladesh winning the nine-month war against occupying Pakistan in 1971, and says this is a “new liberation”.
“We have paid an enormous price,” he adds. “We hope the people who will now be running the show will not betray the blood of the people.”
He says the protests were the outcome of years of increasingly autocratic rule from Hasina .
“We were sitting on a powder keg and it was going to ignite at some point. It happened sooner rather than later. People were so angry, so unhappy,” he says. “This quota was like the tip of the iceberg that caused the Titanic to sink.”
