Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
Another example of people rising up and just downright throwing out the leader. Crazy how this can actually work.
Highlights
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After fifteen years in power, the Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country on August 5, chased out by young protesters. What started as a movement against quotas for civil-service employment evolved into a general upsurge against the autocratic rule of Hasina and her party, the Awami League (AL).
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The situation changed within a period of five weeks, and the final victory was achieved at the cost of more than four hundred lives and several thousand injured and missing.
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At first, the League tried to control the movement but was unable to do so. It then pulled out its party cadres and harassed the Shahbag leadership while promoting internal feuds within their ranks, paralyzing the struggle
✏️ The facade comes off. 🔗 View Highlight
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AL went on to dismantle its political adversary, BNP. For the AL, Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamic groups were also a factor to be reckoned with, but BNP was its immediate electoral opponent. The AL leadership soon realized that dissatisfaction with its record of misrule could benefit BNP electorally.
✏️ They pulled out all the stops to destroy their opposition. Random arrests, manipulating state machinery and processes against them, and constant harassment until they withdrew from 2014 elections. After that, just a steady cross-country effort to block BNP activities, thousands of court cases on corruption and murder charges, and jailing the BNP PM in 2018. 🔗 View Highlight
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AL compromised its historic secular credentials by forming a tacit alliance with Hefazat-e-Islam, a radical Islamist group that was responsible for the murder of secular bloggers.
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The AL-led political front included several conservative Islamist parties. In addition, Hasina’s government granted certain concessions to Islamist forces, such as the recognition of Qawmi madrasas, religious schools with a conservative curriculum that are not regulated by the government.
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The country was hijacked by military gangsters between 1982 and 1990, during the reign of the army chief, H. M. Ershad. His regime was a dark episode marked by murders and assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions, corruption, and pillage, accompanied by the annihilation of democracy and democratic values. A popular upheaval ousted Ershad and paved the way for parliamentary democracy.
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The AL increasingly took hold of the state administration through the appointment process and brought the media and the intelligentsia under control through a mixture of inducements and coercion. By the end of 2018, the AL had a firm grip over the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and even the army, traditionally seen as a major backer of BNP.
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Political parties reached a consensus about the future democratic trajectory of the nation — a consensus that was later violated. Both the AL and BNP greatly benefited from the perception that they were at the forefront of these struggles.
✏️ Even as they came in as the newly-established “democratic” parties, this perception benefited them to eventually abuse it. 🔗 View Highlight
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The results of the 2018 elections surpassed even the League’s most optimistic expectations, with its candidates winning 288 of the 300 seats in contention. The next election in January 2024 was a sham, with the whole opposition absent from the vote. This pushed the resistance into the extra-parliamentary arena, culminating in the protests that ousted Hasina.
✏️ So basically, ever since they wont in 2008, it’s just been a series of performative elections. 🔗 View Highlight
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The second major turning point was the 2013 movement, popularly known as the Shahbag movement, demanding the capital punishment of war criminals. The AL initially supported this mobilization as it served its own interests and goals. However, the Shahbag protesters started demanding a wider democratization of society and an end to socioeconomic injustices.
✏️ The ruling party lost control of the people’s popular movement not only demanding justice, but wider democratic efforts (which the party didnt want). 🔗 View Highlight
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The July uprising was successful with a wide range of social forces taking part. As with other struggles against autocratic regimes, the popular aspiration was for freedom, largely expressed in rather vague and abstract terms. In other words, it was not a movement guided by sharply defined ideological positions.
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The students initially protested for reform of the quota system, but state repression ignited a mass uprising involving wide swaths of the Bangladeshi working and middle classes, which ended in the upsurge that swept away Hasina
✏️ Small beginning that quickly avalanched into revolution. 🔗 View Highlight
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the July events will only lead to a positive outcome if the working class and other oppressed groups are able to take a leading role, overcoming religious and ethnic divisions in Bangladeshi society. While students may have begun the revolution, working people will have to make sure it succeeds. Herein lies the biggest challenge for the Left in Bangladesh.