Military in control of Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina flees

Bangladesh’s military was in control of the country on Tuesday after mass protests forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee.

The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.

Hundreds of people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest, but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled Bangladesh aboard a helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.

Army chief General Wakeruz Zaman announced on Monday afternoon on state television that Hasina had resigned and the military would form a caretaker government.

“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” said Zaman, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina’s official residence.

Traffic was lighter than usual on Tuesday in the usually chaotic streets of Dhaka and schools reopened with thin attendance after closing down in mid-July as protests against quotas in government jobs spiralled.

Garment factories, which supply apparel to some of the world’s top brands and are a mainstay of the economy, will remain closed on Tuesday and plans to reopen will be announced later, the main garment manufacturers association said.

Protester leaders want Nobel laureate Yunus to lead interim govt

Zaman plans to meet the protest organisers at 12pm local time (6am GMT) on Tuesday, the army said in a statement.

Student protest leaders, ahead of an expected meeting with the army chief, said that they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.

“In Dr Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.

“Any government other than the one we recommended would not be accepted,” Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the student movement, said in a video on Facebook with three other organisers.

“We wouldn’t accept any army-supported or army-led government.”

“We have also had discussions with Muhammad Yunus and he has agreed to take on this responsibility at our invitation,” Islam added.

A reliable source confirmed to The Daily Star that Yunus has agreed to lead the interim government as its chief adviser.

Yunus himself has not commented on the call, but in an interview with India’s The Print, he said Bangladesh had been “an occupied country” under Hasina.

“Today all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated,” it quoted Yunus as saying.

Yunus, 84, and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh but he was indicted by a court in June on charges of embezzlement that he denied.

Yunus is undergoing minor medical procedures in Paris, his press secretary Sabbir Osmani said, but did not immediately comment on the statements from the student leaders.

The Nobel laureate told Indian broadcaster Times Now in a recorded interview that Monday marked the “second liberation day” for Bangladesh after its 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

But he said Bangladeshis were angry with neighbour India for allowing Hasina to land there after fleeing Dhaka.

“India is our best friend…people are angry at India because you are supporting the person who destroyed our lives,” Yunus said.

Meanwhile, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar told an all-party meeting that India has assured Hasina of its help and given her time to decide the future course of action, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported quoting sources.

Briefing political party leaders, Jaishankar said India has spoken to the Bangladesh army chief to ensure the safety of over 10,000 Indian students there, the sources said.

Replying to questions from various leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, Jaishankar did not rule out the role of foreign governments in the unrest in Bangladesh but emphasised that the situation was too fluid and that India has been keeping a watch on the evolving situation, the PTI report added.

113 killed in Monday’s unrest

Streets in Dhaka were largely peaceful on Tuesday — with traffic resuming and shops opening, but government offices mainly closed — after a day of chaotic violence saw at least 113 people killed.

It was the deadliest day since protests began in early July, with at least 413 people killed overall, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.

Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka after Zaman’s announcement on Monday.

“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.

“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971 and [are] now seeing in 2024.”

Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.

Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.

“The time has come to make them accountable for torture,” said protester Kaza Ahmed. “Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder.”

Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.

The World Bank on Monday said it was assessing the impact of events in Bangladesh on its loan program after the recent developments.

“We are assessing the impact of the unfolding situation on the World Bank Group program and remain committed to supporting the development aspirations of the people of Bangladesh,” a spokesperson for the bank said.

Political vacuum

Zaman said a curfew would be lifted on Tuesday morning, with the military set to lead an interim government.

Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin on late Monday had ordered the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.

Zia, who is in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.

The president and army chief also met on late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president’s press team saying it had been “decided to form an interim government immediately”.

It was not immediately clear if Zaman would lead it.

Hasina’s fate was also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.

Media in neighbouring India reported Hasina had landed at a military airbase near New Delhi.

A top-level source said she wanted to “transit” on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into “unprecedented levels of violence” put that into doubt.

There were widespread calls by protesters to ensure Hasina’s close allies remained in the country.

Bangladesh’s military said they had shut down Dhaka’s international airport on Monday evening, without giving a reason.

Bangladesh has a long history of coups.

The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a “peaceful, orderly and democratic transition”, his spokesman said.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call. Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm”.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, warned that Hasina’s departure “would leave a major vacuum” and that the country was in “uncharted territory”.

“The coming days are critical,” he said.

Families wait as some political prisoners freed

Meanwhile, families of political prisoners secretly jailed in Bangladesh under the autocratic rule of Hasina waited desperately for news of their relatives, as some of those missing were released.

“We need answers,” said Sanjida Islam Tulee, a coordinator of Mayer Daak, meaning “The Call of the Mothers” — a group campaigning for the release of people detained by Hasina’s security forces.

Rights groups accused Hasina’s security forces of abducting and disappearing some 600 people — including many from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religio-political party.

Tulee told AFP that at least 20 families gathered outside a military intelligence force building in a northern Dhaka neighbourhood, waiting for news of their relatives.

Among the most high profile of those released on Tuesday was opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem Ali, the executed leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.

“He was released from secret detention this morning,” family friend and relative Masum Khalili told AFP. “He had a medical check-up, his condition is stable.”

Quasem, a British-educated barrister, was abducted — allegedly by security forces in plainclothes — in August 2016.

Security forces during Hasina’s rule were accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters, and disappearing their leaders and supporters.

Human Rights Watch last year said security forces had committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain unaccounted for.

Hasina’s government denied the allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those reported missing drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.

“We heard Ahmad Bin Quasem has been released,” Tulee said, “but what happened to others? “