By Ashish Singh
After writing my article last week, I needed to take some time to reflect upon the ongoing situation in Bangladesh. Call it a coincidence that my Bangladeshi-Swedish friend Anisur Rahman sent me one of his recently published articles on the issue the same day. A poet, playwright, and journalist, Anisur Rahman’s authorship is based in Bangladesh and Scandinavia. He is one of the board members of the Swedish Writers’ Union. He is also the editor-in-chief of the international literary journal, upplittmagasin.se. He is heavily involved in literary, cultural, and political debates in media houses like bdnews24.com and unt.se. His writings have been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Assamese, Chinese, Danish, English, Persian, French, German, Georgian, Nepali, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, and Turkish. I spoke with him in detail about his views on the recent regime change in Bangladesh, the events that led to Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, and the possible international gameplay around it.
Anisur Rahman
Ashish Singh: What are the reasons behind the regime change in Bangladesh?
Anisur Rahman: It was shocking and unpredictable. Policymakers in Sheikh Hasina’s government and a ruling 14-party alliance led by the Awami League made a series of mistakes in dealing with the students.
It was not unusual for a party in Bangladesh to lose popularity after the rule of consecutive three-mandate periods since 2009. People were under huge pressure due to the high inflation. It was also a failure to control corruption. However, it does not mean the Sheikh Hasina government was in a vulnerable position that such a movement could become cause for ousting her government. Her government is also credited for significant development as well.
Despite being the country’s largest party, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League had a package of unfit party colleagues, for instance, party’s general secretary Obaidul Quader. The party was not well organised.
The government did lack coordination. It has now become clear that Sheikh Hasina did not get correct information from intelligence sources. Several opinion pieces in the media presented observations by asking the government to solve the crisis through dialogue. Sheikh Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, her adviser on information technology, categorically confessed their mistakes in dealing with students.
The Indian official channel and the UN were also urging the authorities to solve the crisis through dialogue. It seemed the authorities were overconfident and heavily dependent on their intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Lastly, it was observed, that the military chief along with his colleagues betrayed Sheikh Hasina. No matter, he was her relative. Immediately after the fall of the government, the military boss held a meeting even with leaders from the forbidden Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Ashish Singh: Why and how did a student movement turn out to be the cause of ousting Sheikh Hasina’s government?
Anisur Rahman: First of all, the government did not take the movement seriously. During the movement, Sheikh Hasina visited China. She did not even pay careful attention to what was happening in the guise of a student movement.
After her return from China, she held a press conference in the afternoon dated the 14th of July. One comment from Sheikh Hasina to a question from a journalist, concerning the student movement was purposefully distorted by her opponents. These distorted words were circulated among the students around 11 p.m. the same day.
At midnight, the students came out on to the streets chanting the slogan ’Who am I? Who are you? Rajakar Rajakar!” It is totally against the spirit of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. Rajakar was the collaborating force of the Pakistan military in Bangladesh in 1971. The students’ movement was a trap for Sheikh Hasina and also for the protesting students.
Central control of the students’ movement was in the hands of a few coordinators who had liaison with opposition political parties including BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami, and elements in the defunct Nagorik Shakti, a political party launched by the Nobel laureate banker, Dr Muhammad Yunus in 2007.
A US-backed, Europe-based news blog run by a British journalist, married to a barrister — based in Dhaka, and a Bengali boy from a family in Sylhet division, close to the spirit of Jamaat-e-Islami politics, a Hindu blogger based in Paris, a blogger closed to BNP-politics based in the USA –they all continuously provoked the students to turn this movement to be an anti-Hasina movement.
Several opposition political parties as well as both left and right-wing intellectual elements provided fuel in causing this movement to be anti-Hasina.
Several NGOs depending on the aid from Western sources played a role in ousting Sheikh Hasina’s government.
The role of a portion of national and international media is not even free from controversy and bias towards the anti-Hasina trend.
Several members of Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet were utterly unfit and controversial and were involved in addressing the student movement on different occasions. They lacked coordination.
During the student movement, university teachers and officers went on strike after presenting a series of demands. Everything, including the library and laboratory, was closed. Students had nothing to do — no class, no exam, no research. In these circumstances, they found this movement as a kind of ’time out’ for them.
Lately, Sheikh Hasina has been serious about solving the crisis through dialogue. She repeatedly urged the students to have a dialogue. However, the students’ movement was not in the hands of students.
It has come to light that a number of student coordinators had ties to party politics. Dr Muhammad Yunus picked two for his ’unconstitutional’ interim cabinet.
(Ashish Singh is a social and political scientist.)
