India Tomorrow
New Delhi–Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned from her post on Monday after long and violent protests killing over three hundred people. According to BBC Bangla service, Sheikh Hasina has left for a ‘secured place.’ She has been Prime Minister since 2009.
The army chief of Bangladesh Waker-uz-Zaman has said that an interim government would be formed. The army chief said he had consulted with representatives of the country’s political parties and civil society before his statement.
Reports say that the protestors were pelting stones at Sheikh Hasina’s official residence.
Sheikh Hasina reportedly took a journey towards Agartala, the capital of the North Indian state Tripura. Her sister Sheikh Rehana is also reported to be with her.
The students have been protesting since July this year against the quota system for the relatives of ‘freedom fighters’ and the atrocities inflicted by the Sheikh Hasina government. The government’s heavy-handed response to those demonstrations drew condemnation at home and abroad as it fanned calls for Hasina to resign.
The quota for the relatives of ‘freedom fighters’ was reduced to five per cent by the Supreme Court of the country from the Sheikh Hasina government’s prescribed 30 per cent. But the agitating students were demanding the resignation of Sheikh Hasina.
Sheikh Hasina had deployed to quell this student agitation but the students started a civil disobedience movement. The students had appealed to stop giving taxes.
Thousands of people including women were seen marching towards the capital Dhaka after the appeal of the student leaders. Local reports say that though the army is deployed, they are not stopping the people marching towards Dhaka.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh government has ordered a total shutdown of internet services in the country. Despite the government’s official shutdown of Facebook and WhatsApp, countless posts with the hashtag “StepDownHasina” flooded the platforms, with many people accessing them via VPNs.
According to media reports the anti-government movement in Bangladesh has drawn support from all societal sectors, including film stars, musicians, and singers.
Mosques in some parts of the Muslim-majority nation used their loudspeakers – which is generally used for calling worshippers to prayer – to urge citizens to join Monday’s protest march.
The now ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured her fourth consecutive term in January through an election devoid of genuine opposition. Her administration faces accusations from rights groups of misusing state institutions to consolidate power and suppress dissent, including through extrajudicial killings of opposition activists.
The demonstration is backed by all major opposition including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose acting chairman, Tarique Rahman, lives in exile in the United Kingdom.
“Either support this brutal autocrat against the aspirations of the vast majority of the 180 million Bangladeshis or stand with the common citizens across all professions, beliefs and backgrounds to help them reclaim their due rights and freedoms,” Rahman wrote on social media.
Earlier, a questionable move of the Bangladesh government to ban the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir under anti-terrorism law following the recent nationwide unrest over the quota system for government jobs created a flutter in the South Asian coastal country.
In its ban order issued on August 1, the government has accused Jamaat-e-Islami of instigating protests.
The student protesters demanded that the 30 percent quota for “children of freedom fighters” in government jobs was unfair and must end. The quota system was established after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, following the cessation of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from Pakistan.
The quota has always been a controversial issue in Bangladesh. While the government says that it was introduced to honour the sacrifices made during the War of Independence, others argue that it violates merits and promotes inequality.
Many Bangladeshis viewed the quota as a part of the government’s strategy to create a group of people in the administration who would always support Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s Awami League because this quota was introduced by her late father Sheikh Mujiburrahman and it had continued since then.
As Islami Chatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, is one of the biggest student organizations and has its network in all the universities and educational institutions across Bangladesh, accused it of fanning the anti-quota movement, the government immediately initiated action against the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing.
The ban was enforced on Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Chhatra Shibir and all its front organizations as political parties and entities under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009. The Home Ministry issued a gazette notification on August 1 afternoon banning the party and all its front outfits following the Law Ministry’s approval.
According to the gazette notification, the government decided on Section 18 (1) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009, and enlisted Jamaat-e-Islami as a banned entity in the second schedule of the Act. The section reads: “For the purposes of this Act, the government, on reasonable grounds that a person or an entity is involved in terrorist activities, may, by order, enlist the person in the schedule or proscribe the entity and enlist it in the schedule.”
Citing three verdicts of the International Crimes Tribunal related to Jamaat-e-Islami leaders including former Jamaat Ameer Ghulam Azam, the gazette said the tribunal held Jamaat, which was previously named as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, and its student wing Shibir, previously known as Islami Chhatra Sangha, and its front organizations liable for committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971.
Besides, the gazette said, the High Court, following a writ petition, in August 2013 declared the registration of the Jamaat with the Election Commission illegal. The Supreme Court later upheld the High Court’s verdict.
Security was beefed up across Bangladesh in the wake of the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, a key ally of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Speaking at an event, the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she believed that the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir might go underground and engage in destructive activities after their ban and will have to be dealt with as a ‘militant group’.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s Ameer Shafiqur Rahman strongly condemned the executive order banning Bangladesh’s “oldest traditional democratic party” by violating the Constitution. “We strongly condemn and protest this unconstitutional, undemocratic and unjust decision of the government,” he said in a statement.
Rahman appealed to Bangladeshi people to systematically raise their voice to protest against the government’s mass killings, disregard of human rights, oppression and the latest unconstitutional decision to ban Jamaat-e-Islami.
Raising a significant legal point, Rahman said the 14-party alliance led by the Awami League was a political platform and one political party or alliance cannot make decisions about another political party. “The laws and constitution of Bangladesh do not grant such authority. If a trend of banning one party by another party or alliance begins, it will lead to chaos and the collapse of state order,” he said. e party.
Bangladesh in 2009 initiated a process to try the key collaborators of Pakistani troops in 1971 on charges of crimes against humanity and six top leaders of Jamaat and one of BNP were hanged after their trial in two special war crimes tribunals. The apex Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the judgments. According to the Bangladesh government, the Jamaat had opposed Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan and sided with the Pakistani troops during the Liberation War.
People critical of Sheikh Hasina’s regime have said that the protests, which saw the participation of most political forces, were an organic protest against the government. Since its 2018 ban, the Jamaat has been looking at agitations like the quota protests as a way to survive. Despite losing its poll registration, Jamaat continued with its political activities as one of the allies of BNP, which is the main Opposition party in Bangladesh.
