Months of escalating and deadly protests in Bangladesh brought down the country’s longest-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who resigned and left the country on Monday. Hasina had beaten back numerous previous protests in her twenty years on and off as prime minister, angering many Bangladeshis with her heavy-handed rule. Their fury came to a head this summer. A first round of protests broke out over job quotas for relatives of independence war veterans, which were a major source of political patronage for Hasina and her party. Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian Awami League party crushed the demonstrations. When the nation’s top court reduced the number of allocated jobs, the government thought it had quelled public displeasure.
But Hasina and her government got it wrong. Revulsion at the brutal crackdown—including thousands of arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings, and security forces storming into hospitals to snatch suspects—combined with years of frustration at Hasina’s aloof, brutal, and ineffective rule. Both factors led to larger, high-stakes protests this past weekend, prompting Hasina to finally flee.
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It will now be a struggle to normalize democratic politics, though the rapid release of the main opposition leader was a step forward. Democrats in Bangladesh, supported by regional powers like India and Japan, as well as the United States and Europe, must work to rebuild the country’s once vibrant democracy and civil society. This work should start by ensuring the army keeps to its promise and holds elections soon, rather than clinging to power.
For more on how Bangladesh can recover, see my new article for U.S. News and World Report.
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