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21 August 2024

Bangladesh’s Accidental Revolutionaries Topple Sheikh Hasina — What’s Next?

Geoffrey Macdonald, Ph.D.

Bangladesh has experienced its most consequential political event in at least two decades. On June 6, one day after Bangladesh’s high court reinstated the country’s job quota system that favored descendants of the 1971 liberation war, about 500 students gathered at Dhaka University to demand its repeal. Two months later, on August 5, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had governed for 15 years, abdicated power and fled the country as a coalition of Bangladeshi students, political opponents and ordinary citizens marched on her residence to demand her resignation. As the prime minister departed for India, the head of the army announced his plan to form an interim government in a televised address.

USIP’s Geoffrey Macdonald explains how the protest movement toppled the government, what happens next and how this tumult could impact Bangladesh’s relations with India, China and the United States.

How did a student-led protest movement result in the collapse of Bangladesh’s government?

Macdonald: The Hasina government’s precipitous fall is a testament to its egregiously poor handling of the protest movement and her overall legacy of increasingly autocratic response to political dissent. Despite the government’s decision to appeal the quota verdict — effectively siding with the students — the prime minister demeaned the protest movement and her party sanctioned its student wing’s violence against protesters. When clashes between the police, ruling party supporters and protesters turned deadly, the government refused to take steps toward substantive accountability. The protester’s dissent and the subsequent repressive government response are emblematic of Hasina’s long rule, one that featured little space for political opposition and increasingly illiberal governance.

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