Bangladesh in limbo: a country of 170 million where students run the streets
Bangladesh Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus (centre) with members of the Hindu community at the famous Dhakeshwari Temple in Dhaka on Tuesday. Yunus has urged people to ‘exercise patience’ before judging the role of his government | PHOTO: PTI
By Mujib Mashal and Saif Hasnat
The two black VIP vehicles, with the Bangladeshi national flag displayed on their hoods as per state protocol, were parked late last night in a parking lot on the ground floor of Dhaka University.
The cars were waiting for two students, both 26. Just a week earlier, they had been hunted down by leaders of a youth-led popular uprising against the country’s seemingly unbreakable prime minister. Now, after her astonishing ouster, the two are ministers in the country’s interim government.
In the parking lot, young women and men gathered around this most unlikely of government officials, asking questions and posing for selfies. Graffiti sprayed on a pillar at the entrance read: “Revolution is not a dinner party.”
Outside, the streets of this country of 170 million people are run by students.
After overcoming a deadly crackdown and toppling Bangladesh’s iron-fisted leader Sheikh Hasina, the student protesters are now trying to chart a new course for a country that was born in a bloody rift five decades ago.
Hasina’s power had become so all-encompassing that her departure precipitated a near-total collapse of the state. A wave of violence, including revenge killings and arson, continued after her departure, with the country’s long-persecuted Hindu minority in particular living in fear. Nearly all of the country’s police officers went into hiding, fearful of reprisals for their role in the killing of hundreds of young protesters. Students regulate traffic in Dhaka, the bustling capital, checking driver’s licenses and reminding people to wear helmets. At some roundabouts, the punishments they mete out to violators are straight out of the classroom: an hour’s delay for taking a wrong turn, 30 minutes for not wearing a seat belt.
A female student, who looked no older than 16, tried to maneuver through traffic on a busy street with the zeal of an overachiever, shouting more pleas than commands at each bhaiya (Bengali for brother).
A car full of New York Times journalists was stopped by a boy who looked no older than 12. He asked to see a driver’s license.
In another corner of the city where the worst of the violence had taken place, Salman Khan, 17, and two other students manned a roundabout, occasionally pulling over the most luxurious cars. What exactly were they looking for?
“Black money, black money,” Khan said, explaining that many of Hasina’s senior officials were on the run.
The students now running this country are led by a very different figure: the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. He is using his legendary legacy as a helper of the poor to become the interim leader of a country in disarray. But he has accepted the mantle of a hand-picked grandfather figure for what the students describe as “generational transformation.” “I am doing this because this is what the youth of the country wanted, and I wanted to help them achieve it,” Yunus said in a briefing with reporters over the weekend. “It is not my dream, it is their dream.”
Nahid Islam, a key leader of the student protest who said he was blindfolded and tortured by security forces, described the immense pressure now placed on the movement, “even though we were not prepared for it.”
First publication: Aug 14, 2024 | 12:06 AM IST