Long-time Bangladesh prime minister flees

It’s been an absolutely wild ride in Bangladesh lately.

Sheikh Hasina went to bed on Sunday night, still the world’s longest-serving female prime minister. The next day, she fled her own country by helicopter after protesters overran her compound.

How’d we get here? 

Regular readers will have seen our periodic updates after student-led protests first broke out in June.

Students were angry after the country’s supreme court reinstated a controversial quota system that reserved a portion of government jobs for the families of people who fought in the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence from Pakistan.

Fast forward to mid-July, and the protests had only heated up, meeting an escalating response from Hasina herself. After first deriding the students as descendants of “razakars” (pro-Pakistan collaborators), she:

• Closed schools and universities
• Imposed curfews with “shoot on sight” orders
• Restricted internet and cell services, and
• Presided over mass arrests, while police and pro-government groups killed hundreds and tear-gassed others.

But her heavy-handed response simply meant that, even after the supreme court pulled a U-turn and dismissed the controversial quota system once and for all, the unrest just morphed to encompass broader grievances against Hasina herself.

Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, first served as PM from 1996 to 2001 following the end of military rule. Then after a stint in opposition and prison, she returned in 2009 and earned plaudits for growth that peaked at 7.9% in 2019.

But along the way, she also revealed an autocratic streak, curtailing freedoms while authorities handed jail sentences to critics like Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (aka, the ‘banker to the poor’).

Hasina then ✌️won✌️ her latest term earlier this year, but only after the beleaguered opposition had boycotted the process. And all the while, the country’s economy started to sputter while its reserves dwindled.

Which gets us to the events of this weekend. With a growing cross-section of society openly calling for Hasina’s resignation, record crowds then hit the streets until more clashes left 90+ people dead on Sunday. So on Monday, protestors stormed Hasina’s palace and she fled in a chopper to neighbouring India.

Her military chief then announced her resignation, and coordinated with the country’s president (a mostly ceremonial figure) to meet protestor demands, including dissolving parliament and forming a new transitional government.

Of course, many Bangladeshis are wary of their military getting political – it’s got a history of coups, and there are questions around its role in Hasina’s departure.

But tensions seem to have calmed now that the military has met another protestor demand: appointing Hasina critic and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead the transition government. He’s now returning home from Paris.

So just like that (😗🤌💨), a seemingly permanent fixture on the world stage is now gone, opening up a new political era full of unknowns. And for the 175 million Bangladeshis, that’s somehow both a daunting and exciting prospect.

INTRIGUE’S TAKE

The sheer drama is worth your attention alone, dear Intriguer. But here are a couple of ways this will now ripple out over Bangladesh’s borders:

First, Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest textile exporter, and it’s now spooked its customers, with fast-fashion brand H&M going full EU and saying it’s “concerned”, while Hula Global (think Anthropologie, JCPenney, and TJMaxx) is redirecting its orders to India for the rest of the year.

And second, Bangladesh sits on the Indo-Pacific chessboard where major powers are openly vying for influence. So China, Russia and India were all quick to congratulate Hasina when she ‘won’ earlier this year, though arguably now tainting each of them with her legacy.

But interestingly, the US rebuked her at the time, and China snubbed her during a fundraising visit to Beijing last month, potentially leaving those same two players best placed for whatever comes next.

Also worth noting:

• Muhammad Yunus (the interim leader and Nobel laureate) has faced various fraud charges over the past decade. He denies the allegations, and claims Hasina was targeting him for political reasons.
• The US imposed visa restrictions on several Bangladeshi officials last year, describing them as “responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh”.