Sheikh Hasina Ousted in Bangladesh
Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh by helicopter on 5 August 2024, ending fifteen consecutive years in power and the longest premiership in the country's history. The protests began in June over the reinstatement by a court of a quota system reserving thirty per cent of civil service posts for descendants of veterans of the 1971 liberation war. In an economy where public employment is one of the few secure paths for graduates and youth unemployment is high, the grievance was material rather than symbolic. It became something larger when Hasina referred to the protesters as razakars — the term for collaborators with Pakistan in 1971, and the worst insult in Bangladeshi politics. Police, paramilitary units and the ruling party's student wing then attacked demonstrations with live ammunition. A UN inquiry later estimated that around 1,400 people were killed in the July and August crackdown. The underlying context was fifteen years of consolidated control: three elections the opposition boycotted or was excluded from, the disappearance and imprisonment of critics, and a security apparatus operating with impunity. The Supreme Court scaled the quotas back in late July, and by then the demand was her resignation. The army declined to continue firing on crowds and told her to leave. She flew to India, where she remains. Muhammad Yunus was appointed to head an interim administration three days later, tasked with reforming the institutions before an election. She was sentenced to death in absentia in November 2025 for crimes against humanity. Her Awami League has been barred from contesting the election due in 2026. Bangladesh is now attempting the institutional reform that neither party undertook in thirty years of alternating power.
- Year: 2024 CE
- Category: Social
