People gather in front of the ransacked Awami League’s central office in the aftermath of the prime minister’s resignation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Rights groups and diplomats in Bangladesh on Tuesday raised concerns at reports of attacks on minorities including Hindus, a day after the prime minister was ousted following mass protests.

Some businesses and homes owned by Hindus — a group seen by some in the Muslim-majority nation as having been close to ousted leader Sheikh Hasina — were attacked on Monday, witnesses said.

Police reported mobs launching revenge attacks on Hasina’s allies. Offices of Hasina’s Awami League party were torched and looted across the country, eyewitnesses told AFP.

“Houses and shops of minority people were attacked, vandalised and looted, at least 97 places on Monday and Tuesday,” Rana Dasgupta, general secretary of Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, said in a statement.

The group said at least 10 Hindu temples were attacked by “miscreants” on Monday.

One Hindu man was beaten to death in Bangladesh’s southern Bagerhat district, said a hospital official who requested anonymity due to safety concerns.

“Such attacks on minorities are against the fundamental spirit of the anti-discrimination student movement,” said Transparency International Bangladesh head Iftekharuzzaman, who uses one name.

The United States embassy in Dhaka called for “calm”, in a post on social media platform X.

“We are concerned about reports of attacks on religious minorities and religious sites in Bangladesh,” it said, a message echoed by European Union diplomats.

EU heads of mission “are very concerned about incoming reports of multiple attacks against places of worship and members of religious, ethnic and other minorities in Bangladesh”, EU ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley posted on X.

“We urgently appeal to all parties to exercise restraint, reject communal violence and uphold the human rights of all Bangladeshis.”

Monday was the deadliest day of unrest since protests erupted in early July, with at least 122 people killed.

Some homes of the Ahmadis, a minority Muslim sect, were also torched by a mob on Monday, a local newspaper reported.

The house of celebrated Hindu musician Rahul Ananda – who last year met French President Emmanuel Macron when he visited Dhaka – was also torched.

Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar on Tuesday also said New Delhi was “monitoring the situation with regard to the status of minorities”.

He added that the government would “remain deeply concerned till law and order is visibly restored”.

With unrest and political turmoil rampant in the country, following the resignation of Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina, the people have sounded cries of ‘victory’. In an aggressive burst of joy, protesters joining from different parts of Dhaka were seen storming Ganabhaban (the Bangladesh prime minister’s residence), overturning furniture, smashing glass doors, and taking away different items. Many were even dancing and chanting slogans in the premises and elsewhere in Dhaka.

Various Awami League offices, including the residences of Awami League politicians and former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, throughout Bangladesh were also attacked and looted.

Renowned Bangladeshi photographer who participated in the protests at Shahbagh, Dhaka, said that “Beautiful moments descended into Bangladesh” as Sheikh Hasina stepped down from her post.

The photos below capture some of these moments of “joy” after the former PM resigned and fled the country.

“Ms. Hasina, who landed at the Hindon airbase on August 5 in a C-130J military transport aircraft, hours after resigning as the prime minister, has been shifted to an unspecified location under tight security,” people in the know said. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s plan to travel to London has hit a roadblock over some “uncertainties” and she is unlikely to move out of India for the next couple of days, people familiar with the matter said on August 6.

“Ms. Hasina, who landed at the Hindon airbase on August 5 in a C-130J military transport aircraft, hours after resigning as the prime minister, has been shifted to an unspecified location under tight security,” they said. 

“The former Bangladesh Prime Minister, accompanied by her sister Sheikh Rehana, planned to leave for London from India to take temporary refuge but the option is not being pursued now. This is after the U.K. government indicated that she may not get legal protection against any possible probe into the massive violent protests in her country,” they said.

Bangladesh Protests live updates – August 6

“The Awami League leader planned to travel to London through India and her aides informed Indian authorities about it before she landed in Hindon,” they said.

Hasina decided to travel to London as Rehana’s daughter Tulip Siddiq is a member of the British Parliament. Tulip is economic secretary to the Treasury and Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate.

In a statement, British foreign secretary David Lammy said in London on August 5 that Bangladesh has seen unprecedented levels of violence and tragic loss of life in the last two weeks and people of the country “deserve a full and independent UN-led investigation into the events”.

They further added, “Hasina has apprised New Delhi about her possible future steps. It is also learnt that Hasina has family members in Finland as well and that is why she also contemplated leaving for the northern European country.”

While saying that Hasina’s travel plans have hit certain issues and she may stay in the country for the next couple of days, the people also described the situation as dynamic with no definitive path or clarity on the matter.

The 76-year-old who ruled the South Asian country with an iron fist for 15 years, resigned as the prime minister following the massive protests that initially began as an agitation against a job quota scheme but weeks later morphed into a mass movement demanding her ouster from power.

The controversial quota system provided for 30% reservations in civil services jobs for the families of veterans who fought the 1971 liberation war.

Hasina’s Awami League retained power in the parliamentary election in January that was boycotted by the opposition parties.

“The former Bangladesh prime minister left her official residence Ganabhavan in a military chopper to an airbase. From the airbase, she flew into Hindon in a C-130 military transport aircraft of the Bangladesh Air Force,” the sources said.

Around 18 million young Bangladeshis are out of work, as per government figures.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Bangladeshi student group has vowed on July 28 to resume protests that sparked a lethal police crackdown and nationwide unrest unless several of their leaders are released from custody.

“Last week’s violence killed at least 205 people”, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data, in one of the biggest upheavals of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Also Read: Explained | On the student protests in Bangladesh

Army patrols and a nationwide curfew remain in place more than a week after they were imposed and a police dragnet has scooped up thousands of protesters including at least half a dozen student leaders.

Members of Students Against Discrimination group, whose campaign against civil service job quotas precipitated the unrest, said they would end their weeklong protest moratorium.

The group’s chief Nahid Islam and others “should be freed and the cases against them must be withdrawn”, Abdul Hannan Masud, one of the coordinators of the anti-discrimination group, said in an online briefing on July 27.

Also Read: Bangladesh arrest total passes 2,500

Abdul, who did not disclose his location because he was in hiding from authorities, also demanded “visible actions” be taken against Government Ministers and police officers responsible for the deaths of protesters.

“Otherwise, Students Against Discrimination will be forced to launch tough protests from July 29,” he added.

Nahid Islam and two other senior members of the protest group were forcibly discharged from hospital on July 26 in the capital Dhaka and taken away by a group of plainclothes detectives.

Earlier in the week Nahid Islam told AFP he was being treated at the hospital for injuries police inflicted on him during an earlier round of detention and said he was in fear for his life.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters on July 26 that the trio were taken into custody for their own safety but did not confirm if they had been formally arrested.

Police told AFP on July 28 that detectives had taken two others into custody, while a Students Against Discrimination activist told AFP that another person had been taken on July 28 morning.

“At least 9,000 people have been arrested nationwide since the unrest began,” according to Prothom Alo, a Bangladesh’s newspaper.

Telecommunications Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak told reporters the country’s mobile internet network would be restored later on July 28, eleven days after a nationwide blackout imposed at the height of the unrest.

“Fixed line broadband connections had already been restored on July 23 but the vast majority of Bangladesh’s 141 million internet users rely on their mobile devices to connect with the world,” according to the National telecoms regulator.

‘Job crisis’

Also Watch | Bangladesh protests: The trouble ahead for Hasina government

Protests began this month over the reintroduction of a quota scheme reserving more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.

With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work — as per the government figures — the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

In Focus podcast: What do the student protests signify for the Sheikh Hasina regime in Bangladesh?

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to the ruling Awami League. The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs last week but fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Nearly 200 are dead from violent student protests and firing by forces in Bangladesh – is PM Sheikh Hasina, who won elections just a few months ago, losing her grip on gen-next, and will the unrest India’s closest neighbour is grappling with, spill over?

But first, Bangladesh is taking a pause from days of brutal violence as forces took on student protestors demonstrating against the quota system. A look at the situation right now, although information remains restricted.

July 1: Protests by students began after the Supreme Court upheld an earlier government order maintaining about 56% of all government jobs would be reserved for freedom fighters – the mukti jodha/ mukti bahini of Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971, their children and even grandchildren. The students on the street said they were fighting what they saw as a move to make the bureaucracy politically aligned to the ruling Awami League.

There’s a lot more on the underlying social, historical and political tensions in this podcast at The Hindu with my colleague Kallol Bhattacherjee.

July 14: In a statement appealing for calm, PM Hasina actually fuelled protestors anger- by saying that those protesting were Razakars- a term used for those Bangladeshis who supported Pakistan in 1971, seen as traitors. The protests battled police, set fire to government buildings IT centres, vandalized a metro station.

Shoot at sight orders, a nationwide curfew, internet bans followed. The army and paramilitary Rapid Action Forces were called in, as the violence spiralled out of control.

July 21: The supreme court’s appellate bench struck down the earlier order, bringing down quotas for freedom fighters and families to 5%. The order helped restore calm, although students groups still demand an apology from PM Hasina, and the resignation of her ministers for the crackdown. In 3 weeks, nearly 200 had been killed, thousands injured – including hundred with eye injuries from pellets and bullets fired by the forces.

The worry now, that when the curfew is lifted and internet fully restored, the protests could recur, or continue to simmer, posing a threat to the Hasina government, that was once seen as the champion of students movements.

In fact there has been some concern internationally. The UN spokesperson said the UNSG was deeply concerned, particularly as UN marked vehicles were used by riot police in Dhaka.

At a congressional hearing, a senior U.S. official said that they were in touch with Bangladeshi authorities, to calm the violence and to rescind shoot at sight orders – of course PM Hasina has a tense relationship with the U.S. and has indirectly claimed that its sanctions against her during elections were to force her to allow a U.S. base in Bangladesh.

So is this the internal matter of Bangladesh, and why should India worry?

– Bangladesh is one of India’s closest neighbours, very strong ties between the leaders that were seen as PM Hasina made two visits to India in June- for the swearing in and for a bilateral visit.

– Protests hurt Bangladesh economically, and India is a strong partner on trade, energy and connectivity.

– The protests against 1971 related quotas carried a subtext that could turn anti-Indian- as India is not just connected to Muktibahinis in the past, but today is accused by the opposition siding with PM Hasina.

– About 10,000 Indian students are in Bangladesh- about 7,000 had to be evacuated already, and prolonged protests will disrupt their lives.

– Bangladesh’s problems quickly become a problem with West Bengal- the Hasina government protested this week when Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said that if innocent Bangladeshis fled across the border, she would have to give them shelter under UN laws. The MEA issued a sharp rebuke to the West Bengal govt after it received the letter.

– Bangladesh’s other major partner is China, which will not criticize PM Hasina for internal violence, and India would not want to give Beijing the advantage.

– Bangladesh has been sensitive to India on protests as well, for eg. Calling the CAA protests an internal matter, and the Modi government does not want be seen interfering in this matter.

Worldview Take:

The crackdown in Bangladesh on student protestors, and the extent of violence just six months after PM Sheikh Hasina began her fourth term in office, is a big challenge to the popularity of her government, and the conduct of forces, indiscriminate firing causing dozens of deaths is another undemocratic turn in the country. It is ironical that the 1971 liberation, and Hasina’s own return to politics and power in 1996 and 2008 all accrue to student movements – losing gen-next’s support over these protests will be a big blow. As a close partner of Bangladesh, not just PM Hasina’s, India can be discreet but not remain silent with such turmoil in its neighbourhood.

Reading recommendations:

Transformation: Emergence of Bangladesh and Evolution of India-Bangladesh Ties by Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

India and the Bangladesh Liberation War by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta

Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh by Nusrat Sabina Chowdhury

 Biden and Beyond: The United States Rethinks South Asia by Hernaikh Singh and C Raja Mohan

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia by Sten Widmalm- Section on Bangladesh, towards One Party Rule

Sheikh Hasina: The Making of an Extraordinary South Asian Leader by Dr Abul Hasnat Milton

A WORLD OF THREE ZEROS by Muhammad Yunus

Production: Shibu Narayan and Kanishkaa Balachandran