Some context: Students are protesting to reform the quota system. Which was abolished in 2018 after protest but recently brought back again. The Quota system basically reserves 56% of public sector jobs, i.e. 30% to relatives of war veteran.
The war happened in 1971. To get public job and avail the quota, it must be their 3rd or 4th generation now. Which is plain unfair.
But it’s not about that, the gov loyalists and their goons fake these veteran certificates to land these jobs. Bangladesh is one of the most corrupted countries in the world after all. So real veteran relatives are seldom the beneficiary.
These students just wanted to reform this system. But our fascist gov and their goons used force and killed 50+ unarmed students until yesterday (3 from my alma mater alone.) This was completely unprovoked and unnecessary. Basically any forms of dissent have been dealt with this way since 2009. No one can criticize or protest the big brother.
We have a dictatorship since 2009. People are angry - due to corruption, inflation, joblessness and tyranny. This is just some outburst of it.
When you see the videos how the police are killing teenagers and university students in the road - our future generation - no one can tolerate this.
Now the fascist gov has closed all internet and phone connection to outside world. I can't contact my family anymore. I don't know their well being.
There is of course more to it. But this is the summary.
I agree that Sheikh Hasina is extremely authoritarian and corrupt dictator but imo JeI are the actual fascists, and the BNP has absolutely been enabling them.
That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end.
Ideally all these old fossils (Hasina, Zia, Rahman, etc) need to be purged and the actual youth (who are the majority of Bangladesh) get a chance to have their voice in power.
It's a handful of elite 70 year olds who have been running a country where the median age is 25 and are ruining it due to their own personal drama from the 70s and 80s.
Independent of points for or against their rule, the ageist argument makes little sense. 25 year olds are generally politically naive and easily manipulated. The average person in their twenties has no idea about economics, geopolitics or other such topics that are important to understand for running a country. When you look at uprisings against ancient leaders in countries with very young populations, they regularly end up even worse then before, sadly. Take Sudan as an example.
Yeah I think "fascist" is too much for any actor not JeI but authoritarian is right. They've cut off Internet and telecom access after all, a dangerous game given how physically close they are to West Bengal.
That’s a terrible idea and would set Bangladesh back generations. Hasina is authoritarian, but Bangladeshis need someone like her to run such a disorderly population. She’s not Lee Kuan Yew, but she’s the best in that direction Bangladesh can hope for. And a third-rate copy of LKY is a hell of a lot better than whatever Islamic socialist would replace her.
> It's a handful of elite 70 year olds who have been running a country where the median age is 25 and are ruining it due to their own personal drama from the 70s and 80s.
> That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end. ...
Beware of what you wish for! It's all nice and easy to harp at "undemocratic" and "authoritarianism". But understand the political context and history of Bangladesh before passing such blanket judgement. The reality of Bangladesh politics is:
1. Political violence is a fact there - Mrs. Hasina's father, a hugely popular leader, was assassinated and 18 members of her family, including her 10-year-old brother, and relatives were massacred. She had to seek refuge abroad to survive.
2. Bangladesh has also seen many military coups.
3. Some opposition parties of Bangladesh are backed by the military.
4. Some of the opposition lean towards religious fundamentalism and, as you pointed out, also associate with extremist groups.
5. Foreign powers - USA (and other western countries acting in cohort with the US), China and India - often interfere in Bangladesh's internal affairs.
Being a young democracy, amidst such a political environment necessarily requires an authoritarian streak in a politician to survive and to nurture a secular democracy. As an indian, I genuinely admire her commitment to create a democracy in an Islamic republic that is easily prone to religious fundamentalism and sectarianism - sometimes she reminds me of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who did the same with Turkiye. (Remember that Bangladesh is one of the few islamic Republics that has actually committed to democratic political values).
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All that said, it is very clear that the current protests were very poorly handled and will be politically damaging to her, and could be a turning point in Bangladesh politics. Whether it will be good for Bangladesh totally depends on how her government handles these protest. Even if the matter is sub-judice, and being examined by the Bangladesh Supreme Court, the government should have engaged more deeply with the protestors and anticipated the political violence.
I think it's more about justice than the number of jobs or whether you get it or not. Many people will be happy when they perceive that a fair process has been established in granting these jobs. Especially when income is hard to come by.
At 140,000 square kilometres, Bangladesh is about the size of New York State, with 170 million people. Problems are inevitable, there are not so many job opportunities at all, and there will always be people who are dissatisfied
Nope. It won't be numerous but grab whatever of the tiny pie is the point. I am from neigboring country but situation is same for jobs. For 10 govt job, 10K people can show up and create riot like situation in little time.
Why are you seething about this from the other side of the world?
You are presumably an intelligent person, but you, and everyone else that could, left your home country for economic opportunities elsewhere. Now, your home country is administrated and governed by the people without the opportunity to leave and you are on the other side of the world.
I think it is extremely weird to see the people with the best opportunity to reshape their country leave and then from overseas complain about the politics in that country.
Huh? Even if he was seethings, why is caring about your family a bad thing? Is your opinion suddenly not relevant anymore when you've fled the country? Weird mindset
I think it's worth noting why this is happening. The country has been giving out degrees and jobs to people who instead of working and studying hard, to descendants of veterans in the country's war against pakistan, and this level of nepotism has been going on since the 70s which as you can easily imagine is not great for those who see the value in getting these "basic livelihood for hard work" things. So when people started protesting recently, because for anyone with half a brain this is completely wrong, the people without half a brain who benefit from this completely fucked system responded by killing and raping students and now there's no internet.
This is definitely how you drain a country of all its competent people very fast by the way.
The ruling party seems to be allied with a student paramilitary to help act as their enforcers.
"Chhatra League distributes dormitory seats at Chittagong University instead of authorities. Only those who join Chhatra League after being enrolled, get the chance to stay in the residential halls."
> The general secretary of Bangladesh Chhatra League Jahangirnagar University unit, Jasimuddin Manik and his followers celebrated the rape of 100th girls including at least 20 students of the university in 1998.
Is it poverty that brings out the worst in people? Or something else?
Important to note it wasn't just a 'war against Pakistan', but a war for independence from Pakistan [1], which also included a genocide against Bengalis by Pakistan and their allies [2].
from that link about the Bangladesh genocide (wow, I never heard of this):
> Pakistan's imams declared Bengali Hindu women to be "war booty”;[11][12] and Pakistani fatwa were issued legitimizing Bengali Hindu women as spoils of war.[12][13] Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.
This is based on a non-contextual reading of Quran 4:24, Quran 8:69, Quran 23:5-6:, Quran 33:50 and various hadiths, which continue to be taken literally (when it is convenient to do so) by belligerents, hundreds of years after they were written. I refuse to cite them here because they are offensive to humanitarian/modern ethical worldviews (and because I do not wish to play a game of moral relativism).
I don't know about running a country to the ground. They are economically doing quite well with metrics exceeding those of neighboring countries like India.
Conjecture: there is no exit from despotry because more than deriving happiness from the current state, the despot fears dissolution. A counter-example might be post apartheid South Africa or Idi Amin’s exile, but there are sufficient examples of worse personal and family outcomes to rule out simple projections of psychopaths.
This protest, which started peacefully is currently the consequence of absolute mishandling and mismanagement by the government that resulted in close to 100 being shot dead by the police.
The current protest is not about the quota system anymore. It is the result of the systematic breakdown of social and economic opportunities that stems from years of corruption and favouritism within every sect of the economy.
If you figure the event is significant enough to be on the front page, isn't something about the event itself more appropriate? as opposed to a tweet about the network being down as stand-in
That seems like a good point. I hope it doesn't context-shift the comments too much (I'm in a meeting atm and don't have time to check.)
I've talked with a guy from Bangladesh over the last 3 days and he said that he was at a party and he was about to be killed, so he stopped going and started filming how other students are being beaten by local police. The fact that the government blocked the internet is pretty sad and I wish that no more people die.
Has there been any indication from NetBlocks how they think the government is blocking internet access? I can still see subnets being announced from Bangledesh associated providers.
My friends are mostly Bdesh expats at this point. I wonder how dangerous it would be to setup a link from Bdesh into India. It would be a useful lifeline. Best wishes for the students and the people of Bdesh, but the stuff we were seeing as late as yesterday on Twitter was ugly. I hope those that can are using their mobiles to take proof.
The last thing India wants is Bangladeshi refugees. I mean the Modi government is actively in the process of trying to expel the Muslim Bangladeshis that came in the 1970s.
Sorry when I meant link I specifically meant a network link. A way to route net traffic out of the country. It wouldn't be too hard given how far the outskirts of Dhaka are from the West Bengal border and plenty of Indian Bengalis have ties in Bangladesh.
Readit News
The war happened in 1971. To get public job and avail the quota, it must be their 3rd or 4th generation now. Which is plain unfair.
But it’s not about that, the gov loyalists and their goons fake these veteran certificates to land these jobs. Bangladesh is one of the most corrupted countries in the world after all. So real veteran relatives are seldom the beneficiary.
These students just wanted to reform this system. But our fascist gov and their goons used force and killed 50+ unarmed students until yesterday (3 from my alma mater alone.) This was completely unprovoked and unnecessary. Basically any forms of dissent have been dealt with this way since 2009. No one can criticize or protest the big brother.
We have a dictatorship since 2009. People are angry - due to corruption, inflation, joblessness and tyranny. This is just some outburst of it.
When you see the videos how the police are killing teenagers and university students in the road - our future generation - no one can tolerate this.
Now the fascist gov has closed all internet and phone connection to outside world. I can't contact my family anymore. I don't know their well being.
There is of course more to it. But this is the summary.
I agree that Sheikh Hasina is extremely authoritarian and corrupt dictator but imo JeI are the actual fascists, and the BNP has absolutely been enabling them.
That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end.
Ideally all these old fossils (Hasina, Zia, Rahman, etc) need to be purged and the actual youth (who are the majority of Bangladesh) get a chance to have their voice in power.
It's a handful of elite 70 year olds who have been running a country where the median age is 25 and are ruining it due to their own personal drama from the 70s and 80s.
The challenge of escalating partisanship is self-reïnforcing polarisation. The worse the leadership, the worse the opposition.
The operant question, thus, is not who is good but who is less evil, in the hope that this ratchet, a few times turned, yields goodness.
Really? Are you going to totally ignore that it is those very 25+ years old that gave the current premiere of Bangladesh her massive majority? (See also https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/88356/why-are-m... ).
> That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end. ...
Beware of what you wish for! It's all nice and easy to harp at "undemocratic" and "authoritarianism". But understand the political context and history of Bangladesh before passing such blanket judgement. The reality of Bangladesh politics is:
1. Political violence is a fact there - Mrs. Hasina's father, a hugely popular leader, was assassinated and 18 members of her family, including her 10-year-old brother, and relatives were massacred. She had to seek refuge abroad to survive.
2. Bangladesh has also seen many military coups.
3. Some opposition parties of Bangladesh are backed by the military.
4. Some of the opposition lean towards religious fundamentalism and, as you pointed out, also associate with extremist groups.
5. Foreign powers - USA (and other western countries acting in cohort with the US), China and India - often interfere in Bangladesh's internal affairs.
(Source: https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/80654/ )
Being a young democracy, amidst such a political environment necessarily requires an authoritarian streak in a politician to survive and to nurture a secular democracy. As an indian, I genuinely admire her commitment to create a democracy in an Islamic republic that is easily prone to religious fundamentalism and sectarianism - sometimes she reminds me of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who did the same with Turkiye. (Remember that Bangladesh is one of the few islamic Republics that has actually committed to democratic political values).
-----
All that said, it is very clear that the current protests were very poorly handled and will be politically damaging to her, and could be a turning point in Bangladesh politics. Whether it will be good for Bangladesh totally depends on how her government handles these protest. Even if the matter is sub-judice, and being examined by the Bangladesh Supreme Court, the government should have engaged more deeply with the protestors and anticipated the political violence.
You are presumably an intelligent person, but you, and everyone else that could, left your home country for economic opportunities elsewhere. Now, your home country is administrated and governed by the people without the opportunity to leave and you are on the other side of the world.
I think it is extremely weird to see the people with the best opportunity to reshape their country leave and then from overseas complain about the politics in that country.
Honestly, it sounds like you want to gatekeep political discussion. Am I misunderstanding you?
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/05/imran-khan-interview/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/did-us-ask-for-imra...
This is definitely how you drain a country of all its competent people very fast by the way.
The ruling party seems to be allied with a student paramilitary to help act as their enforcers.
"Chhatra League distributes dormitory seats at Chittagong University instead of authorities. Only those who join Chhatra League after being enrolled, get the chance to stay in the residential halls."
It's the student wing.
In South Asia, all party student wings are basically paramilitaries and gangs.
Is it poverty that brings out the worst in people? Or something else?
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide
> Pakistan's imams declared Bengali Hindu women to be "war booty”;[11][12] and Pakistani fatwa were issued legitimizing Bengali Hindu women as spoils of war.[12][13] Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.
This is based on a non-contextual reading of Quran 4:24, Quran 8:69, Quran 23:5-6:, Quran 33:50 and various hadiths, which continue to be taken literally (when it is convenient to do so) by belligerents, hundreds of years after they were written. I refuse to cite them here because they are offensive to humanitarian/modern ethical worldviews (and because I do not wish to play a game of moral relativism).
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I’m just surprised nobody is talking about the reason the government claims it has limited access to information: preventing disinformation.
Not a single person here has commented about disinformation, but it is the single most applicable part of this article for Americans.
Preventing the spread of disinformation has been the supposed in the last decade reason for the largest censorship campaigns our nation has ever seen.
The current protest is not about the quota system anymore. It is the result of the systematic breakdown of social and economic opportunities that stems from years of corruption and favouritism within every sect of the economy.
If you figure the event is significant enough to be on the front page, isn't something about the event itself more appropriate? as opposed to a tweet about the network being down as stand-in
That seems like a good point. I hope it doesn't context-shift the comments too much (I'm in a meeting atm and don't have time to check.)
I feel like your story is really missing some details.
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