DHAKA: Student demonstrators who ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have rejected calls from Bangladesh’s two main political parties for quick elections and are considering creating their own party to sustain their movement, according to interviews with four protest leaders.
Their hope: to avoid a repeat of the last 15 years, in which Hasina ruled the country of some 170 million people with an iron fist.
In June, a handful of student leaders – most in their early-to-mid 20s — began organizing demonstrations against a law reserving coveted government jobs for certain segments of the population.
Within two months, Hasina’s government was swept away by an upswell of popular anger at the brutality of its crackdown on anti-quota protesters. At least 300 people were killed in the single largest bout of violence since Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
The movement was hailed as a Gen Z revolution, spurred by young Bangladeshis’ anger at years of jobless growth, allegations of kleptocracy, and shrinking civil liberties.
An interim government headed by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus — which includes two student leaders in senior positions — now runs the country.
For most of the past three decades, Bangladesh has been governed either by Hasina’s Awami League or the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of her rival Khaleda Zia, both of whom are in their 70s.
Student leaders have discussed forming a political party to end the duopoly, said Mahfuj Alam, who chairs a committee tasked with liaising between the government and social groups such as teachers and activists.
A decision would be made in about a month, the 26-year-old law student told Reuters, adding that protest leaders wanted to consult widely with citizens before deciding on a platform.
Details of the students’ plans for their movement’s political future have not previously been reported.
“People are really tired of the two political parties. They have trust in us,” he said, at the gates of Dhaka University’s Arts Faculty.
After the story was published, Alam said on Facebook his statement to Reuters “had come out wrong” and that the students’ main focus was to maintain the spirit of the mass uprising and to consolidate the government.
“We are not thinking about political organizations right now,” he said in the Facebook post, adding that the priority was broad reform of the political system. “Everyone will know what the political structure will be at the appropriate time.”
Tahmid Chowdhury, another student coordinator who helped bring down Hasina, said there was a “high chance” they would form a political party. They were still working out their program, though he said it would be rooted in secularism and free speech.
“We don’t have any other plan that could break the binary without forming a party,” said the 24-year-old graduate student in world religion.
The student leaders in interim government have not specified what policies they intend to pursue, beyond sweeping institutional changes — such as reforming the electoral commission handpicked by Hasina — to avoid another spell of authoritarian rule.
“The spirit of the movement was to create a new Bangladesh, one where no fascist or autocrat can return,” said Nahid Islam, 26, a key protest organizer who sits in Yunus’ cabinet. “To ensure that, we need structural reforms, which will definitely take some time.”
The government is not considering calls from the Awami League and BNP to hold fresh polls as early as fall, said Islam, who holds the telecommunications portfolio.
The regime change has forced out the chief justice, the central bank governor and the police chief who oversaw the crackdown on the students, among other officials.
A spokesperson for Yunus, who has said he is not keen on holding elected office, did not return a request for comment. Touhid Hossain, a career diplomat serving as Yunus’ de facto foreign minister, told Reuters the students had not discussed their political plans with the technocrats.
But he added: “the political scenario is going to change because we have basically excluded the young generation from politics.”
Yunus, an 84-year-old economist whose microcredit programs helped lift millions globally out of poverty, wields moral authority but there are doubts over what his administration can achieve.
“We are totally in uncharted waters, both legally and politically,” said Shahdeen Malik, a constitutional expert. “The powers of this interim government are not defined because there is no constitutional provision.”
Reuters interviewed more than 30 people, including key student leaders, Hasina’s son and adviser Sajeeb Wazed, opposition politicians and army officers to assess the divisions left in the wake of the protests and the prospects for the new government.
Hasina, whose son said she hopes to return to Bangladesh, couldn’t be reached for comment.
“The political parties are not going anywhere. You cannot wipe us out,” Wazed told Reuters from the United States, where he lives. “Sooner or later, either the Awami League or the BNP will be back in power. Without our help, without our supporters, you are not going to be able to bring stability to Bangladesh.”
COLLABORATORS
On July 19, as Hasina’s supporters and police battled student demonstrators, authorities detained three of the movement’s most important leaders: Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Mojumder.
Mojumder told Reuters that he was sedated and beaten by law enforcement. The treatment, he said, solidified his view that Hasina had to go.
The new police chief Mainul Islam did not respond to Reuters’ questions for this story.
Previous protests had fizzled when leaders were detained but this time demonstrations raged on. Expecting to be arrested, the core of about two dozen coordinators had formed a structure in which they were supported by layers of other student-activists, said Islam, a veteran of previous protests.
Missteps by Hasina, meanwhile, fueled public anger against her.
While the students had protested for more than a month, they were largely limited to public university campuses. Then, on July 14, Hasina held a news conference.
Half an hour in, she half-smilingly referred to the demonstrators as “razakars.” The pejorative describes people who collaborated with Pakistan during the 1971 war, which she contrasted with descendants of freedom fighters for whom many government jobs would be reserved.
The comment ignited furious mass protests.
At Dhaka University, male demonstrators were joined by female students who broke out of their five halls of residences, whose gates are locked in the evenings, said Umama Fatema, 25, a female student coordinator.
The next day, the Awami League’s student wing moved to suppress demonstrations and clashes erupted, with sticks, iron rods and stones for weapons.
’STOP THE VIOLENCE’
The escalation in violence that week expanded the demonstrations from public campuses to private institutions, said Nayeem Abedin, a 22-year-old coordinator at the private East-West University. “We had a responsibility to come out to the street for our brothers,” he said.
Students at such institutions typically come from Bangladesh’s middle class that expanded rapidly during the robust economic growth that Hasina oversaw over much of her term.
“It felt like a turning point,” said Islam. “Private university students joined in, and unexpectedly, so did many parents.”
At least 114 people were killed by the end of that week, with hundreds more hurt. The scale of the crackdown shocked even some in the Awami League elite.
“I also told my mother: ‘no, we need to immediately tell Chhatra League not to attack, stop the violence,’” said Wazed, without providing further details. “We suspended the police officers that shot at students.”
At least two officers were suspended in early August after a video depicting the killing of a student went viral online. The student leaders plan to prosecute police and paramilitary accused of abuse.
On July 21, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court, whose judges were effectively appointed by Hasina, ruled that 93 percent of state jobs should be open to competition, meeting a key demand of the students. The demonstrations continued to grow.
Hasina declared an indefinite curfew on Aug. 4, a day after at least 91 people were killed. The army told the prime minister that evening it would not enforce the lockdown.
“The army chief didn’t want more bloodshed,” said one serving officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to media. “People from all walks of life were joining.”
The next day, as crowds marched to her official residence, Hasina fled to India.
Bangladesh student protesters eye new party to cement their revolution
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Bangladesh student protesters eye new party to cement their revolution

- In June, a handful of student leaders began demonstrations against a law reserving coveted government jobs for certain segments of population
- Within two months, Hasina’s government was swept away by an upswell of popular anger at the brutality of its crackdown on anti-quota protesters
Trump is receptive to contacts with North Korean leader, White House says

- Trump open to communication with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
- North Korea rejecting Trump letter, according to a report
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump would welcome communications with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after having had friendly relations with Kim during his first term, the White House said on Wednesday.
“The president remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong Un,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
She was responding to a report by Seoul-based NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, that the North’s delegation at the United Nations in New York had repeatedly refused to accept a letter from Trump to Kim.
Trump and Kim held three summits during Trump’s 2017-2021 first term and exchanged a number of what Trump called “beautiful” letters. In June 2019, Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarized zone with South Korea.
Little progress was made, however, at reining in North Korea’s nuclear program, and Trump acknowledged in March that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power.”
Since Trump’s first-term summitry with Kim ended, North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks.
The attempts at rapprochement come after the election in South Korea of a new president, Lee Jae-myung, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.
As a gesture of engagement on Wednesday Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the Demilitarized Zone along their shared border.
Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Lee and Trump than it was in the US president’s first term.
Since then North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, to which Pyongyang has provided both troops and weaponry.
Kim said in a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported on Thursday.
Russia hits Ukraine’s Kharkiv with deadly nighttime barrage of drones

- Zelensky: Attack shows Russia is not facing enough pressure
- Two southern regions without electricity after attacks
KHARKIV, Ukraine: A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv on Wednesday killed six people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said.
The attack followed Russia’s two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow says are retaliatory measures for Kyiv’s recent attacks in Russia.
A new wave of drone attacks on four city districts was reported early on Thursday by Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, including a drone that landed in a school courtyard and smashed windows. There were no other reports of casualties or damage.
Elsewhere, two southern Ukrainian regions, Mykolaiv and Kherson, were left without electricity on Wednesday after Russian forces attacked an energy facility, the governors said.
Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s northeast, withstood Russia’s full-scale advance in the early days of the war but has since been a regular target of drone, missile and guided aerial bomb assaults.
Prosecutors in Kharkiv region said on the Telegram messaging app that the death toll in Tuesday night’s incidents had risen to six as rescue teams pulled bodies from under the rubble. They said three people were still believed to be trapped.
The strikes by 17 drones on Kharkiv sparked fires in 15 units of a five-story apartment block and caused other damage in the city close to the Russian border, Mayor Terekhov said.
“There are direct hits on multi-story buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises and public transport,” Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Every new day now brings new despicable blows from Russia, and almost every blow is telling. Russia deserves increased pressure; with literally every blow it strikes against ordinary life, it proves that the pressure is not enough,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram.
A Reuters witness saw emergency rescuers helping to carry people out of damaged buildings and administering care, while firefighters battled blazes in the dark.
Nine of the injured, including a 2-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, have been hospitalized, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the broader Kharkiv region, said on Telegram.
In total, the Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 85 drones overnight, 40 of which were shot down.
Blackouts
In the southern Kherson region, workers were trying to restore electricity supplies after Russian forces attacked what its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said was “an important energy facility.”
“It is currently impossible to predict the duration of the work. Residents of the region, I ask you to show understanding and prepare for a prolonged power outage,” he said on the Telegram messenger.
The governor of the neighboring Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said his region was also experiencing emergency shutdowns but that power would soon be restored.
Kherson region directly borders a war zone and is under daily drone, missile and artillery attack. The Mykolaiv region faces mainly missile and drone attacks.
There was no immediate comment from Russia on the latest overnight attacks.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbor in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
Mali’s government adopts bill granting junta leader 5 more years in power

- The bill now awaits ratification by the National Transitional Council, the legislative body overseeing the transition
BAMAKO, Mali: Mali’s Council of Ministers on Wednesday adopted a controversial bill granting the head of the military junta an additional five years in power.
Gen. Assimi Goita has led the West African nation since orchestrating two coups in 2020 and 2021. The move follows the military regime’s dissolution of political parties in May.
According to the government’s cabinet statement, the bill will lead to the “revision of the Transition Charter, granting the Head of State a five-year renewable mandate starting in 2025.” It implements the recommendations of the national dialogue consultations organized by the military regime in April, which the political parties boycotted.
The bill now awaits ratification by the National Transitional Council, the legislative body overseeing the transition.
Earlier in May, Gen. Goita signed a decree dissolving political parties, a decision made against a backdrop of burgeoning opposition. It coincided with a surge in kidnappings of pro-democracy activists in the capital, Bamako, and just days after a demonstration by several hundred activists.
Mali, a landlocked nation in the semiarid region of Sahel, has been embroiled in political instability that swept across West and Central Africa over the last decade.
The nation has seen two military coups since 2020 as an insurgency by jihadi groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group worsened. The junta had promised a return to civilian rule by March 2024, but later postponed elections. No date has been set yet for the presidential election.
At least 49 people have died in flooding in South Africa with toll expected to rise, officials say

- The death toll included six high school students who were washed away when their school bus was caught in floodwaters
JOHANNESBURG: At least 49 people were confirmed dead Wednesday as floods devastated one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, and officials said the toll was expected to rise as more bodies are recovered in the search for missing people.
The floods hit the largely rural Eastern Cape province in the southeast of the country early Tuesday after an especially strong weather front brought heavy rains, gale force winds and also snow in some parts.
“As we speak here, other bodies are being discovered,” Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane told reporters at a briefing, adding that it was one of the worst weather-related disasters his province had experienced. “I have never seen something like this,” he said.
The death toll included six high school students who were washed away when their school bus was caught in floodwaters on Tuesday near a river close to the town of Mthatha, which was especially hard hit and at the center of the worst flooding. Four other students were among the missing, Mabuyane said.
Authorities found the school bus earlier Wednesday, but it was empty. Three of the students were rescued on Tuesday when they were found clinging to trees and crying out for help, the provincial government said.
A driver and another adult who were on the bus with the schoolchildren were among the dead.
Search and rescue operations would continue for a third day on Thursday, authorities said, though they didn’t give details on how many people might still be missing. They said they were working with families to find out who was still unaccounted for.
Disaster response teams have been activated in Eastern Cape province and the neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province after the torrential rain and snow hit parts of southern and eastern South Africa over the weekend. Mabuyane said there had also been reports of mudslides.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the National Disaster Management Center was also working with local authorities in the Eastern Cape, the province that took the brunt of the extreme cold front that weather forecasters had warned was on its way last week. There were unusually large snowfalls in parts of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State province in South Africa’s interior.
Ramaphosa offered his condolences to the affected families in the Eastern Cape in a statement from his office and described the situation as “devastation.”
Power outages have affected hundreds of thousands of homes in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Eastern Cape provincial government officials said hundreds of families were left homeless and in temporary shelters in that province after their houses were washed away or broken apart, while at least 58 schools and 20 hospitals were damaged by the floods, which mostly affected Mthatha and the surrounding district.
Other houses were left submerged under water. Cars and debris that were carried away by the floods were left strewn in piles as the rain stopped and the water began to subside.
South Africa is vulnerable to strong weather fronts that blow in from the Indian and Southern Oceans. In 2022, more than 400 people died in flooding caused by prolonged heavy rains in the east coast city of Durban and surrounding areas.
Poor areas with informal housing are often the worst affected and where the majority of fatalities occur.
Northern Ireland hit by third night of violence but main flashpoint calmer

BALLYMENA, Northern Ireland: Violence erupted in different parts of Northern Ireland for the third successive night on Wednesday, with masked youths starting a fire in a leisure center but unrest in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena was notably smaller in scale.
Hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Ballymena, a town of 30,000 people located 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Belfast, on Tuesday night in what police condemned as “racist thuggery.”
The violence flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court earlier that day, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town.
The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge, the BBC reported. Police are investigating the damaging of properties on Monday and Tuesday in Ballymena, which has a relatively large migrant population, as racially-motivated hate crimes.
Two Filipino families told Reuters they fled their home in Ballymena on Tuesday night after fearing for their safety when their car was set on fire outside the house.
A few dozen masked youths threw some rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police after officers in riot gear and armored vans blocked roads in the town on Wednesday evening.
Police deployed water cannon against the crowd for the second successive night but the clashes were nothing like the previous night that left 17 officers injured and led to five arrests.
Much of the crowd had left the streets before midnight.
A small number of riot police were also in the town of Larne 30 kilometers west where masked youths smashed the windows of a leisure center before starting fires in the lobby, BBC footage showed.
Swimming classes were taking place when bricks were thrown through the windows and staff had to barricade themselves in before running out the back door, a local Alliance Party lawmaker, Danny Donnelly, told the BBC.
Northern Ireland’s Communities Minister Gordon Lyons had earlier posted on Facebook that a number of people had been temporarily moved to the leisure center following the disturbances in Ballymena, before then being moved out of Larne.
The comments drew sharp criticism from other political parties for identifying a location used to shelter families seeking refuge from anti-immigrant violence. Lyons condemned the attacks on the center.
Police said youths also set fires at a roundabout in the town of Newtownabbey, a flashpoint for sectarian violence that sporadically flares up in the British-run region 27 years after a peace deal largely ended three decades of bloodshed.
Debris was also set alight at a barricade in Coleraine, the Belfast Telegraph reported.
The British and Irish governments as well as local politicians have condemned the violence.