Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees

People celebrate the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on August 5, 2024. (REUTERS)
Short Url
Updated 06 August 2024
Follow

Military in control of Bangladesh after Hasina flees

  • Hasina stepped down as PM after violent protests in Bangladesh claimed at least 300 lives since last month 
  • Protesters stormed parliament, torched TV stations while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s military was in control of the country on Tuesday after mass protests forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.

Hundreds of people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest, but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled Bangladesh aboard a helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.

Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Monday afternoon on state television that Hasina had resigned and the military would form a caretaker government.

“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” said Waker, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina’s official residence.

Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka after Waker’s announcement.

“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.

“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971, and now seeing in 2024.”

But there were also scenes of chaos and anger, with police reporting at least 66 people killed on Monday as mobs launched revenge attacks on Hasina’s allies.

Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.

Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.

“The time has come to make them accountable for torture,” said protester Kaza Ahmed. “Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder.”

Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.

The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.

Her government was accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

At least 366 people died in the unrest that began in early July, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.

Student protest leaders, ahead of an expected meeting with the army chief, said Tuesday that they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.

“In Dr. Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.

Waker said a curfew would be lifted on Tuesday morning, with the military set to lead an interim government.

Bangladeshi President Mohammed Shahabuddin late Monday ordered the release of prisoners from the protests, as well as former prime minister and key opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.

Zia, who is in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.

The president and army chief also met late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president’s press team saying it had been “decided to form an interim government immediately.”

It was not immediately clear if Waker would lead it.

Hasina’s fate was also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.

Media in neighboring India reported Hasina had landed at a military air base near New Delhi.

A top-level source said she wanted to “transit” on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into “unprecedented levels of violence” put that into doubt.

There were widespread calls by protesters to ensure Hasina’s close allies remained in the country.

Bangladesh’s military said they had shut Dhaka’s international airport on Monday evening, without giving a reason.

Bangladesh has a long history of coups.

The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, warned that Hasina’s departure “would leave a major vacuum” and that the country was in “uncharted territory.”

“The coming days are critical,” he said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a “peaceful, orderly and democratic transition,” his spokesman said. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call.

Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm.”


Migrants returning to Venezuela face debt and harsh living conditions

Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

Migrants returning to Venezuela face debt and harsh living conditions

MARACAIBO: The hands of Yosbelin Pérez have made tens of thousands of the aluminum round gridles that Venezuelan families heat every day to cook arepas. She takes deep pride in making the revered “budare,” the common denominator among rural tin-roofed homes and city apartments, but she owns nothing to her name despite the years selling cookware.
Pérez, in fact, owes about $5,000 because she and her family never made it to the United States, where they had hoped to escape Venezuela’s entrenched political, social and economic crisis. Now, like thousands of Venezuelans who have voluntarily or otherwise returned to their country this year, they are starting over as the crisis worsens.
“When I decided to leave in August, I sold everything: house, belongings, car, everything from my factory — molds, sand. I was left with nothing,” Pérez, 30, said at her in-laws’ home in western Venezuela. “We arrived in Mexico, stayed there for seven months, and when President (Donald Trump) came to power in January, I said, ‘Let’s go!’”
She, her husband and five children returned to their South American country in March.
COVID-19 pandemic pushed migrants to the US
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have migrated since 2013, when their country’s oil-dependent economy unraveled. Most settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants saw the US as their best chance to improve their living conditions.
Many Venezuelans entered the US under programs that allowed them to obtain work permits and shielded them from deportation. But since January, the White House has ended immigrants’ protections and aggressively sought their deportations as US President Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promise to limit immigration to the US
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had long refused to take back deported Venezuelans but changed course earlier this year under pressure from the White House. Immigrants now arrive regularly at the airport outside the capital, Caracas, on flights operated by either a US government contractor or Venezuela’s state-owned airline.
The US government has defended its bold moves, including sending more than 200 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador for four months, arguing that many of the immigrants belonged to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang. The administration did not provide evidence to back up the blanket accusation. However, several recently deported immigrants have said US authorities wrongly judged their tattoos and used them as an excuse to deport them.
Maduro declared ‘economic emergency’
Many of those returning home, like Pérez and her family, are finding harsher living conditions than when they left as a currency crisis, triple-digit inflation and meager wages have made food and other necessities unaffordable, let alone the vehicle, home and electronics they sold before migrating. The monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or $1.02 as of Monday, has not increased in Venezuela since 2022. People typically have two, three or more jobs to cobble together money.
This latest chapter in the 12-year crisis even prompted Maduro to declare an “economic emergency” in April.
David Rodriguez migrated twice each to Colombia and Peru before he decided to try to get to the US He left Venezuela last year, crossed the treacherous Darien Gap on foot, made it across Central America and walked, hopped on a train and took buses all over Mexico. He then turned himself in to US immigration authorities in December, but he was detained for 15 days and deported to Mexico.
Broke, the 33-year-old Rodriguez worked as a mototaxi driver in Mexico City until he saved enough money to buy his airplane ticket back to Venezuela in March.
“Going to the United States ... was a total setback,” he said while sitting at a relative’s home in Caracas. “Right now, I don’t know what to do except get out of debt first.”
He must pay $50 a week for a motorcycle he bought to work as a mototaxi driver. In a good week, he said, he can earn $150, but there are others when he only makes enough to meet the $50 payment.
Migrants seek loan sharks
Some migrants enrolled in beauty and pastry schools or became food delivery drivers after being deported. Others already immigrated to Spain. Many sought loan sharks.
Pérez’s brother-in-law, who also made aluminum cookware before migrating last year, is allowing her to use the oven and other equipment he left at his home in Maracaibo so that the family can make a living. But most of her earnings go to cover the 40 percent monthly interest fee of a $1,000 loan.
If the debt was not enough of a concern, Pérez is also having to worry about the exact reason that drove her away: extortion.
Pérez said she and her family fled Maracaibo after she spent several hours in police custody in June 2024 for refusing to pay an officer $1,000. The officer, Pérez said, knocked on her door and demanded the money in exchange for letting her keep operating her unpermitted cookware business in her backyard.
She said officers tracked her down upon her return and already demanded money.
“I work to make a living from one day to the next ... Last week, some guardsmen came. ‘Look, you must support me,’” Pérez said she was told in early July.
“So, if I don’t give them any (money), others show up, too. I transferred him $5. It has to be more than $5 because otherwise, they’ll fight you.”

Bangladesh dengue deaths top 100, August could be worse

Updated 33 min 1 sec ago
Follow

Bangladesh dengue deaths top 100, August could be worse

  • Dengue has killed 101 people and infected 24,183 so far this year, official data showed, placing a severe strain on the country’s already overstretched health care system
  • Experts say climate change, along with warm, humid weather and intermittent rain, has created ideal breeding conditions for Aedes mosquitoes, the carriers of the dengue virus

DHAKA: Bangladesh is experiencing a surge in dengue cases and deaths, with health experts warning that August could bring an even more severe outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease if urgent action is not taken.
Dengue has killed 101 people and infected 24,183 so far this year, official data showed, placing a severe strain on the country’s already overstretched health care system.
A sharp rise in fatalities has accompanied the spike in cases. Nineteen people have already died of dengue so far in August, following 41 deaths in July — more than double June’s 19 fatalities.
“The situation is critical. The virus is already widespread across the country, and without aggressive intervention, hospitals will be overwhelmed,” said Kabirul Bashar, an entomologist at Jahangirnagar University.
“August could see at least three times as many cases as July, with numbers potentially peaking in September.”
Health officials are urging people to use mosquito repellents, sleep under nets, and eliminate stagnant water where mosquitoes breed.
“We need coordinated spraying and community clean-up drives, especially in high-risk zones,” Bashar said.
Experts say climate change, along with warm, humid weather and intermittent rain, has created ideal breeding conditions for Aedes mosquitoes, the carriers of the dengue virus.
While Dhaka remains a major hotspot, dengue is peaking across the country. Large numbers of infections are being reported from outside the capital, adding pressure to rural health care facilities with limited capacity to treat severe cases.
Doctors warn that early medical attention is critical. Severe abdominal pain, vomiting, bleeding, or extreme fatigue should prompt immediate hospital visits to reduce the risk of complications or death.
With the peak dengue season still ahead, health experts have stressed that community participation, alongside government-led mosquito control, will be critical in preventing what could become one of Bangladesh’s worst outbreaks in years. The deadliest year on record was 2023, with 1,705 deaths and more than 321,000 infections reported.


Australia plans to recognize Palestinian state within days, Sydney Morning Herald reports

Updated 11 August 2025
Follow

Australia plans to recognize Palestinian state within days, Sydney Morning Herald reports

  • France and Canada last month said it planned to recognize a Palestinian state
  • Britain has said it would follow suit unless Israel addresses the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and reaches a ceasefire

SYDNEY: Australia plans to recognize a Palestinian state as early as Monday following similar moves by France, Britain and Canada, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could sign off on the move after a regular cabinet meeting on Monday, the SMH reported, citing unidentified sources.
Albanese’s office did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
France and Canada last month said it planned to recognize a Palestinian state, while Britain has said it would follow suit unless Israel addresses the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and reaches a ceasefire.
Israel has condemned decisions by countries to support a Palestinian state, saying it will reward Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza.
Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday that most Israeli citizens were against establishing a Palestinian state as they thought that would bring war and not peace, even as thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Tel Aviv, opposing his plan to escalate the nearly two-year war and seize Gaza City.
“To have European countries and Australia march into that rabbit hole just like that, fall right into it ... this is disappointing and I think it’s actually shameful but it’s not going to change our position,” Netanyahu said.
Albanese has been calling for a two-state solution, with his center-left government supporting Israel’s right to exist within secure borders and Palestinians’ right to their own state.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers last month said it was “a matter of when, not if, Australia recognizes a Palestinian state.”
 


The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet

Updated 11 August 2025
Follow

The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet

  • “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,” Palin said

WASHINGTON: Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold a high-stakes meeting about the Ukraine war on Friday in Alaska, which the United States bought from Russia more than 150 years ago.
Russian influence still endures in parts of the remote state on the northwest edge of the North American continent, which extends just a few miles from Russia.

When Danish explorer Vitus Bering first sailed through the narrow strait that separates Asia and the Americas in 1728, it was on an expedition for Tsarist Russia.
The discovery of what is now known as the Bering Strait revealed the existence of Alaska to the West — however Indigenous people had been living there for thousands of years.
Bering’s expedition kicked off a century of Russian seal hunting, with the first colony set up on the southern Kodiak island.
In 1799, Tsar Paul I established the Russian-American Company to take advantage of the lucrative fur trade, which often involved clashes with the Indigenous inhabitants.
However the hunters overexploited the seals and sea otters, whose populations collapsed, taking with them the settlers’ economy.
The Russian empire sold the territory to Washington for $7.2 million in 1867.
The purchase of an area more than twice the size of Texas was widely criticized in the US at the time, even dubbed “Seward’s folly” after the deal’s mastermind, secretary of state William Seward.

The Russian Orthodox Church established itself in Alaska after the creation of the Russian-American Company, and remains one of the most significant remaining Russian influences in the state.
More than 35 churches, some with distinctive onion-shaped domes, dot the Alaskan coast, according to an organization dedicated to preserving the buildings.
Alaska’s Orthodox diocese says it is the oldest in North America, and even maintains a seminary on Kodiak island.
A local dialect derived from Russian mixed with Indigenous languages survived for decades in various communities — particularly near the state’s largest city Anchorage — though it has now essentially vanished.
However near the massive glaciers on the southern Kenai peninsula, the Russian language is still being taught.
A small rural school of an Orthodox community known as the “Old Believers” set up in the 1960s teaches Russian to around a hundred students.

One of the most famous statements about the proximity of Alaska and Russia was made in 2008 by Sarah Palin, the state’s then-governor — and the vice presidential pick of Republican candidate John McCain.
“They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska,” Palin said.
While it is not possible to see Russia from the Alaskan mainland, two islands facing each other in the Bering Strait are separated by just 2.5 miles (four kilometers).
Russia’s Big Diomede island is just west of the American Little Diomede island, where a few dozen people live.
Further south, two Russians landed on the remote St. Lawrence island — which is a few dozen miles from the Russian coast — in October, 2022 to seek asylum.
They fled just weeks after Putin ordered an unpopular mobilization of citizens to boost his invasion of Ukraine.
For years, the US military has said it regularly intercepts Russian aircraft that venture too close to American airspace in the region.
However Russia is ostensibly not interested in reclaiming the territory it once held, with Putin saying in 2014 that Alaska is “too cold.”

 

 


Trump wants to evict homeless from Washington and send them ‘far from the capital’

Updated 10 August 2025
Follow

Trump wants to evict homeless from Washington and send them ‘far from the capital’

  • White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington
  • On any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in D.C., a city of about 700,000 people

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump pledged on Sunday to evict homeless people from the nation’s capital and jail criminals, despite Washington’s mayor arguing there is no current spike in crime.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong,” Trump posted on the Truth Social platform.
The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in the city. Trump is planning to hold a press conference on Monday to “stop violent crime in Washington, D.C.” It was not clear whether he would announce more details about his eviction plan then.
Trump’s Truth Social post included pictures of tents and D.C. streets with some garbage on them. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” he said.
According to the Community Partnership, an organization working to reduce homelessness in D.C., on any given night there are 3,782 single persons experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people.
Most of the homeless individuals are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or “on the street,” the organization says.
A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer that angered the president.
The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday the capital was “not experiencing a crime spike.”
“It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023,” Bowser said on MSNBC’s The Weekend. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”
The city’s police department reports that violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26 percent in D.C. compared with last year while overall crime was down about 7 percent.
Bowser said Trump is “very aware” of the city’s work with federal law enforcement after meeting with Trump several weeks ago in the Oval Office.
The US Congress has control of D.C.’s budget after the district was established in 1790 with land from neighboring Virginia and Maryland, but resident voters elect a mayor and city council.
For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking the law that established local elected leadership, which Trump would have to sign. Bowser on Sunday noted the president’s ability to call up the National Guard if he wanted, a tactic the administration used recently in Los Angeles after immigration protests over the objections of local officials.