How a young generation in Bangladesh forced out the leader who ruled for much of their lives

How a young generation in Bangladesh forced out the leader who ruled for much of their lives
Protesters shout slogans as they celebrate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (File/AP)
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Updated 12 August 2024
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How a young generation in Bangladesh forced out the leader who ruled for much of their lives

How a young generation in Bangladesh forced out the leader who ruled for much of their lives
  • Students initially poured into Bangladesh’s streets in June, demanding an end to rules that set aside up to 30 percent of government jobs for the descendants of veterans
  • Young people like Prome are among the most frustrated with and affected by the lack of opportunity in Bangladesh

Jannatul Prome hopes to leave Bangladesh to study more or possibly find a job after she finishes her university degree, frustrated by a system that she says doesn’t reward merit and offers little opportunity for young people.
“We have very limited scope here,” said the 21-year-old, who would have left sooner if her family had enough money to pay tuition at foreign universities for both her and her older brother at the same time.
But recent events have given her hope that one day she might be able to return to a transformed Bangladesh: After 15 years in power, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country last week — chased out by young protesters, Prome among them, who say they are fed up with the way her increasingly autocratic rule has stifled dissent, favored the elite and widened inequalities.
Students initially poured into Bangladesh’s streets in June, demanding an end to rules that set aside up to 30 percent of government jobs for the descendants of veterans who fought the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Protesters said that benefitted supporters of Hasina’s Awami League, which led that struggle — and who already were part of the elite. The quota and others for marginalized groups meant only 44 percent of civil service jobs were awarded based on merit.
That such jobs lay at the center of the movement was no coincidence: They are some of the most stable and best paying in a country where the economy has boomed in recent years but not created enough solid, professional jobs for its well-educated middle class.
And that Generation Z led this uprising was also not surprising: Young people like Prome are among the most frustrated with and affected by the lack of opportunity in Bangladesh — and at the same time, they are not beholden to the old taboos and narratives that the quota system reflected.
Their willingness to break with the past was clear when Hasina belittled their demands in mid-July, asking who, if not the freedom fighters, should be awarded government jobs.
“Who will? The grandchildren of Razakars?” Hasina retorted, using a deeply offensive word that refers to those who collaborated with Pakistan to quell Bangladesh’s independence struggle.
But the student protesters wore the word as a badge of honor. They marched on Dhaka University’s campus, chanting: “Who are you? Who am I? Razakar. Who said this? The dictator.”
The following day, protesters were killed during clashes with security forces — only galvanizing the demonstrations, which widened into a broader uprising against Hasina’s rule.
Sabrina Karim, a professor at Cornell University who studies political violence and Bangladesh’s military history, said that many of the protesters are so young they cannot remember a time before Hasina was prime minister.
They were raised, like the generations before them, on stories of the independence struggle — with Hasina’s family at the center. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the first leader of independent Bangladesh and was later assassinated in a military coup. But Karim said this narrative had much less meaning for the young protesters than it did for their grandparents.
“It doesn’t resonate with them anymore as much as it did (before). And they want something new,” she said.
For Nourin Sultana Toma, a 22-year-old student at Dhaka University, Hasina’s equating of the student protesters with traitors made her realize the gulf between what the youth wanted and what the government could provide.
She said that she had watched as Bangladesh was slowly lulled into becoming immune to inequities and people lost hope that things would ever get better.
The country’s longest-serving prime minister prided herself on boosting per capita income and transforming Bangladesh’s economy into a global competitor — fields turned into garment factories and bumpy roads became winding highways. But Toma said she saw the daily struggle of people trying to buy essentials or find work and her demand for basic rights met with insults and violence.
“It could no longer be tolerated,” Toma said.
This economic distress was keenly felt by Bangladesh’s youth. Eighteen million young people — in a country of 170 million — are not working or in school, according to Chietigj Bajpaee, who researches South Asia at the Chatham House think tank. And after the pandemic, private sector jobs became even more scarce.
Many young people try to study abroad or move overseas upon graduation in the hopes of finding decent work, decimating the middle class and resulting in brain drain.
“The class differences have widened,” said Jannatun Nahar Ankan, a 28-year-old who works with a nonprofit in Dhaka and who joined the protests.
Despite these problems, none of the protesters seems to have truly believed that their movement would be able to dethrone Hasina.
Rafij Khan, 24, was on the streets preparing to join a protest when he heard Hasina had resigned and fled the country. He called home repeatedly to see if he could verify the news.
He said that in the last days of the demonstrations, people from all classes, religions and professions had joined the students on the streets. Now they hugged one another, while others just sat on the ground in disbelief.
“I can’t describe the joy that people felt that day,” he said.
Some of that euphoria is wearing off now as the enormity of the task ahead sinks in. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus became the interim leader Thursday and he, along with a Cabinet that includes two student protest leaders, will have to restore peace, build institutions and prepare the country for fresh elections.
The hope for most students is that the interim government gets time to repair Bangladesh’s institutions while a new political party — not led by the old political dynasties — is formed.
“If you asked me to vote in elections right now, I don’t know who I’d vote for,” said Khan. “We don’t want to replace one dictatorship with another.”
The young people who took to the streets have often been described as the “I hate politics” generation.
But Azaher Uddin Anik, a 26-year-old digital security specialist and recent graduate of Dhaka University, said that is a misnomer.
They don’t hate all politics — just the divisive politics in Bangladesh.
And although he admits that the structural reforms that the country now needs may be more difficult than removing the prime minister, he is hopeful for the first time in a while.
“My last experience is telling me that the impossible can happen,” he said. “And maybe it isn’t too late.”


Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says

Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says
Updated 21 February 2025
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Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says

Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says
  • Judge Amir H. Ali noted that Trump's appointees to the State Department and USAID had “continued their blanket suspension of funds”
  • The judge earlier issued a freeze order based on a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging Trump's cutoff of US foreign assistance

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has kept withholding foreign aid despite a court order and must at least temporarily restore the funding to programs worldwide, a federal judge said Thursday.
Judge Amir H. Ali declined a request by nonprofit groups doing business with the US Agency for International Development to find Trump administration officials in contempt of his order, however.
The Washington, D.C., district court judge said administration officials had used his Feb. 13 order to temporarily lift the freeze on foreign aid to instead “come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension” of funding.
Despite the judge’s order to the contrary, USAID Deputy Secretary Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee, and other top officials had “continued their blanket suspension of funds,” Ali said.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging the Trump administration’s month-old cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department, which shut down $60 billion in annual aid and development programs overseas almost overnight.
Even after Ali’s order, USAID staffers and contractors say the State Department and USAID still have not restored payments even on hundreds of millions of dollars already owed by the government.
Marocco and other administration officials defended the nonpayment in written arguments to the judge this week. They contended that they could lawfully stop or terminate payments under thousands of contracts without violating the judge’s order.
The Trump administration says it is now doing a program-by-program review of all State Department and USAID foreign assistance programs to see which ones meet the Trump administration’s agenda.
Aid organizations, and current and former USAID staffers in interviews and court affidavits, say the funding freeze and deep Trump administration purges of USAID staffers have brought US foreign assistance globally to a halt, forced thousands of layoffs and is driving government partners to financial collapse.


Philippine police arrest over 450 in ‘Chinese-run’ scam center raid

Philippine police arrest over 450 in ‘Chinese-run’ scam center raid
Updated 21 February 2025
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Philippine police arrest over 450 in ‘Chinese-run’ scam center raid

Philippine police arrest over 450 in ‘Chinese-run’ scam center raid
  • Scam center targeted victims in China and India with sports betting and investment schemes, says anti-organized crime commission chief
  • Online gaming operations have been banned in the Philippines on grounds that they were being used as cover by organized crime groups

MANILA: Philippine police arrested more than 450 people in a raid on an allegedly Chinese-run offshore gaming operator in Manila, the country’s anti-organized crime commission has said.
Initial interrogations suggested the suburban site had been operating as a scam center, targeting victims in China and India with sports betting and investment schemes, the commission said after the Thursday raid, which saw 137 Chinese nationals detained.
“We arrested around five Chinese bosses,” commission chief Gilberto Cruz told AFP on Friday, adding they faced potential trafficking charges.
Banned by President Ferdinand Marcos last year, Philippine online gaming operators, or POGOs, are said to be used as cover by organized crime groups for human trafficking, money laundering, online fraud, kidnappings and even murder.
“This raid proves that the previous POGO workers are still trying to continue their scamming activities despite the ban,” Cruz said.
He previously told AFP that about 21,000 Chinese nationals have continued to operate smaller-scale scam operations in the country since the online gaming ban.
International concern has grown in recent years over similar scam operations in other Asian nations that are often staffed by trafficking victims tricked or coerced into promoting bogus cryptocurrency investments and other cons.
President Marcos has put POGOs at the center of recent campaign messaging in the run-up to May mid-term elections, framing predecessor Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged tolerance of the sites as evidence of a too-cozy relationship with China.
Thursday’s raid is the latest in a series of busts this year, including one in January that saw around 400 foreigners arrested in the capital, including many Chinese nationals.
The Washington-based think tank United States Institute of Peace said in a May 2024 report that online scammers target millions of victims around the world and rake in annual revenues of $64 billion.
 


China backs Trump’s Ukraine peace bid at G20 as US allies rally behind Zelensky

China backs Trump’s Ukraine peace bid at G20 as US allies rally behind Zelensky
Updated 21 February 2025
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China backs Trump’s Ukraine peace bid at G20 as US allies rally behind Zelensky

China backs Trump’s Ukraine peace bid at G20 as US allies rally behind Zelensky
  • China says supports US, Russia talks on Ukraine at G20 meeting
  • Says willing to continue to play a role in resolving crisis

BEIJING: China came out in support of US President Donald Trump’s bid to strike a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, at a G20 meeting in South Africa on Thursday, while US allies rallied around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended US policy on the war, scrapping a campaign to isolate Moscow with a phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin and talks between senior US and Russian officials that have sidelined Ukraine.
Trump on Wednesday then denounced Zelensky as a “dictator,” prompting statements of support for the Ukrainian president from G20 members such as Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom.
“China supports all efforts conducive to peace (in Ukraine), including the recent consensus reached between the United States and Russia,” Wang Yi told other G20 foreign ministers gathered in Johannesburg, according to a statement from his ministry.
“China is willing to continue playing a constructive role in the political resolution of the crisis,” he added.
Wang did not reiterate the point he made at the Munich Security Conference last Friday that all stakeholders in the Russia-Ukraine conflict should participate in any peace talks.
Beijing wants to ensure its involvement in whatever deal Trump seeks to strike with the Kremlin to prevent a currently diplomatically-isolated Russia from slipping out from under its influence, and because its ties to Russia offer China an “in” with European officials worried about being frozen out of any talks, analysts say.
“By going straight to Putin, President Trump has erased what Beijing had hoped could be a key piece of initial leverage,” said Ruby Osman, a China expert at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
“Instead, China might turn its attention to discussing a Chinese role in eventual reconstruction and peacekeeping — something that would give Beijing a significantly more vested interest in European security architecture,” she added.
The Trump administration said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold more talks with Russia on ending the nearly three-year long conflict after a 4-1/2-hour long meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Russia said the talks had been useful, but hardened its demands, notably insisting it would not tolerate the NATO alliance granting membership to Ukraine.
 


The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie declines to take the stand as the defense rests

The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie declines to take the stand as the defense rests
Updated 21 February 2025
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The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie declines to take the stand as the defense rests

The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie declines to take the stand as the defense rests

MAYVILLE, N.Y.: The New Jersey man on trial in the 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie declined to testify in his defense Thursday as his lawyers rested their case without calling any witnesses.
“No, I do not,” Hadi Matar, 27, said when asked by Chautauqua County Judge David Foley whether he wished to take the stand.
Earlier Thursday, prosecutors called a forensics expert as their final witness, wrapping up seven days of witness testimony, most notably from Rushdie himself.
The lawyers are scheduled to deliver closing arguments Friday, followed by jury deliberations.
Matar is on trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York on charges of attempted murder and assault for the attack at the nearby Chautauqua Institution that left Rushdie, 77, blind in one eye and with other serious injuries. City of Asylum founder Henry Reese, who was appearing with Rushdie, suffered a gash above his eye.
Throughout the trial, Matar, who is from Fairview, New Jersey, was often seen taking notes and speaking with his attorneys. On several occasions while being brought in or out of the courtroom, he declared, “Free Palestine” to news cameras. But defense attorneys had declined to say whether he intended to testify.
Although Matar’s lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own, they sought to challenge prosecution witnesses as part of a strategy intended to cast doubt on whether Matar intended to kill, and not just injure, Rushdie. The distinction is important for an attempted murder conviction.
Matar came armed with a knife, not a gun, attorneys said, and Rushdie survived the stabbing, which they noted witnesses had described as a “skirmish” or “scuffle.”
“We’ve argued from the beginning that they have not, at least in our opinion, proven any type of intent to murder,” Public Defender Nathaniel Barone told reporters outside the courtroom.
He suggested Matar likely would have faced a lesser charge of assault were it not for Rushdie’s public profile.
“We think that it became an attempted murder because of the notoriety of the alleged victim in the case,” Barone said.
Rushdie was stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand in an unprovoked attack as he prepared to participate in a discussion about keeping writers safe. He spent 17 days in a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center.
Matar also faces trial in US District Court in Buffalo on a separate federal indictment charging him with attempting to provide material support to the militant group Hezbollah.


Zelensky says talks with US envoy ‘restore hope’ for strong agreement

Zelensky says talks with US envoy ‘restore hope’ for strong agreement
Updated 21 February 2025
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Zelensky says talks with US envoy ‘restore hope’ for strong agreement

Zelensky says talks with US envoy ‘restore hope’ for strong agreement
  • “Ukraine is ready for a strong, effective investment and security agreement" with the US, Zelensky said in a post on X after meeting with Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia

President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged on Thursday that Ukraine was ready to work quickly to produce a strong agreement on investments and security with the United States, saying a meeting with US envoy Keith Kellogg “restores hope” for success.
“General Kellogg, a meeting which restores hope. We need strong agreements that will really work. I gave instructions to work fast and in a very, very even-handed fashion,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
“The details of the agreement are important. The better the details are drafted, the better the result.”
The meeting with Kellogg took place a day after Zelensky and US President Donald Trump exchanged barbs as US-Russian talks got underway on ending the three-year-old war pitting Kyiv against Moscow. Ukraine was not invited to the talks.
After the meeting with Kellogg, Zelensky said on social media platform X that Ukraine had to “ensure that peace is strong and lasting — so that Russia can never return with war.”
“Ukraine is ready for a strong, effective investment and security agreement with the President of the United States. We have proposed the fastest and most constructive way to achieve results. Our team is ready to work 24/7.”
The talks with Kellogg also followed Ukraine’s rejection of an initial US proposal to develop rare earths in Ukraine.
In his comments on X, Zelensky also said his discussion with Kellogg focused on the battlefield situation, the security guarantees that Ukraine is seeking and the return of prisoners of war.
“It’s important for us — and for the entire free world — that American strength is felt,” he wrote.