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  •   Home > News > International

    They toppled a dictator, now Bangladesh's young protesters are vying for power

    Bangladesh's student uprising forced their prime minister to flee. Now they're trying to become a force for change from within the political system.


    If there's one thing Tasnim Jara never thought she'd have to do, it's telling people in her home country of Bangladesh how to not bleed to death from a police gunshot wound.

    But in August 2024, the Oxford-educated medical doctor had to post a video online doing just that.

    Dr Jara, 30, had spent weeks watching the violence unfold in Bangladesh on her phone while she was thousands of kilometres away working in Cambridge, UK.

    A student-led uprising against the country's dictatorial prime minister Sheikh Hasina had exploded and the police were responding with state-sanctioned violence.

    As the protests reached boiling point, Dr Tasnim Jara, halfway across the world, realised there was only way one she could help.

    "I found myself trying to scour for everyday items that people could carry in their backpacks when they go to these protests and if their friend gets shot, what they can do to stop the bleeding before they're able to get their friend to the hospital," she told Foreign Correspondent.

    She posted two videos for her 11 million social media followers suggesting they carry gauze, tampons, nappies — anything to control blood flow and keep someone alive.

    "It was frantic. It was surreal," she said. "I never imagined I'd have to make a health awareness video like that. My country was not in a war situation."

    Hasina eventually fled Bangladesh, kickstarting a new political movement with the goal of radically transforming the country.

    Dr Jara saw it as an opportunity to help change her country for good and returned home from the UK to join Bangladesh's first ever student-led political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP).

    "I wanted to contribute in whatever way I can in changing our political culture," she said.

    The question now for Dr Jara and dozens of other student leaders is whether a movement that tore down a dictator can transform Bangladesh's political system from within.

    From student politics to parliament

    On a humid Friday evening in July, excitement filled the air in Khulna, a city five hours south of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.

    Crowds started multiplying, first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.

    As the sun set they jostled to get close enough to take selfies and shake hands with a group of young student leaders, including Dr Tasnim Jara.

    It was a reception fit for rock stars, but these weren't musicians, they were members of the NCP in Khulna on a nationwide tour.

    The student uprising that gave birth to the NCP began in June 2024 at the country's public universities, sparked by a government job quota the students said handed prized civil service roles to people aligned with authoritarian prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her party, the Awami League.

    For weeks it remained largely a student movement, as police and the Awami League’s student wing unleashed violence on the young protesters.  

    Then video of a student being blasted with rubber bullets at close range went viral and Bangladesh erupted in fury.

    What followed was a mass uprising fuelled by almost 16 years of resentment towards Hasina, who was famed for corruption, rigged elections, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

    She responded by approving the use of deadly force against the protesters and in just over three weeks 1,400 people were killed, according to United Nations estimates.

    On August 5, with protesters surrounding the prime ministerial residence in Dhaka, the woman known as the Iron Lady of Bangladesh boarded a military helicopter bound for neighbouring India, leaving behind a power vacuum and questions about who would fill it.

    The student protest leaders had hoped the rare moment of national unity created by the uprising would lead to reform and democracy.

    But they soon realised the established political parties weren't taking their dream for a "new Bangladesh" as seriously as they were.

    That's when they decided to form the NCP.

    "The aspiration from people [was] that the country would not stay how it was but there will be fundamental changes to how the country is being run," said Dr Jara, who's now the party's senior joint member secretary.

    "When I am a doctor I can treat my individual patients, I can make sure they get treated the right way, but to change the system where everybody's rights are upheld for health, for education, for right to freedom of speech, we need political will."

    Making those dreams a reality is easier said than done, but the students at least have Bangladesh's interim government on their side.

    Last August they called on the country's only Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, an economist famous for pioneering microcredit, to lead the country through a transition period until the next election.

    As chief adviser he set the mammoth task of drastically reforming key public institutions like the judiciary, police and electoral system.

    The interim government set up a National Consensus Commission which will ultimately — ideally — lead to 30 political parties signing off on reforms to be passed into law in the future.

    Big ticket items include ridding the civil service of corruption, rewriting the constitution and ensuring next February's election reflects the democratic nation Bangladesh claims to be.

    In short, they want to remake the country, and the young people who kickstarted the movement to get here want in.

    Taking on the political establishment

    Before Hasina was overthrown, her Awami League party had ruled for close to 16 years, with allegations of election rigging plaguing the last three elections in particular.

    But with the party now banned from participating in February's election, the race to replace it has opened up, with the students' NCP emerging as a serious contender.

    If their reception in Khulna is anything to go by, it's clear the spirit of last year's uprising has not died off.

    But getting someone to back your call for a dictator to be overthrown is one thing – getting them to actually vote for you at the ballot box is another.

    The NCP faces headwinds including established political parties intent on grabbing power after years on the sidelines, an image that the party only stands for the young and a dormant Awami League trying to sabotage its chances.

    While Bangladesh's youth may dream of radical change, the reality is there's a popular, established, less revolutionary party — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) — that's held government multiple times before.

    Right now, analysts say they're the favourites to win the election.

    Senior BNP member and former MP Amir Khosru told Foreign Correspondent the idea for significant, systemic reforms post-Hasina was his party's idea.

    But whether or not the BNP would bring about the "Bangladesh 2.0" protesters fought and died for is less clear.

    "I have respect for their views, that's fine," Mr Khosru said. "But let the test be the people of Bangladesh. The people of Bangladesh will decide what kind of Bangladesh they want to see."

    The kind of leader Bangladesh might see is one who's kept his distance from the uprising, at least physically.

    The BNP's acting chairman Tarique Rahman — in all likelihood the country's next prime minister — has lived in London for 17 years.

    Despite being able to freely travel back to Bangladesh he still hasn't returned.

    Detours on the way from dictator to democracy

    While there is enthusiasm and optimism about what February's election may bring, many Bangladeshis are weary after a year of what they see as inaction and indifference towards the grand hopes of transformation.

    Economics graduate and student activist Prapti Taposhi, 24, put everything on the line last year during the uprising, including her relationship with her pro-Awami League father.

    Every night she and her friends would send each other memes joking that it could be their last night on Earth, in case the next day they were killed by police.

    For her, the uprising wasn't about overturning the jobs quotas or simply ousting Sheikh Hasina, it was about something much bigger — a freer, fairer Bangladesh.

    "We never cared about the damn job. We cared about our dignity as a human being, as a citizen of our country," she said.

    One significant roadblock to secure the kind of Bangladesh she fought for has emerged.

    While 90 per cent of Bangladeshis are Muslim, the constitution mandates it's a secular country.

    But the National Consensus Commission has reviewed that clause and proposed to change it to "religious freedom and harmony".

    Some are concerned that would lead to Islamic laws becoming state laws.

    Prapti has already noticed a shift in religious attitudes since the fall of Hasina, who had banned the country's largest Islamic party and crushed hardline religious groups.

    She has observed the interim government being far more tolerant of what she calls "Islamist extremist voices".

    In May, tens of thousands turned out to a rally organised by Islamic lobby group Hefazat-e-Islam to protest the reforms proposed by the Women's Affairs Reform Commission including increased female representation in parliament, criminalising marital rape and bringing in equal property inheritance.

    Right now, Muslim daughters inherit half as much as sons.

    At the May rally, men brimming with religious fervour called the group "a Whore Commission" on stage.

    Prapti is furious nobody from the interim government spoke out about it.

    "I'm not talking about repressing the Islamic voices," she said. "I'm talking about condemning."

    She sees the targeting of women as an affront to the female student protesters who took charge of the movement at a moment when it could have died.

    "You have single-handedly thrown [women] away because of … how they dress, because of how they talk, because of how they behave."

    'Slipped out of our hands'

    Assistant Professor of Bangla, Nadira Yeasmin, has felt the wrath of conservative religious groups who have gotten louder since the interim government took over.

    She's a well-known feminist who's also fighting for equal property inheritance.

    Earlier this year, she published a magazine outlining why equal property inheritance is not against Islam and listed a number of Muslim countries that already have it.

    But the conservative media and religious groups and parties came for her.

    She said they made hundreds of posts online, organised demonstrations, lobbied her landlord to kick her out and submitted written complaints to the principal of her college.

    Now she's on leave while they investigate accusations by the student wings of Islamic parties that she's "anti-Islam".

    "If that case goes against me, then I will lose my job," she said. "Totally dismissed. Fired.

    "We had expected that we would build a beautiful country. I feel like that possibility has largely slipped out of our hands."

    While Nadira and Prapti are disappointed with how things have panned out in the last year, they are not downtrodden.

    Prapti acknowledged the limitations of an interim, unelected government whose changes may not be binding on the next parliament. She's still holding out hope Bangladesh may eventually make the transition from dictator to democracy she yearns for.

    "I would not say the dream is dying, but the dream is not fulfilled yet. We want to have an equitable and equal structure for everybody. That dream is becoming more clear.

    "Bangladesh should be for everybody, and we should be in the street until the country is for everybody."

    Watch Foreign Correspondent tonight at 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.


    ABC




    © 2025 ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved

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