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.”


Austria says stabbing attack suspect swore allegiance to Daesh

Austria says stabbing attack suspect swore allegiance to Daesh
Updated 16 February 2025
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Austria says stabbing attack suspect swore allegiance to Daesh

Austria says stabbing attack suspect swore allegiance to Daesh
  • Daesh calling for lone wolf attacks in America and Europe following a New Year attack in New Orleans, according to SITE Intelligence.
  • Daesh has not claimed responsibility for the attack so far

VILLACH: The Syrian asylum-seeker suspected of carrying out a deadly stabbing rampage in the Austrian town of Villach had sworn allegiance to Daesh and was radicalized online, authorities said on Sunday.
A 14-year-old boy was killed in Saturday afternoon’s attack in the center of Villach and five other people were wounded, three of whom are in intensive care, police said.
Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told a press conference in Villach that the 23-year-old Syrian man, who was arrested seven minutes after the first call to the police, had been rapidly radicalized on the internet and that the Daesh flag had been found in his apartment.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Police said the man, who is being charged with murder and attempted murder, had recorded himself swearing an oath of allegiance to Daesh.

• More harm would have been done had it not been for another Syrian, a food delivery driver, who saw the attacker and drove into him with his vehicle to stop him, authorities said.

Karner, a conservative, told reporters there was sadness and sympathy for the victims, then added: “But in these moments there’s also understandably often anger and rage. Anger at an attacker who randomly stabbed innocent people here in this town.”
Police said the man, who is being charged with murder and attempted murder, had recorded himself swearing an oath of allegiance to Daesh.
More harm would have been done had it not been for another Syrian, a food delivery driver, who saw the attacker and drove into him with his vehicle to stop him, authorities said.
Daesh has not claimed responsibility for the attack so far. However, the media section of Daesh’s Afghan branch, Daesh-K, recently circulated a post by Daesh calling for lone wolf attacks in America and Europe following a New Year attack in New Orleans, according to SITE Intelligence.
The bloodshed in Villach followed the thwarting of a plot in August to carry out a suicide attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna by a teenager who had also sworn loyalty to Daesh.

 


Wife of detained Ugandan politician ‘worried’ over hunger strike

Wife of detained Ugandan politician ‘worried’ over hunger strike
Updated 16 February 2025
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Wife of detained Ugandan politician ‘worried’ over hunger strike

Wife of detained Ugandan politician ‘worried’ over hunger strike
  • Besigye was abducted in Kenya in November, and has been facing the death penalty on treason charges in a court martial

ADDIS ABABA: The wife of detained Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye said on Sunday she was “very worried” about his health, nearly a week after the ex-presidential candidate began a hunger strike.
Besigye, 68, is a leading opponent of the country’s President Yoweri Museveni — in power for nearly 40 years — whom he has unsuccessfully challenged in four elections.
On trial for “threatening national security,” Besigye went on hunger strike on Feb. 10 to protest his detention, with his lawyer describing him as “critically ill.”
“He’s not been eating, he’s only drinking water,” his wife, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima, said on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Kizza Besigye, 68, is a leading opponent of the country’s President Yoweri Museveni, whom he has unsuccessfully challenged in four elections.

• On trial for ‘threatening national security,’ Besigye went on hunger strike on Feb. 10 to protest his detention.

“He says it’s his only act of protest at the illegal detention that he’s being put through.”
When Besigye was last seen in public, during a court appearance on Friday, “he looked very frail and dehydrated,” she said.
She added that she was “very worried about his condition now.”
Besigye was abducted in Kenya in November, and has been facing the death penalty on treason charges in a court martial.
Museveni rejected last month’s Supreme Court ruling that civilians should not be tried in military courts.
Byanyima has previously labelled the trial a “sham.”
“I am in a fight for justice,” she said. “If this happens to him, that he continues to be held illegally, that some trumped-up process is used to convict him, this is not just about him, it’s about the fate of democracy and the rights of Ugandans,” she said.
The UN and several rights organizations have voiced their concern about the suppression of the political opposition in Uganda in the run-up to the 2026 presidential elections.
Rights group Amnesty International branded Besigye’s case a “travesty of justice.”

 


US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland

US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland
Updated 16 February 2025
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US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland

US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland
  • The new US administration has warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China

MUNICH: Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Sunday said that talks between the US and Russia over the Ukraine war must not rewrite European security and allow Moscow to establish “spheres of interest.”
Washington blindsided Kyiv and its European backers this week by launching talks on ending Moscow’s three-year invasion in a call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The new US administration has also warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.
The Kremlin has pushed for the negotiations to discuss not just Ukraine but also broader European security.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Washington blindsided Kyiv and its European backers this week by launching talks on ending Moscow’s three-year invasion in a call with Putin.

• The new US administration has warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.

That has sparked fears among Washington’s allies that Putin could return to demands he floated prior to the 2022 invasion aimed at limiting NATO’s forces in eastern Europe and US involvement on the continent.
One issue talks “should not discuss is new European security arrangements,” Stubb, whose country shares a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, told the Munich Security Conference.
“There’s no way we should open the door for this Russian fantasy of a new, indivisible security order, where it can do spheres of interest.”
The stance from the new US administration has sown further concerns in Europe as Trump demands NATO countries spend more on their own defense.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth this week warned that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.
Stubb insisted that Ukraine’s push to join NATO and the EU should be “non-negotiable,” even after Washington appeared to rule out Kyiv joining the military alliance as part of a peace deal.
Stubb laid out a vision for how negotiations could work — saying that the West should hit Russia with tough sanctions ahead of talks to pile on the pressure.
He said European countries should help support any eventual ceasefire, with the US acting as a “backstop.”

 


Osaka meets Saudi Arabian culture ahead of the 2025 Expo

Osaka meets Saudi Arabian culture ahead of the 2025 Expo
Updated 16 February 2025
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Osaka meets Saudi Arabian culture ahead of the 2025 Expo

Osaka meets Saudi Arabian culture ahead of the 2025 Expo
  • Similar cultural showcases are scheduled for several cities across Japan in the coming weeks

TOKYO: To promote the country, its culture and heritage, as well as its pavilion at the Osaka Expo, which opens in April, Saudi Arabia is staging events around the country to give people a taste of life and culture in the Kingdom.

On Saturday and Sunday, Saudi Arabia put on a cultural experience showcasing its heritage in Osaka’s busy Namba district. The event used interactive experiences to help give the local people a taste of the nation’s rich traditions.

Visitors were able to experience Saudi Arabian hospitality and sample traditional food and drink.

The event also highlighted the country’s artistic heritage with displays of intricate handmade items that demonstrated the craftsmanship behind Saudi Arabia’s traditional arts.

A special Immersive VR Experience took guests virtually to the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, allowing them to explore cultural landmarks in a unique way.

In addition, guests were able to try on traditional Saudi attire, while live performances of regional music created a unique Arabian atmosphere.

One attendee described the event as “an unexpected but delightful experience,” adding that the culture felt “warm and welcoming.”

Similar cultural showcases are scheduled for several cities across Japan in the coming weeks. With the Osaka-Kansai Expo approaching, Saudi Arabia is building anticipation for its pavilion, where a similar diverse program of performances, exhibits and cultural showcases will be on display.


Over 40 people killed in Mali gold mine collapse

Over 40 people killed in Mali gold mine collapse
Updated 16 February 2025
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Over 40 people killed in Mali gold mine collapse

Over 40 people killed in Mali gold mine collapse
  • The deceased, mostly women, had climbed down into open-pit areas left by industrial miners to look for scraps of gold when the earth collapsed
  • Artisanal mining is a common activity across much of West Africa and has become more lucrative in recent years due to rising prices of metals

BAMAKO: Forty-three people, mostly women, were killed after an artisanal gold mine collapsed in western Mali on Saturday, the head of an industry union said.
The accident took place near the town of Kenieba in Mali’s gold-rich Kayes region, Taoule Camara, secretary general of the national union of gold counters and refineries (UCROM), told Reuters.
The women had climbed down into open-pit areas left by industrial miners to look for scraps of gold when the earth collapsed around them, he said.
A mines ministry spokesperson confirmed the accident had taken place between the towns of Kenieba and Dabia, but declined to give further details as ministry teams at the scene had not yet shared their report.
Artisanal mining is a common activity across much of West Africa and has become more lucrative in recent years due to growing demand for metals and rising prices.
Deadly accidents are frequent as the artisanal miners often use unregulated methods.
Thirteen artisanal miners, including women and three children, were killed in southwest Mali in late January, after a tunnel in which they were digging for gold flooded.