Quotas for government jobs may not be what you think would spark up a revolution — even though they were indeed the initial driver behind the nationwide revolt that ultimately led to Sheikh Hasina’s flight from the country by military aircraft.
So, what happened in Bangladesh over the summer, and why did this crisis get so little media coverage? How did peaceful student protests turn into a death toll of over a thousand, and put an abrupt end to the Prime Minister’s 15-year mandate? And what is to happen next, now that Bangladesh underwent what many consider a “second independence”?
To explore the events of the summer and the possible futures for Bangladesh, I conducted an interview with Faizan Ahmed, a former student from Dhaka, who I’d like to thank for his time and insight.
It all started in June 2024, when the Supreme Court of Bangladesh ruled in favour of the return of quotas for government jobs, a system which automatically reserves 30% of these jobs to the descendants of freedom fighters — soldiers who fought against Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. This system had already been abolished in 2018 following public outcry, but the High Court decision on June 5th sparked a new wave of peaceful student protests in Dhaka.
Perceived as unfair by students, government job quotas are said to limit merit-based opportunities, especially in the context of economic difficulties, with unemployment rates being as high as 15.7% for people between the ages of 15 and 24. Specifically, government jobs have higher wages and better advantages in comparison to the private sector, which makes them more attractive to the youth.
Many also hold the belief that the real point of this quota system is to favour those who may have ties with the prime minister, as Hasina’s grandfather was the leader of the freedom fighters during the Liberation War. Hence, having their relatives make up a considerable part of government jobs is perceived by some as an attempt to gather supporters of Hasina’s regime in the public sector, as Faizan explains: “Sheikh Hasina uses that to keep her own people in power [...] She used this excuse to give favours to a lot of people so they’d be part of the government.”
Originally peaceful, the protests of July took a violent turn after Sheikh Hasina called protesters the “descendants of the razakar”, a pejorative word which can be translated as ‘traitor’.
“Razakar was a term used for the Bengalis who supported Pakistan’s regime [during the 1971 Liberation War]. These Bengalis were viewed as enemies of the state, because they betrayed their own people… It’s a really offensive thing to say to anybody, because you work against your country’s fight for freedom. It’s a derogatory term [...], so that's what set it off. Because up until then, the protests were peaceful. The violence didn't go that far. But as soon as she called us razakars, everybody was like: ‘We're done. We're not having it anymore’.”
Tensions only increased following mass brutality by state forces, including the police, the army, and the Chhatra League (the student wing of the government party) — leading to a death toll of over a thousand, and 400 people losing their eyesight during what is often called the ‘July Massacre’. Faizan describes the violence of the governmental crackdown: “The army was instructed to shoot protestors on sight. [...] Two of my friends were arrested, they were taken into a cell and beaten up mercilessly.”
However, the violent repression from state forces was not enough to deter protesters this time around. “But this time, they [the students] just didn’t give up. And after that, the whole country came behind the students when they saw how we were being treated. It wasn’t just the students’ fight anymore, it was the whole country’s fight against an oppressive regime.”
On July 17th, the government established a nationwide military curfew and a complete internet shutdown of the country, a tactic Hasina had already used in the past. “During the 2018 protests, they also had a blackout. So this isn't the first time it happened.”
Bangladesh inhabitants were therefore cut off from the rest of the world for five days — an event which had extended consequences on various industries and the country’s economy, including the shutdown of garment factories, which account for a significant share of Bangladesh’s GDP.
For Faizan, who was in the Netherlands during the protest, not being able to reach his family and friends during the shutdown was a stressful experience. “I didn't have contact with my family for three days, and then eventually they figured out these third party apps in order to contact people outside the country. And when the internet came back, they controlled the bandwidth a lot, so everything was super slow [...] and everything was also monitored, allegedly.”
To understand why students and workers showed such resistance in the face of extreme police violence, we have to take into account that the discontent about Sheikh Hasina’s regime stems deeper than job quotas: it is also the accumulated anger and frustration resulting from 15 years of a regime of corruption, alleged rigged elections, state violence, human rights violation, censorship measures, and authoritarian drifts. “The quota system was just a trigger for the revolution to start, [it] is not big enough to start a revolution. It’s also her 15-year dictatorship, freedom of speech restrictions — there are so many people who got locked up for saying anything against the government: one of my friend’s grandfather, who is an internationally accredited journalist, was taken into a torture cell for writing against the government”.
So the July protests were not merely a story about job opportunities and fairness; it was the revolt of a people against an authoritarian-leaning regime, driving resistance to unprecedented levels. “The narrative kind of changed from ‘they [the police] are coming, let’s disperse this area’ to ‘Oh, they are coming to attack us, we need more hands’”. This previously unseen energy from the protesters spurred them to storm the Prime Minister’s palace on August 5th, forcing Hasina—now in exile in India—to flee her residence by helicopter, her regime collapsing in turn. “It was a scene out of a movie. [...] To be very honest, I was hoping for it, but I didn't expect it was actually gonna play out like it did”.
Since her resignation, an interim government headed by Dr Mohammed Yunus, a Nobel Prize laureate and one of Hasina’s most vocal critics and opponents, was created. It is however unsure when or how new elections will occur. Some argue that the political vacuum left by the collapse of the former regime is dangerous, thus prompting rapid action; others, however, call for more profound changes to prevent the mistakes of the past from recurring and to strengthen Bangladesh’s institutions and restore its democracy. The main risk now is that slow action and a lack of communication with Bangladeshis will divide the country once again. “Everybody united against the government because we had one goal; and now that we won, the unity spread out again.”
While avoiding corruption is at the heart of the interim government’s concerns, this might be a tough task given its prevalence in the past — and even then, the problem runs deeper. “At the same time, it's not just corruption that's wrong with Bangladesh. It's education, labour laws, women's rights, pollution, overpopulation… There needs to be a really strong interim government which would actively try to break down the structure that was created by the Awami League. [...] We don’t know how long people will be happy with an interim government. We don't know how much influence the interim government can have on the country, or how much they can go against the Constitution. There are a lot of questions that are still unanswered, a lot of work to be done, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen. But I want to be hopeful.”
In the midst of all the chaos, one thing is certain: Bangladesh is now at a crossroads.
