From Quotas to Carnage
By Anime Abdullah
Nov/Dec 2024
The horrific and savage carnage the world painfully witnessed during the fall of Bangladesh’s fascist regime under the ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in July was beyond belief. Thousands of young lives from infants to college students were brutally killed. Their bodies, dreams, and futures were hastily buried in unmarked graves to conceal the gruesome reality of fascism. Death registries were removed from hospitals to obscure the true extent of the dictatorship’s cruelty. Thousands more vibrant, promising young lives were assaulted and permanently disabled to scar and mar a nation’ future forever. This sheer massacre was not a result of any foreign invasion, like Palestine’s occupation by Israel, but a state-sponsored atrocity carried out by a ruthless, power-obsessed regime, hellbent on maintaining its grip on power with a callousness bordering on madness.
The suffocating stench of these deaths sickened humanity across continents. Their blood-soaked images of bodies strewn on streets seared into the memories of the diaspora worldwide. The heart-wrenching cries of grieving families reverberated across the Atlantic. Millions of American Bangladeshis spent sleepless nights glued to social media, scrolling through harrowing updates, praying for an end to the violence.
Yet there was one exception.
Standing atop a mountain of corpses, bathing in their blood, and inhaling their dying breaths, Hasina Wajed remained untouched and unmoved. Her insatiable desire to cling to power eclipsed all else. To crush any remnants of youth resistance, she sought to unleash more military force on August 5, when she sensed the risks of her own life and cowardly fled to India. Nothing – destroying a 16-year dynasty, abandoning all complicit cabinet members in danger, or leaving behind a nation in utter ruin – could stop her.
More appalling was the fact that all this violence, destruction, and downfall of the Hasina Administration erupted over a seemingly trivial and non-political issue: the job quota system, which was designed in 1972 as a temporary recognition for the 1971 war veterans, who constituted less than 0.25% of the population. However, 50 years later, this administration, notorious for its staggering corruption, crafted a controversially long list of “freedom fighters” and expanded the allocation 120-fold through a 30% quota to disproportionately benefit the mostly party supporters. What was once a tribute to veterans became a convenient backdoor for party loyalists to secure government jobs.
The Bangladesh Awami League (BAL), which led the 1971 war, had long capitalized on its war legacy, seizing the role of the sole spokesperson for the nation’s war sentiment. Overtime, this legacy was weaponized to create a single-party democracy. The BAL government even executed several leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami and other opposition figures, branding them as “war criminals” through a controversial “kangaroo court“. Millions from opposition parties were imprisoned with a label of religious extremist to silent dissent. Indeed, the legitimacy of both the trials and convictions remain controversial. Such continued exploitation of religious and war sentiment created a societal cult and left ordinary citizens too terrified to speak out, lest they be labeled traitors.
However, the students remained defiant. Since 2008, they have been protesting the exploitation of the veterans’ quota which gained momentum in 2018. Desperate to quell that unrest, Hasina overstepped her authority and abruptly canceled the total quota system. When the protesters sought a revision, such wholesale cancellation seemed merely a ploy, which became evident by the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the quota system in July 2024, claiming “justice takes its own course.”
Whereas, the pervasive lack of transparency in thousands of cases involving murder, crossfire killings, and harassing innocents has already exposed the judiciary’s complicity in propping up the government’s tyrannical rule. The courtrooms still echo with the anguished cries of the families of over 900 forcibly disappeared individuals. Being aware of judicial independence as a facade, designed to deflect the government’s responsibility while secretly advancing its agenda, the students continued to protest the job quota system.
Their non-political and non-violent protest could have easily been addressed through dialogue and discussion, which unfortunately didn’t exist in the Hasina Administration’s democracy. The government opted for force over dialogue. It responded to the protests with derogatory remarks and threats and unleashed its militant student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), to brutalize the demonstrators with police backing.
These tactics were not new. For 15 years, BAL has systematically silenced dissent, eroding democracy bit by bit, and cementing its autocracy. The tipping point came when an unarmed student, Abu Sayeed trusted the administration and raised his hands in surrender to avoid violence, still he was gunned down in cold blood. Disbelief etched on Sayeed’s face as his body shuddered after the first shot. He tried to stand, but another bullet came, and then another, and yet another, all from close range.
Sayeed was not alone. Mir Mahfuzur Rahman Mugdho, another unarmed student, was shot in the head while offering water to fellow protesters. Within days, hundreds of students met the same fate and fell victim to the regime’s bullets.
Abu Sayeed and others’ televized murders became a damning indictment of a rogue government that had long lost its legitimacy. Its common pattern in cracking opposition became evident, which reignited the rage of past massacres, including the 2013 killing of madrasa students in the name of Hefazat Islam extremists, and the 2009 killing of 57 high-ranking Army officers in the name of the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles mismanagement. On top of these, Hasina’s demeaning tone and cold disregard for these fallen lives, not even pretending to show remorse, laid bare the deep-rooted fascism festering within the government.
Ali Riaz is a professor at Illinois State University, aptly stated, that Hasina’s regime embodied “the arrogance of autocracy” that numbed and blinded the ruling party government to the nation’s pain and to the pulse of its younger generation. Without addressing grievances, the BAL government doubled down, shutting down the internet and mobile networks countrywide, deploying border forces and the military, and imposing a curfew. On July 18, a “shoot on sight” order was issued.
What exacerbated this tragedy was the government’s attempt to justify the killing by branding these students as “Razakars”— a term loaded with the highest treachery, referring to collaborators with Pakistan during Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence. This attempt to frame the protestors as traitors backfired and unarmed citizens from all walks of life joined students in solidarity, which morphed the veteran quota-based protest into a broader challenge to the government’s authority. The nation became split into two factions — BAL loyalists and those seeking justice.
The quota movement, while justified, was merely the tip of the iceberg, that revealed the deep-seated autocracy and fascism rooted in corruption, suppression of citizens’ rights, and manipulation of religious sentiments for 15 years. The perceived injustice of guaranteeing jobs to pro-Awami League supporters was further exacerbated by rising inflation, a dismal job market for university graduates, and rampant corruption. Hasina even boasted about her office helper amassing $40 million and traveling only by helicopter — an outrageous example of corruption among pro-government individuals.
Most of the banks are ‘owned’ by influential businessmen and leaders of the ruling party, which allowed the BAL government to smuggle over $150 billion over the last 15 years. 70.9% of households reported being victims of corruption, and 40.1% having paid bribes to receive any service. The obvious consequence was prices of essential goods skyrocketed, pushing the people to the brink.
But there existed no way to express their discontent through free elections, as the Election Commission scandal had unveiled widespread electoral fraud. The people had no choice but to take the streets to bring down the BAL government. Unlike typical political defeat, this was the collapse of a regime — epitomized by Sheikh Hasina’s humiliating flight to India. Her escape drew striking parallels to the hasty run away of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to the UAE in 2021, and Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022. Although the context could be different, future of these dictators may not differ.
Ousted for corruption, injustice, and inhumanity, Hasina’s exile was met with widespread joy. Even sweets were distributed which mirrored the celebrations that followed the assassination of her father and family on August 15, 1975 for similar dictatorship and fascism. It wouldn’t be surprising if BAL is eventually banned in Bangladesh, or if Sheikh Hasina faces execution by the very “kangaroo” court system she established to exterminate her political opponents. Indeed, history seems to have its own way of serving justice to those who abuse power.
Exposing every facet of the Hasina administration’s fascism is vast, and many organized efforts are already dedicated to documenting it.
In the background looms the larger geopolitical involvement of U.S.-China to disrupt India’s influence. These global power plays will continue to shape the political landscape, and the region will continue to witness the changes. They will make governments rise and fall, but the grief of mothers waiting for their martyred sons and daughters will never end. The longing of spouses for their brave partners will remain eternal, and orphaned children will forever bear the scar of loss. The laypeople pay the ultimate cost and remain long after political shifts.
So, this is a moment of reckoning. Sheikh Hasina alone is not responsible for the irreparable losses suffered by the nation. Her enablers — those who stood by silently, those who looked the other way as illegal and undemocratic actions unfolded, and those who ignored the killings in 2009, 2013, and the random casualties in between — are equally complicit. Every life lost, every drop of blood spilled, matters. Let our collective conscience awaken to hold every government, even our favorite one, accountable (4:135). Our religious ruling makes it a fard stance, even if it involves a Nobel laureate like Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the current chief of the interim government of Bangladesh.
Anime Abdullah is a freelance writer.