Bangladesh has actually been doing pretty well in the past decade, no? I know there have been concerns about Hasina’s increasing authoritarianism over the years, but the stuff I’ve read indicated that she was actually quite popular, within the context of the country’s incredibly polarized politics.
Having her toppled by a mob like this… while hoping for the best for Bangladesh, I can’t help but feel quite pessimistic for the future of the country. For one thing, there’s the distinct possibility that this is a military coup disguised as a popular insurrection. Hope that’s not the case.
There’s another thread on this with a constantly-updating Al Jazeera article that included a timeline of events which I pasted over there before It got too far down the page. I’ll paste it here too:
Timeline: How the unrest began
• Students began protesting last month when a controversial government job quota system that favoured children of war veterans was reinstated by the High Court.
• The government responded by shutting down universities and using the police and military to crack down on protesters.
• Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina imposed a nationwide curfew and cut off access to phones and the internet.
• Some 200 people, mostly students, were killed. Thousands were arrested.
• On July 21, Bangladesh’s top court stepped in, ruling that the quotas should be scaled back from 30 percent to 5 percent, with 3 percent for relatives of veterans.
• Last week, demonstrations resumed with protesters issuing new demands, including bringing justice and accountability for those killed and for Hasina to step down.
• The prime minister had pledged a strong response, calling the demonstrators criminals and saboteurs.
I’ve been following it for a few weeks, it was a snowball effect.
The original protest was met with mockery and ignorance where Hasina called the protestors “rajakars”, which refers to the people who aided Pakistan during the genocide in the 70s. That caused even bigger protests.
The government’s youth wing/league, likened to a gang or terrorist group, violently beat protestors and killed some. In the chaos, police fired on protestors, drove cars through rickshaws, and started showing up to homes in plainclothes at night arresting students. More happened but this is what I saw videos of. Many more were killed during this time. To slow the spread of news about this, the government shut down the internet. At this point the people wanted her out of power.
Further growing protests were met with more violence, a curfew, and a shoot on sight order. The youth wing attacked people on the street and police fired at people outside. People were shot at even when standing by the windows or on the rooftops.
All of thus culminated in people flooding to the capital, filling the city centres and Hasina fleeing the country.
While its very likely that opposition party members supported the protests, too much happened for it to be entirely manufactured.
Hello, a Bangladeshi here. Let me explain what happened so you have a better understanding:
“Bangladesh has actually been doing pretty well in the past decade, no?”
No, not at all. It’s still one of the least developed country with one of the most corrupted governments. Development is very slow and very unsteady. And if any development actually happens, 90% of the money goes to the politicians, only 10% to actual development.
“but the stuff I’ve read indicated that she was actually quite popular”
You read her propaganda. She’s not popular at all, most ordinary people despised her. In her rule, the elections have been more fixed than pro wrestling. No democracy what so ever. There were rampant oppression upon anyone who dares to even slightly criticize the government. They regularly detained the supporters of opposition parties for no reason. She was a autocrat hiding behind a mere facade of democracy.
They have a student wing called Chattra League. They are nothing short of a terrorist group. Look them up on Wikipedia, there’s an entire article on Wikipedia about their violence alone. They have murdered, raped, tortured, ran forced prostitution rings, etc. Just in 2019, they beat a uni student to death in campus for criticizing the government’s relationship with India in a Facebook post. They also attacked the protestors during the quota movement.
“there’s the distinct possibility that this is a military coup disguised as a popular insurrection.”
That is absolutely not true. For one, the current army chief is her relative. And she killed most of army generals with actual backbones that can do such a thing in a staged mutiny in 2009.
Also the whole thing started from student protests, and when the government (the police, and the military) started shooting and mass detaining everyone, other people joined in too. 300+ deaths is a very, very conservative estimate. A truer number is probably as high as 1000+. And when that many people gets killed, it’s hard to stay silent anymore. People from literally everywhere in country started protesting as a response. This was, by all sense, the movement of people. It was the people that were in the streets. It was the people that led it, it was the people that stormed her residence. The military had nothing to do with it other than the murders.
“Riots caused by court rulings don’t usually topple prime ministers”
Yeah it usually doesn’t. But after almost two decades of violent oppression, that protest was just a nucleation point for a mass movement against the regime that was a long time coming. That was the tipping point, the point when enough was enough. It only seems off because you are missing the whole context.
Hey I’m sorta curious, do you have any insight on what the protesters plan on doing next? Especially with the army declaring an interim government and all that.
Like is there some plan on how to make sure the movement doesn’t die down or get co-opted like other movements have?
the stuff I’ve read indicated that she was actually quite popular, within the context of the country’s incredibly polarized politics.
Bangladesh has a very poor press freedom ranking and people have been persecuted for posting on social media. My impression is that she was despised, or at best tolerated
Having her toppled by a mob like this… while hoping for the best for Bangladesh, I can’t help but feel quite pessimistic for the future of the country. For one thing, there’s the distinct possibility that this is a military coup disguised as a popular insurrection. Hope that’s not the case.
I would come to the same conclusion if I had not followed this for the past dew weeks. It sounds like a coup from the headline.
I’m cautiously optimistic. The country has a chance for the first time in decades to establish a proper democracy, weed out corruption, and restore press freedoms. Anything can happen in a power vacuum, but I remain hopeful.
Great, pretty soon every regional power will launch thousands of satellites to pretend to build their own satellite internet.
Fun fact: The aluminium from satellite parts burning up in the atmosphere kills the ozone layer.
Reuters - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Reuters:
> MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
Reuters - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Reuters:
> MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
Reuters - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Reuters:
> MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
“In view of these horrific images, I have urgently appealed to the ICRC and the UN to record yet another human rights violation by the terrorist country,” Lubinets wrote.
Didn’t Ukraine congratulate Azerbaijan in autumn 2020 and in subsequent events? Dismembering a PoW seems to be so mundane for Azeri army, that I’d expect Ukrainians to accept the other side’s brutality as men, not cry to the whole world, or something like that they’d say to humiliate Armenians? They can also quickly surrender to stop all this and stop angering Russia, I think I’ve seen that advice from Ukrainians in the web to Armenians as well.
On a serious note, this is, of course, disgusting, but even if you normalize double standards, they are not something that really works. They are unnatural for humans, however strange that would seem. If “approved” militias eating PoWs’ hearts in Syria were fine, if what Azeris were and are doing is fine, then this inevitably trickles down to how any combatants are treated.
a petulant kid that are lashing out because they had their feelings hurt
or it was too long a text for you to grasp?
I’m saying that the usual Ukrainian advice to Armenians is to stop angering Azerbaijan.
Anyway, I think I’m again looking to be offended.
Just … this amount of indignation about one guy chopped up. Nothing close to what a few countries which are not under sanctions openly do. It’s as if they really thought their lives are worth more.
Everything. I meant that most Ukrainians are fine with dismemberment when they don’t like the side whose PoWs get dismembered. So the emotion in that article is funny.
You employ heavy whataboutism and generally jump all over the place in your comment. Okay, you put Azeri-Armenian conflict there for some reason, but then you briefly mention heart-eating in Syria? What are you talking about? How it’s related to the thread under that article? It feels like I’ve jumped into an hour-long discussion at the end, but no, that’s what you start it with. I believe, if you put it there, you want people to understand your point and interact with you, but you yourself need to be coherent for it to be possible.
The fediverse is a tight camp yet we don’t need to agree on everything and who knows where we’d meet next.
There though I say I don’t understand why you put these things together before even arguing your point or jumping on you. I didn’t see any side condone that kind of violence in Azeri-Armenian conflict, only a mere support of one side over another due to political support of the side suspected behind them. Moreso, I don’t remember it getting any coverage in worldnews at all, or someone having any stakes beside the parties involved and their close partners. It’s not the exact thread to do so, but you can raise awareness about that if you will.
I feel like you can explain the connection you made.
Worldnews has nothing to do with this. The indignation in the article is funny in comparison with the emotions I’ve encountered from Ukrainians in TG and elsewhere about Azeri war crimes. Which is why I feel like laughing at it. Not at the crime itself.
I also don’t get what you are trying to say, that most people here don’t have the context to understand? That is their fault. I’ve described it briefly, they may politely ask if that weren’t clear, just like they’d ask their professors in college if they don’t understand something.
Reuters - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Reuters:
> MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
The combo of F-16 plus AWACS plus radar guided AMRAAM’s could prove a deadly counter to Russias continued use of glide bombs. The AMRAAMs have a longer range than those glide bombs, so the Russian aircraft that are launching them could be targeted.
reuters.com
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