In an astonishing turn of events, Bangladesh has seen thousands of protesters destroy and set ablaze the home of the founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in an outburst of anger. She asked her supporters to resist the interim government in a speech full of fire as former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was to stay in exile in India.
The violence erupted on Wednesday evening, triggered by Hasina’s scheduled speech to her supporters, after she had fled to India last August when a violent student-led uprising was staged against her 15-year rule. Opponents accuse her of suppressing opposition during her rule.
The historic house in Dhaka, where Rahman lived and was assassinated in 1975, had been converted into a museum by Hasina. Witnesses said several thousand protesters, armed with sticks, hammers and construction equipment, had massed around the site and the nearby independence monument. Pictures on social media showed the house almost razed, with parts of it on fire.
The Daily Star, Bangladesh’s leading English newspaper, reported that the properties of the supporters of Hasina’s Awami League party were also targeted. The rally was part of a coordinated effort called the “Bulldozer Procession” to disrupt Hasina’s online address.
The student leadership of Students Against Discrimination then angrily reacted against Hasina’s return to political discourse as an affront to the newly constituted interim government of Bangladesh. The student leader Hasnat Abdullah went on social media to declare, “tonight Bangladesh will be freed from the pilgrimage site of fascism.” The protester Mahmudur Rahman explained such actions as something necessary to remove what he labeled a “symbol of fascism.”
Slogans against India, where Hasina has sought asylum, also reverberated at the rallies. The interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has demanded her extradition, so far with no response from India.
As protesters in the demonstrations that swept the Bangladeshi capital called for Hasina’s execution over deaths linked to an uprising last year, many pointed a finger of blame at her for presiding over a particularly brutal suppression of dissent. She told them in a defiant speech, “They can bring down a building. They cannot defeat history. History will take its revenge,” attacking the interim regime’s assumption of power.
The student-led movement also aims to challenge the country’s 1972 constitution, which they believe reflects the legacy of Hasina’s father and is therefore in dire need of deep political reform in Bangladesh.
