Weeks of escalating student protests have spiralled into Bangladesh’s worst unrest in memory, and experts say an inept government response has catalysed a serious challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic rule.
Demonstrations that began as calls for the government to reform politicised civil service hiring rules swelled in size this week in tandem with the ferocity of a police crackdown.
Tens of thousands of young and angry Bangladeshis gathering on the streets each day are no longer calling for a policy change but instead demanding an end to Hasina’s tenure.
“Down with the dictator,” protesters chanted this week at several rallies across the capital Dhaka, a sprawling megacity of 20 million where incensed crowds set fire to several government buildings on Thursday.
Analysts say the crisis now facing Hasina and the ruling Awami League is one of her government’s own making.
“The protests are hugely significant… possibly the most serious challenge to the Awami League regime since it took office,” Crisis Group Asia director Pierre Prakash told AFP.
“Rather than try to address the protesters’ grievances, the government’s actions have made the situation worse,” he added. “The country seems to be dangerously poised.”
Students began their campaign by demanding an end to a quota system that reserves more than half of highly sought-after public sector jobs for specific groups.
The scheme was set up by Hasina’s father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who took office after the country’s devastating 1971 war of liberation against Pakistan.
It reserves 30 percent of civil service posts for the children of veterans from that conflict — a tool protesters say has been used to reward Awami League loyalists.
With Bangladesh unable to provide adequate employment opportunities for its 170 million people, the scheme is a pronounced source of resentment among young graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.
Hasina inflamed tensions last week by likening protesters to the Bangladeshis who had collaborated with Pakistan in 1971 — still a highly charged insult more than half a century after the conflict.
“Mocking them was an insult to their dignity,” Ali Riaz, a professor of politics at Illinois State University, told AFP.
“It was also a message that they don’t matter in any measure to a regime which is unaccountable.”
‘Hubris and economic incompetence’
Since taking office for a second time in 2009, rights groups and critics say Hasina and the Awami League have worked to dramatically curtail democracy in Bangladesh.
Her government is accused of unjustly jailing her chief rival, passing draconian anti-press freedom laws, and a litany of rights abuses including the murder of opposition activists.
This year the Awami League won re-election in a vote without genuine opposition after a crackdown that saw hundreds from rival political parties arrested.
Prakash said that having not seen a genuinely competitive election in more than 15 years, “discontented Bangladeshis have few options besides street protests to make their voices heard”.
Hasina has weathered several dramatic crises in her tenure, including a brief army mutiny, the influx of more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar and a spate of Islamist attacks.
But Tom Felix Joehnk, the long-term former Bangladesh correspondent for The Economist, said both the protests and the killings of students was “unprecedented”.
“Doing away with political competition in Bangladesh was always a bad idea,” he told AFP.
“At heart, this is a political crisis brought on by hubris and economic incompetence,” he added.
“Some 18 million young Bangladeshis are jobless. With democracy on hold for more than a decade, they are beginning to vote with their feet.”
