Second day of protests in Bangladesh
Bangladesh: Prime Minister on the Run and Military Government
After a month of riots and violent repression with hundreds of victims, Bangladesh’s leader has been forced to flee and the army chief has formed a caretaker government. The situation in Dhaka has escalated today, with 76-year-old Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina taken by a helicopter together with her younger sister to take refuge in nearby India, a historically friendly country.
He had been in power for 15 years, but the latest protests, sparked by a student demand for more jobs in the public sector, have spread to broad sections of the population (Bangladesh is home to 170 million people) and to completely contest the government’s actions, considered corrupt and the cause of the great inequalities that have accompanied even the years of the most spectacular economic growth known to the Asian country.
“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been affected, many people have been killed. It is time to put an end to the violence,” said General Waker-Uz-Zaman, announcing the prime minister’s resignation in a speech to the nation broadcast on state television. If the situation improves, there is no need to resort to a state of emergency”, he added. During the demonstrations of the last month, at least 300 people have lost their lives and the general has assured that those responsible for this massacre will be punished.
The eldest daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of independent Bangladesh in 1971 after a bloody war with Pakistan, Sheikh Hasina had been in power since 2009, after having already had a first mandate between 1996 and 2001. Before her residence was stormed this morning and she fled to India, her son Sajeeb Wazed had appealed to the security forces to oppose the change of power: “Your duty, he wrote on Facebook, is to ensure the safety of our people and our country and to enforce the Constitution”.
The announcement of the controversial prime minister’s resignation came as hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters marched through the streets of the capital, the day after one of the most tragic days since the protests began: yesterday alone, 94 people died in Bangladesh.
