Summary:
On Thursday, groups intending to defend the Bangladeshi students’ revolution surrounding occupied halls schemed around the planned rally by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s party and attacked some of those they suspected of allegiance to her with bamboo sticks and pipes.
Details:
Sheikh Hasina, 76, Prime Minister of Bangladesh went to India last week due to turmoil involving students protesting across Dhaka for two weeks that eliminated her regime that stood for 15 years. The new interim government and now head of state, Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has urged the United Nations to conduct a probe into the violent incidents preceding her ouster, which it is said claimed hundreds of lives of ordinary civilians at the hands of security forces.
Thursday was the anniversary of the military coup in 1975 in which Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – an important leader of the Bangladesh Liberation War – was killed. During Hasina’s regime, this day was marked as a state holiday with mass gatherings all over the country.
However, with Hasina now out of power, those who had reason to celebrate her overthrow were determined to stop anyone from reelecting her Awami League party. One participant named Imraul Hasan Kayes said, ‘Fugitive and dictator Sheikh Hasina has ordered her goons and militia forces to come to the site so that they can produce counter-revolution We are here to protect our revolution so that it does not go out of hand’.
When police were not present, there were hundreds of men, most of whom were not students, who provided a cordon along the road to the house where Hasina’s family lived. This house where her father and other relatives were massacred 49 years ago had been turned into a museum to pay respect to her father, but it was burnt down by a mob immediately after Hasina’s fall.
The mob targeted any individual they thought to be an Awami League activist deliberately assaulting them with sticks, and the other individuals were cleared from the scene.
Since her escape, Hasina has made only this week this call to her supporters to pray for the deliverance of all souls by throwing flowers and praying on the spot.