Bangladesh Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus said on Tuesday he was ready to head a caretaker government, a day after the military took control as mass protests forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to flee.
Microfinance pioneer Yunus, 84, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty — earning the enmity of ousted Hasina and the wide respect of millions of Bangladeshis.
“If action is needed in Bangladesh, for my country and for the courage of my people, then I will take it,” he told AFP in a statement, also calling for “free elections”, after student leaders called for him to lead an interim government.
What we know so far:
Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she quit.
More than 400 people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled aboard a helicopter on Monday after the military turned against her.
The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.
Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced on Monday the military would form an interim government, saying it was “time to stop the violence”.
The president dissolved parliament today, a key demand of the student leaders and the major opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP), which has demanded elections within three months.
The decision to dissolve parliament was taken following meetings with the heads of defence forces, leaders of political parties, student leaders and some civil society representatives, the presidential statement said.
A statement from President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s office also said that Hasina’s arch-rival, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, had been freed from house arrest.
Student protesters had threatened more demonstrations if parliament was not dissolved.
President Shahabuddin had said earlier that an interim government would hold elections soon after it takes over. Army chief General Wakeruz Zaman was due to meet student leaders to discuss the formation of the government.
Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the movement against Hasina, said in a video on Facebook with two other student leaders that parliament should be dissolved by 3pm (9am GMT) on Tuesday and asked “revolutionary students to be ready” if that did not happen.
Hasina’s flight ended her 15-year second stint in power in the country of 170 million people, which she had ruled for 20 of the last 30 years at the helm of a political movement inherited from her father, state founder Mujibur Rahman, assassinated in 1975.
Since the early 1990s Hasina had feuded and alternated power with her rival Zia, who inherited her own political movement from her husband Ziaur Rahman, a ruler himself assassinated in 1981.
Hasina flew to India and is staying at a safe house outside New Delhi. India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar told parliament that New Delhi had repeatedly “counselled restraint and urged situation to be defused through dialogue”.
The streets of the capital Dhaka were again quiet on Tuesday, with traffic lighter than usual and many schools and businesses that shut during the unrest still closed.
Garment factories, which supply apparel to some of the world’s top brands and are a mainstay of the economy, remained shuttered with plans to reopen to be announced later, the main garment manufacturers association said.
Protest leaders want Nobel laureate Yunus to lead interim govt
The student leaders said they wanted Yunus as the chief adviser to the interim government and a spokesperson for Yunus said he had agreed.
Yunus, 84, and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for work to lift millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans of under $100 to the rural poor of Bangladesh. He was indicted by a court in June on charges of embezzlement that he denied.
“In Dr Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.
“Any government other than the one we recommended would not be accepted,” Nahid Islam, one of the key organisers of the student movement, said in a video on Facebook with three other organisers.
“We wouldn’t accept any army-supported or army-led government.”
“We have also had discussions with Muhammad Yunus and he has agreed to take on this responsibility at our invitation,” Islam added.
Yunus himself initially had not commented on the call, but in an interview with India’s The Print, he had said Bangladesh was “an occupied country” under Hasina.
“Today all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated,” it quoted Yunus as saying.
The Nobel laureate told Indian broadcaster Times Now in a recorded interview that Monday marked the “second liberation day” for Bangladesh after its 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
But he said Bangladeshis were angry with neighbour India for allowing Hasina to land there after fleeing Dhaka.
“India is our best friend … people are angry at India because you are supporting the person who destroyed our lives,” Yunus said.
The student leaders also said that they had received reports of attacks on minority groups, including Hindu temples, in the Muslim-majority country, and urged restraint as this could undermine their movement.
Hundreds of Hindu houses, businesses and temples have been vandalised, a community association said.
Hindus constitute about eight per cent of Bangladesh’s 170 million people and have historically largely supported Hasina’s Awami League party, which identifies as largely secular, instead of the opposition bloc that includes a hardline Islamist party.
India said what was “particularly worrying was that minorities, their businesses and temples also came under attack at multiple locations”.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC) said 200-300 mainly Hindu homes and businesses had been vandalised since Monday, and 15-20 Hindu temples were damaged.
Up to 40 people have been injured though not seriously, its general secretary, Rana Dasgupta, told Reuters.
“The communal atrocities erupted hours before she resigned,” he said. “Although there is no killing, there is injury. Houses and businesses of minorities, especially Hindus, as well as temples, have been targeted, looted, damaged.”
Dasgupta said some people he could not identify had thrown a brick at his car when he was out on the road on Monday in the southeastern district of Chattogram.
“I stand against communal atrocities and will not stop,” he said. “Until my death, I shall fight for them. I may not be able to physically protect them, but I can give them courage. I may not be able to resist attacks, but I can protest.”
Reuters could not verify the scale of reported incidents amid the post-Hasina turmoil and police officers did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment after mobs attacked many police stations.
“The situation is horrific,” said Manindra Kumar Nath, a Hindu community leader. “Even today, we are getting calls from people asking us to save their lives, but we are not receiving any support from anywhere.”
The military’s media office said security forces were helping maintain law and order across the South Asian nation, without specifying any incidents.
“Everyone’s cooperation is highly desired in this regard,” it said in a statement.
Khaleda Zia released
Zia’s party said today she was released from years of house arrest.
“She is now freed”, a Bangladesh National Party (BNP) party spokesman, AKM Wahiduzzaman, told AFP, a day after orders to release her were given following the military taking control.
Zia, 78 and in poor health, was jailed by her arch-rival Hasina for graft in 2018.
President Shahabuddin on late Monday had ordered Zia’s release as well as of prisoners from the protests.
There were widespread calls by protesters to ensure Hasina’s close allies remained in the country.
Bangladesh has a long history of coups.
The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the importance of a “peaceful, orderly and democratic transition”, his spokesman said.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed that call. Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm”.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Centre, warned that Hasina’s departure “would leave a major vacuum” and that the country was in “uncharted territory”.
“The coming days are critical,” he said.
India assures Hasina of help: report
Meanwhile, India’s foreign minister told parliament he was “deeply concerned till law and order is visibly restored” in Bangladesh, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported quoting sources.
Giving the first official confirmation Hasina was in India, Jaishankar told an all-party meeting that India assured Hasina of its help and given her time to decide the future course of action, the report said.
The foreign minister said India had spoken to the Bangladesh army chief to ensure the safety of over 10,000 Indian students there, the sources said.
Replying to questions from various leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, Jaishankar did not rule out the role of foreign governments in the unrest in Bangladesh but emphasised that the situation was too fluid and that India has been keeping a watch on the evolving situation, the PTI report added.
Hasina fled the country on Monday by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader had told AFP. Indian media had reported Hasina had landed at a military airbase near New Delhi.
A top-level source said she wanted to “transit” on to London, but calls by the British government for a UN-led investigation into “unprecedented levels of violence” put that into doubt.
Speaking to BBC’s Newshour programme on Monday, Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy had said: “She’s in her late 70s. She is so disappointed that after all her hard work, for a minority to rise up against her, I think she’s done.
“My family and I are done.”
113 killed in Monday’s unrest
Streets in Dhaka were largely peaceful on Tuesday — with traffic resuming and shops opening, but government offices mainly closed — after a day of chaotic violence saw at least 113 people killed.
It was the deadliest day since protests began in early July, with at least 413 people killed overall, according to an AFP tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.
Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka after Zaman’s announcement on Monday.
“I feel so happy that our country has been liberated,” said Sazid Ahnaf, 21, comparing the events to the independence war that split the nation from Pakistan more than five decades ago.
“We have been freed from a dictatorship. It’s a Bengal uprising, what we saw in 1971 and [are] now seeing in 2024.”
Protesters stormed parliament and torched TV stations, while some smashed statues of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.
Others set a museum dedicated to the former leader on fire, flames licking at portraits in destruction barely thinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the loyalty of the security forces under her autocratic grip.
“The time has come to make them accountable for torture,” said protester Kaza Ahmed. “Sheikh Hasina is responsible for murder.”
Offices of Hasina’s Awami League across the country were torched and looted, eyewitnesses told AFP.
Meanwhile, several Indian and Bangladeshi news outlets reported that the house of former cricketer-turned-politician Mashrafe Mortaza was burnt on Monday by vandals.
Mortaza served as a parliamentarian for the Narail-2 constituency and is also a prominent figure in Hasina’s Awami League, having secured his parliamentary seat for the second consecutive term earlier in 2024.
The World Bank on Monday said it was assessing the impact of events in Bangladesh on its loan program after the recent developments.
“We are assessing the impact of the unfolding situation on the World Bank Group program and remain committed to supporting the development aspirations of the people of Bangladesh,” a spokesperson for the bank said.
Families wait as some political prisoners freed
Meanwhile, families of political prisoners secretly jailed in Bangladesh under the autocratic rule of Hasina waited desperately for news of their relatives, as some of those missing were released.
“We need answers,” said Sanjida Islam Tulee, a coordinator of Mayer Daak, meaning “The Call of the Mothers” — a group campaigning for the release of people detained by Hasina’s security forces.
Rights groups accused Hasina’s security forces of abducting and disappearing some 600 people — including many from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest religio-political party.
Tulee told AFP that at least 20 families gathered outside a military intelligence force building in a northern Dhaka neighbourhood, waiting for news of their relatives.
Among the most high profile of those released on Tuesday was opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem, son of Mir Quasem Ali, the executed leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.
“He was released from secret detention this morning,” family friend and relative Masum Khalili told AFP. “He had a medical check-up, his condition is stable.”
Quasem, a British-educated barrister, was abducted — allegedly by security forces in plainclothes — in August 2016.
Security forces during Hasina’s rule were accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters, and disappearing their leaders and supporters.
Human Rights Watch last year said security forces had committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain unaccounted for.
Hasina’s government denied the allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those reported missing drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.
“We heard Ahmad Bin Quasem has been released,” Tulee said, “but what happened to others? “
