Notes

Downfall in Dhaka. On August 5, the prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled to India after weeks of public protests against her increasingly autocratic rule. Students had been demonstrating since June against a quota system restricting eligibility for government jobs, which people in the country widely see as secure and lucrative.

Bangladesh’s supreme court overturned the law behind the quota system, but the protests grew into a broader movement calling for Hasina’s removal. She’d ruled Bangladesh since 2009, regularly quashing dissent, including by killing opposition activists.

Amid the recent protests, government security forces and vigilantes from Hasina’s party—among them, a paramilitary unit whose past leaders have faced international sanctions over accusations of torture, kidnapping, and murder—cracked down on demonstrators, arresting more than 10,000 of them.

Why did the crackdown fail—and the rebellion work?

The most violent day of protests was August 4, as almost 100 demonstrators died in clashes across Bangladesh. But that evening, protest leaders decided to move up by one day a planned mass march to Hasina’s residence, originally scheduled for August 6. Instead of backing down when faced with a new curfew and rising violence, the protesters realized that the public’s fear of the regime had largely faded, allowing the movement to continue growing. Dozens of former senior military officers also called on its current leadership not to rescue “those who have created the current situation.” On August 5, the army chief announced Hasina’s resignation, saying he’d begin the formation of an interim government.

Hasina, one of the world’s longest-serving female leaders, was the daughter of Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence and served as its first president. He and most of his family were assassinated in an army coup in 1975, survived only by Hasina and her sister.

—Michael Bluhm