The movement reminds us of the 'irony of fate'

The fall and fleeing of Sheikh Hasina, known as Asia's 'Iron Lady' and the woman leader who has stayed the longest time in power in the world, took me back to a newsroom in 1986. Philippines' military dictator Ferdinand Marcos had been toppled from power in a student uprising and he too had to flee from the country. Military ruler General Ershad was removed from power in 1990 through a mass uprising, but he did not have to flee from the country.

I can't resist the temptation of referring to a Facebook status posted up by the UNB editor Shayan S Khan, after killings exceeded a hundred in the mass uprising. He said that if Ershad met with Hasina up there, he would say, just look at me, two died and I stepped down. And look at you...!

Unicef initially reported that at least 32 children were killed in this violence. Later that figure exceeded 66. Until forced to resign, when a politician is indelibly stained with the liability of killing so many children and over 400 persons simply to cling on to power, how can she be described?

UK's Financial Times and several media outlets around the world referred to a Prothom Alo report that stated even less than an hour before she resigned, Sheikh Hasina had been insisting that the army open fire to suppress the demonstrations. She had been unwilling to resign and, according to Prothom Alo, only agreed to resign when her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy insisted as it was a matter of her personal security. Later Joy himself said the same in several interviews. Around 10:00 in the morning she had summoned the chiefs of the three forces and the inspector general of police (IGP), slamming them for failing to bring the situation under control.

She even tried to apply psychological pressure on these officers, reminding them that she was the one who had appointed them to these top positions. In that meeting, saying that police was doing well, she expressed her ire at the armed forces for not playing an equally effective role. This in itself proves her personal liability for this horrific massacre. Even at the last minute had she refrained from using force, the over hundred deaths during the obstruction of Dhaka March could have been prevented.

If any politician takes up the policy of using force to stay in power, she cannot be said to be legitimately in power. It is nothing new for her to speak one way when in power and in another way when out of power. I have heard that a collection of Sheikh Hasina's speeches made over the past 15 years has been published. I don't know if there is any such collection, but the records of the parliamentary proceedings will reveal her words, words that are hard to believe were uttered by a politician.

On 17 February 1988 she had said at a public rally, "I want to tell the police, BDR and the army, do not stand against the people. Do not raise weapons against the people. If you do, the people will not spare you. I want to remind you, the Pakistani army had left their families back home in Pakistan. But the police, BDR and army of today have their families here, in the villages. Find their addresses and warn them. Warn them that if bullets are used against the people, if their voting rights are snatched away, I call upon you too, take revenge."

The word "irony" is used to grasp a situation or time like which we are passing through now. Sheikh Hasina had tried to belittle her political rival, the first woman prime minister of Bangladesh, by accusing her of stealing from orphans. While the court may have ruled her guilty, even foreign observers maintained that the standards of justice had not been followed in the judicial proceedings. Now Hasina herself is accused to killing children, of committing genocide (in terms of huge numbers).

The financial newspaper Banik Barta exemplifies 'irony' succinctly in its headlines, "Khaleda Zia serves jail sentence and wins, Hasina flees and leaves party in dire straits." When BNP had appealed for the opportunity to send their ailing leader abroad for medical treatment, she had bluntly said, "Khaleda Zia is over eighty, it's near time to die anyway."

We must also remember how she harassed and humiliated the present chief advisor of the interim government Dr Muhammad Yunus at various times. She wanted to dip him in the river Padma because, she alleged, he had influenced the World Bank not to fund the Padma Bridge project. She had done all this so aggressively, there was no space to seek recompense. The biggest injustice was done in court, where even the top legal counsels of the country were too scared of government backlash to provide him with legal support.

She utilised almost all strategies of autocrats to remain in power. She repeatedly used the same strategy against all political opponents that could challenge the government in an organised manner, rendering BNP and others helpless.

These strategies included clamping down on the publishing and broadcasting of any form of dissent, preventing assemblies and public meetings, using suppression, repression and fear to deactivate any opposition or taking extreme measures to annihilate them.

Sheikh Hasina's government achieved unimaginable success in muffling dissenting voices and controlling freedom of expression by enacting repressive laws, imposing official orders, threats from the intelligence agencies, and even political use of the court. The success of these strategies gave rise to such audacious arrogance in the autocratic regime, that it was unimaginable that students and youth could stand as a challenge to the government without backing from any political organisations. The amazing thing is that the Students against Discrimination movement took lessons from the failures of the opposition and came up with a counter strategy that completely thwarted the much-used strategies of the government.

The people did not buy political narratives of the government, like terming the agitating students as 'razakars' or saying that BNP and Jamaat had infiltrated the students' movement. Despite the internet being shut down, 4G being switched to 2G and so on, the students lost no time in speedily keeping up communication among themselves. Their movement was not solely dependent on social media and even when the government shut all this down, the pace of the movement did not let up for a moment.

I mentioned earlier too, their organizational efficiency has put the political parties to shame. With public universities being shut down, a new wave emerged from the private universities. Then when they came under attack too, school and college students along with their guardians joined in the protest. Even bullets could not halt the waves of people that surged ahead, as a police report to the home minister back then pointed out, "We shoot. One dies. That's one gone. But the rest still surge forward. That is the most alarming."

We need to pay more attention to the nature of the movement, to how a student movement transformed into a mass uprising.

*Kamal Ahmed is a senior journalist
*This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir