Bangladesh’s army chief was scheduled to meet with student protest leaders on Tuesday, a day after the military took over following major demonstrations that prompted longstanding ruler Sheikh Hasina to depart the country.
Hasina, 76, has been in charge since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January, prompting millions of people to go to the streets over the last month to demand her resignation.
Hundreds of people were killed as security forces attempted to suppress the turmoil, but the rallies intensified, and Hasina departed Bangladesh by helicopter on Monday as the military turned against her.
Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman stated Monday afternoon on national television that Hasina had resigned and that the military would form a caretaker administration.
“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” said Waker, shortly after jubilant crowds stormed and looted Hasina’s official residence.
Student protest leaders, ahead of the expected meeting with the army chief, said Tuesday they wanted Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus, 84, to lead the government.
“In Dr. Yunus, we trust,” Asif Mahmud, a key leader of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) group, wrote on Facebook.
Yunus has not commented on the call, but in an interview with India’s The Print, he said Bangladesh had been “an occupied country” under Hasina.
“Today all the people of Bangladesh feel liberated,” Yunus said, it reported.
Violence
The president and army chief also met President Mohammed Shahabuddin late Monday, alongside key opposition leaders, with the president’s press team saying it had been “decided to form an interim government immediately”.
Millions of Bangladeshis flooded the streets of Dhaka to celebrate after Waker’s announcement on Monday.
“I feel so happy,” 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.”
However, there were also scenes of chaos and anger, with police saying that at least 109 people were killed on Monday, including mobs carrying out vengeance assaults on Hasina’s supporters.
It was the worst day since the protests began in early July, with at least 409 people killed, according to an AFP tally of police, government officials, and hospital physicians.
Protesters invaded parliament and set fire to television stations, while others shattered monuments of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s independence hero.
Others set fire to a museum dedicated to the old leader, with flames licking at portraits in destruction unthinkable just hours before, when Hasina had the security forces’ loyalty in her despotic hands.
“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.
Political prisoners freed
The turmoil began last month with rallies against civil service job quotas, which grew into broader calls for Hasina to step down.
Rights groups accused her government of exploiting state institutions to consolidate power and suppress dissent, including the killings of opposition activists.
Following a meeting with army chief Waker on Monday, the president ordered the release of protest inmates, including former prime minister and prominent opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78.
Zia, who is in terrible health, was imprisoned for graft by her arch rival Hasina in 2018.
Mothers of some of the hundreds of political detainees secretly imprisoned under Hasina’s administration waited outside a military intelligence office in Dhaka on Tuesday, waiting for an update.
“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.
Hasina’s fate is also uncertain. She fled the country by helicopter, a source close to the ousted leader told AFP.
Media in neighbouring India 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.
Political vacuum
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.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center, 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.
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 rulers Britain and the United States meanwhile urged “calm”.