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Agence France-Presse

Adored by her classmates and defiant even after police seized her, student Nusrat Tabassum is one of the many women who helped spearhead the movement that toppled autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina.
Sizeable protests against Hasina’s 15-year rule were nothing new, but this was the first time that young women took to the streets against her in large numbers.
Soldiers refused to fire on them, a pivotal moment in Hasina’s ouster.
“The people had no way back,” Tabassum, 23, said. “Anger was increasing, and the demand for equality was increasing.”
Tabassum is a campus hero for helping lead a movement that began as a protest against civil service job quotas and ended in revolution.
As she strolled the grounds of the elite Dhaka University, friends and other pupils rose from their seats to offer handshakes, hugs and high-fives.

Two weeks ago she was among six top student leaders snatched by plain clothes police and held in custody for several days, officially for their own safety.
With Hasina’s grip on power slipping, her security forces held the group at gunpoint and made them sign a statement calling off the protests.
“I thought of suicide several times,” Tabassum said. “I could not bear the thought of the people of this country thinking that we had cheated, that we had sold out.”
But Bangladeshis saw through the ruse.
“When we saw people did not misunderstand us, and were still protesting on the street, then I regained my strength and power to continue,” she said.
Protests began last month over a court decision to reintroduce loathed quotas for government jobs, seen as a tool for Hasina’s government to stack the bureaucracy with loyalists.
One aspect was a 10 per cent reservation for women applicants, but Tabassum said the politicised nature of the scheme meant that “women were deprived more than they benefited”.
Soon after protests began, Hasina said the quotas had to remain because women were otherwise unable to get those jobs on their own merits.
The irony of her statement, from one of the world’s longest-serving women heads of government, was not lost on its audience.
“Women are more concerned about their rights these days,” said Nahida Bushra, a human sciences graduate student at Dhaka University.
“That’s why women spontaneously joined the protests.”
Muslim-majority Bangladesh has a history of extremist attacks, and one way Hasina sailed through earlier bouts of unrest was by blaming Islamist troublemakers.

She tried again this time, but the sight of young women leading protests undercut her argument.
Bushra, 23, played a key role mobilising her fellow women classmates to attend rallies.
She sidestepped government efforts to stop her and ignored a concerted online campaign to demonise students.
“There was a storm of rumours and disinformation on social media, but we kept our unity with courage and bravery,” she said.
Telecoms were ordered to block access to Facebook and other platforms used to organise demonstrations, so Bushra and others circumvented the bans through virtual private networks.
The government then imposed a complete national shutdown of mobile and broadband internet, so they organised rallies through SMS messages and phone calls.
When police began firing on protesters, they rushed to the front of the crowd in the expectation that officers would be more reluctant to shoot women.
“We moved forward and took the protest forward,” Bushra said.
In a final desperate move to remain in power, Hasina’s government ordered soldiers to suppress the protests.
They refused.


“It would have been an absolute bloodbath and the army was unwilling to perpetrate a massacre,” Thomas Kean of the International Crisis Group said.
“To have sided with Hasina at this juncture would have tarnished their image massively.”
Bangladesh’s armed forces are outsized contributors to UN peacekeeping operations, a source of deep institutional pride.
Kean said their complicity in the crackdown would have opened up the military to Western sanctions and international pariahdom, as well as a potential revolt from rank-and-file soldiers.
Despite army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman being a distant relative of Hasina’s, Kean said the general had “little choice but to put institutional interests first”.
As the dust settles from some of the most tempestuous weeks in Bangladesh’s history, Tabassaum said work had just begun.
“My country has not been able to practice what democracy really looks like,” she said.
“The responsibility to build the country remains.”


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How Bangladesh’s Gen Z women led the movement that toppled ex-PM Sheikh Hasina

Bangladeshi political science student Nusrat Tabassum (middle) speaks at Dhaka University. Photo: AFP

Bangladeshi women walk along the street in Dhaka after a curfew was relaxed following student-led protests. Photo: EPA-EFE

Nahida Bushra, 23, played a key role mobilising her fellow women classmates to attend rallies. Photo: AFP

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A burnt Awami League party office is pictured as anti-government protestors set fire in Dhaka on Tuesday, after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country. Photo: TNS

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hand with his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi, India, in June. Photo: AP

Members of the student organisations greet Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus (centre) during a press conference upon his arrival at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Workers at a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh, in April 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Border Security Force personnel inspect a truck carrying supplies to Bangladesh at the India-Bangladesh border in Fulbari on the outskirts of Siliguri on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Supporters of Bangladesh Nationalist Party attend a mass party rally at the Naya Paltan area, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Wednesday. Photo: EPA-EFE

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Anti-government protesters gather at Prime Minister Hasina’s palace in Dhaka. Photo: dpa

Anti-government protesters gather inside Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s palace in Dhaka after she was ousted and fled. Photo: AFP

Anti-government protesters throng Prime Minister Hasina’s palace in Dhaka. Photo: dpa

A Bangladeshi man chants on a street as people gather in Dhaka. The country’s economic success failed to meet the aspirations of the younger generation, in particular. Photo: EPA-EFE

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A vandalised image of Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the aftermath of her resignation, in Dhaka. Photo: EPA-EFE

President Xi Jinping meets with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh in Beijing on July 10. Photo: Captured from X

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Bangladesh’s longest bridge, which took eight years to build amid setbacks involving political conflict and corruption allegations, stands over Padma River on the outskirts of Dhaka. Photo: AP

Security force personnel stand guard next to damaged vehicles outside a police station, days after the resignation of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in Dhaka. Photo: Reuters

Family members of victims of enforced disappearance hold photos of the missing members at an event held to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances in Dhaka in 2022. Photo: AFP

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Holding the photo of her father, an alleged victim of enforced disappearance in Bangladesh, a girl breaks down in a rally in Dhaka on June 24, 2023. Photo: Abdur Rajjak

A vandalised mural of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka on Tuesday, a day after her resignation. Photo: Reuters

A man holding the photo of his brother, an alleged victim of enforced disappearance, at a rally in Dhaka on International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, on August 30, 2022. Photo: Abdur Rajjak

BNP leader Sajedul Islam Sumon remains missing after he was abducted allegedly by RAB members in 2013. Sumon’s daughter looks at his photo at their home in Dhaka. Photo: Mohammad Abrar

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Asia

South Asia

Sizeable protests against Hasina’s 15-year rule were not new, but this was the first time young women protested against her in large numbers


Protests began last month over a court decision to reintroduce loathed quotas for government jobs, seen as a tool for Hasina’s government to stack the bureaucracy with loyalists
