Bangladesh: Hasina’s gamble will seal her fate

In the past four days, Bangladesh has completely changed. Since Thursday, the Sheikh Hasina government has drawn a veil of darkness over the entire country. Under the cover of a telecommunications blackout, it has committed the worst massacre Bangladesh has seen since the 1980s, if not since the 1971 war of independence. With it, the last drop of legitimacy has expired from the Awami League (AL) and Sheikh Hasina’s government.

At present, with the curfew easing (although the blackout continues) at least 170 are dead. The real figure may be many times higher. Thousands more are injured and hundreds are in the regime’s prisons. There is a temporary quiet on the streets, but the first lifting of the blackout could lead to new eruptions.

As we reported last week, this started out with protests over quotas for public sector jobs, which are used by the AL to reward their faithful servants. It is no longer about that.

In the words of a common chant on the streets: “First count the bodies, then count the quota”. This is now about bringing the butchers to justice, and ending this murderous regime.

The violence was initiated last week, when police and thugs connected to AL’s student wing, the Chhatra League, responded to peaceful protests with batons and live bullets. The first deaths provoked mass outrage. The pent-up discontent of millions of ordinary Bangladeshis began igniting. Crushed by an economic crisis which is leaving the country’s elite unscathed, they identified themselves with the students’ struggle for justice.

The government quickly calculated that should this anger explode out of all control, it might quickly mean the end of the regime. They set about stamping it out rapidly and brutally.

From Thursday down to the present, a communications blackout was instituted. The aim was to sow terror and confusion, with government-controlled local newspapers and TV channels the only source of news.

With few exceptions, the capitalist media internationally maintained a conspiracy of complicit silence. In the diaspora, millions of relatives were left to fret for the fate of family members whom they could no longer contact. It was left to the diaspora communities themselves to organise mass protests to bring attention to the horrors unfolding.

With a determination and anger reflecting that inside Bangladesh, thousands came out from West Bengal to London to New York. Hundreds of Bangladeshi migrant workers even came onto the streets in Qatar, a country with extreme repressive laws against public protest. In the neighbouring UAE the brave stand led to over 50 deportations and three life sentences being handed out by the regime.

A massacre in the dark

Despite the blackout, news about what is happening in the interior has trickled out. The rising fatality figures spoke of the bravery of the masses. Armed with nothing more than pieces of brick, they continued to fight government paramilitaries who fired live rounds from rooftops and even helicopters. Images of the dead have circulated – some being carried by their comrades, others thrown like ragdolls from the backs of police vehicles.

Other stories leaking out suggested temporary victories in a situation akin to civil war, as masses overwhelmed the security forces. On Friday, a jail in Narsingdi was stormed, freeing over 800 prisoners. In response to government-sponsored misinformation, the state run Bangladesh Television headquarters were torched by the masses, as were several police stations.

With social media blocked off, the state media inside Bangladesh has run a constant stream of misinformation, threats and slanders.

Among the lies being spread is the accusation that the students are pawns of the right-wing opposition parties, such as the Bangladesh National Party (BNP). There’s the claim that the Islamic fundamentalists of Jamaat-i-Islami, backed by the Pakistan secret services, have taken over the protests and are using them to destabilise the country. We are even told foreign NGOs have infiltrated the protests in order to carry out a ‘colour revolution’.

The claims are absurd. No doubt Sheikh Hasina’s government would very much have preferred these groups to play a greater role in the movement. The arrests it has carried out against the BNP and Jamaat leaderships are no doubt intended to give them a little political credit among a layer of the masses. After all, these right-wing, bourgeois parties would be guaranteed to put the brakes on any movement they gain a foothold in.

The students have correctly rejected the involvement of these parties, and have denounced the slanders of the government.

Following last week’s slaughter, this regime’s days are numbered / Image: albelianika, Twitter

As for the idea of interference by ISI, the Pakistani secret services: the exploited and downtrodden masses in Pakistan are looking with full sympathy on the struggle of the Bangladeshi masses. The Pakistani regime would have to have a death wish to whip up the flames of unrest in Bangladesh, precisely when they too sit atop a similar pile of inflammable anger among the masses. Unemployment and inflation are, if anything, higher in Pakistan. Both teeter on the edge of default and bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the idea that western NGOs are engineering the protests must first be reconciled with a few facts. Hasina is loyally implementing IMF policies that attack the working class. Her regime has turned the country into a paradise of cheap labour for the West’s apparel industry. Why overthrow such a loyal stooge?

It is all, of course, slander intended to tar the protests. But the government may prove woefully mistaken if they think that through the confusion caused by media lies and blackout, coupled with the terrific repression of the last week, that they have quelled the movement for good.

It is true that a temporary quiet has descended on the country. After his release following abduction and brutal torture by state paramilitaries, student leader Nahid Islam called for a 48-hour break in the protests. But he noted that the blackout is keeping a temporary lid on things by making it impossible to coordinate the movement. The demands of the students still stand: sack the ministers, senior police and other killers, and bring justice to the dead. The first attempt to lift the blackout may lead to new, coordinated, and even bigger explosions, especially given that the people are now mourning 170 martyrs.

But, whatever happens next, following last week’s slaughter, this regime’s days are numbered. Its legitimacy is gone. The economic conditions worsen. New explosions will follow, and eventually the masses will bring down Hasina and the Awami League.

The question being asked by everyone, including by the ruling class inside Bangladesh and beyond is: what next? That depends on whether the working class, the students and the oppressed masses are equipped with a leadership capable of fighting for power.

Hasina’s gamble

Hasina’s government took an enormous gamble in carrying out this slaughter. It permanently blocked off any room for retreat. With the country under lockdown, the Supreme Court attempted to quell the movement, but its attempts were hopeless.

Hasina’s government took an enormous gamble in carrying out this slaughter / Image: World Economic Forum, Flickr

By relenting on the quota question – reducing the number of public sector jobs reserved for veterans’ descendents from 30 percent to five percent – it only showed that it no longer understood what this movement is about.

For millions, this is now about bringing down the killers.

Through mass slaughter, the masses can be driven off the streets in fear and shock temporarily. That shock will wear off. But among these same masses, the legitimacy of the regime will never recover.

As the violence wore on, representatives of the ruling class, in the form of the main business confederations, sat down with Hasina to express their concern. As long as the curfew and blackout continue, the crucial garment sector remains paralysed, and unable to fulfil orders. So too are the banks.

Vice President of apparel manufacturer BGMEA, Arshad Jamal Dipu, told the press immediately after the meeting: “The situation needs to be normalised as soon as possible, as there is an issue of employment… A garment factory cannot function without the Internet.” This is all they care about: ensuring a situation that guarantees a reliable climate for making profit.

And it is to this end, to “normalise” the situation for the capitalists, that Hasina has resorted to force and terror. Indeed, force and terror is all she has to ensure their rule, and that has the capitalists worried. As the US-based think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations put it, this makes for an “increasingly brittle autocracy”. And brittle things tend, at a certain point, to snap.

The ruling class will be looking around for a new pair of hands, with a modicum of legitimacy, to take the reins of power at some point. Herein lies an important source of danger.

Reflecting the demands of the masses on the street, the Quota Movement Bangladesh 2024 website puts the downfall of the regime first among its five demands:

“We demand that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign immediately and hand over power to a neutral third party, either the military or a caretaker government. This interim authority should organise a free and fair election in which all political parties can participate, ensuring the restoration of democracy and the protection of citizens' rights.”

The fall of Hasina is the correct demand. But we think it is incorrect to imagine that a “neutral third party” is possible in the present situation. The protests in Bangladesh were begun by a relatively small layer of society: the more middle-class layers of students. But it has immediately polarised society in two: on the one side, the regime, its parasitic hangers-on and the ruling class; and on the other, the students with, if not the full active support, certainly the sympathy of all of the oppressed and exploited.

The crisis of capitalism is sharply dividing society into two camps. On the one side: the exploiters. On the other: the exploited. There is no third party.

No “caretaker government” could act as a “third party”. Much less are the military capable of playing this role.

It is worth noting that, although the army was deployed across the country with ‘shoot-on-sight’ orders against those defying the curfew on Saturday and Sunday, in most places the army did not engage in gun battles with protesters. It largely limited itself to checking IDs at checkpoints. Instead, it was the hated Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB, a paramilitary outfit) and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB, a police ‘anti-terror’ unit) that committed most of the atrocities, joined by goons from the Chhatra League.

This was no doubt calculated restraint on the part of the army tops, who anticipated a great degree of sympathy among the common soldiers for the protests.

Indeed, an Al Jazeera correspondent published what he claimed was a statement by junior officers of the Bangladeshi Army, many former students themselves:

“[We have been] forced to stand against the common people, against what is right, for long years. But not anymore please. It is high time! Our humble submission to our respected Chief of Army Staff and the command channel, please do not issue us with any unlawful command. We all stand on the side of the common students who started their movement with a righteous demand, we stand on the side of common people of the country.”

Many immediately claimed that this was a fabrication, but the same journalist publicly insisted on the statement’s veracity, and that he had had personal contact with these junior officers. It is wholly plausible that this statement is real. There can be no doubt that groups of officers, even at senior ranks, are looking upon the present situation with a great deal of unease.

In the coming period, we could see army conspiracies, and a section of the ruling class might indeed pin its hopes on a section of the officers acting as a ‘clean pair of hands’ to take the reins of power.

The Hasina regime must be brought down / Image: DelwarHossain, Wikimedia Commons

The Hasina regime must be brought down. But the right-wing opposition parties and the army are wedded to capitalism and will continue this exploitative system. No trust can be placed in that direction.

The mass of students and workers must trust their own power. The demands of the movement, for the downfall of the regime, for the punishment of the criminals responsible for the murder, for the banning of terrorist groups like the Chhatra League, are fundamentally correct. But the criminals are not only Hasina and the AL, but the armed bodies of the state including the police and army, and the whole ruling capitalist class who are demanding ‘order’, and in whose interests Hasina is sowing terror.

Only if the masses take power into their own hands will justice be had. How can this be achieved? Through organisation: the workers and students must organise committees in every university, school and workplace, which must be linked up at a city-wide, district and national level.

Such committees could bring broader and broader masses into the movement. They could provide bodies for self-defence, for penetrating the army and winning the ranks to the side of the masses, and away from their officers.

Consider this: the ruling class is able to sow terror because of its control of production, of the telecoms industry, the media, and of the state. With workers committees in every sector of society, from telecoms to the power grid to the media studios, we could stop these efforts in their tracks. And with these same organised committees, the working class could completely paralyse the armed bodies of the state through an all-out general strike against the Hasina regime.

It would be one step from there towards transferring power directly to the workers and students organised in such bodies. Then and only then could we guarantee not only justice, but that society might be organised in a way that ensures everyone a life worth living. By expropriating the main levers of the economy, tearing them from the hands of the capitalists and placing them in the control of the workers, everyone can be guaranteed a decent job, decent housing, education, healthcare and all the other necessities of a dignified existence.