Some context: Students are protesting to reform the quota system. Which was abolished in 2018 after protest but recently brought back again. The Quota system basically reserves 56% of public sector jobs, i.e. 30% to relatives of war veteran.
The war happened in 1971. To get public job and avail the quota, it must be their 3rd or 4th generation now. Which is plain unfair.
But it’s not about that, the gov loyalists and their goons fake these veteran certificates to land these jobs. Bangladesh is one of the most corrupted countries in the world after all. So real veteran relatives are seldom the beneficiary.
These students just wanted to reform this system. But our fascist gov and their goons used force and killed 50+ unarmed students until yesterday (3 from my alma mater alone.) This was completely unprovoked and unnecessary. Basically any forms of dissent have been dealt with this way since 2009. No one can criticize or protest the big brother.
We have a dictatorship since 2009. People are angry - due to corruption, inflation, joblessness and tyranny. This is just some outburst of it.
When you see the videos how the police are killing teenagers and university students in the road - our future generation - no one can tolerate this.
Now the fascist gov has closed all internet and phone connection to outside world. I can't contact my family anymore. I don't know their well being.
There is of course more to it. But this is the summary.
I agree that Sheikh Hasina is extremely authoritarian and corrupt dictator but imo JeI are the actual fascists, and the BNP has absolutely been enabling them.
That said, I agree with you that Hasina's authoritarianism needs to end.
Ideally all these old fossils (Hasina, Zia, Rahman, etc) need to be purged and the actual youth (who are the majority of Bangladesh) get a chance to have their voice in power.
It's a handful of elite 70 year olds who have been running a country where the median age is 25 and are ruining it due to their own personal drama from the 70s and 80s.
Yeah I think "fascist" is too much for any actor not JeI but authoritarian is right. They've cut off Internet and telecom access after all, a dangerous game given how physically close they are to West Bengal.
Source: Wikipedia
This sounds like the very definition of fascism to me.
Which part sounds like fascism?
The Awami League is ideologically a center-left party, it's not far right. The quota system that's being protested offers employment quotas to descendants of revolutionaries and minorities. It was the party that founded Bangladesh. Protests are occurring because of the corruption and joblessness that results from these quotas and because the law was overturned earlier but reinstated.
Moreover there's no belief in a natural social hierarchy or belief in subordination to the State. If anything the Awami League has historically claimed to champion minorities in the country like Hindus instead of championing Muslim identities like JeI. There's no concept of regimemting society at all by the Awami League, again that's more JeI's domain with its belief in Sharia.
Awami League is authoritarian and corrupt yes but not fascist. The Middle East has plenty of authoritarian dictatorships that engage in varying levels of human rights abuses but that does not make them fascist countries.
I'm sorry but your comment just comes off as really uniformed about Bdesh and South Asian politics.
I'm very uninformed about Bangladeshi and South Asian politics but yes the violent suppression of protests and killing of protestors are the parts that sound a bit fascist to me.
Look I realize on lefty parts of the internet that fascism has colloquially become the same as authoritarianism but they are not the same thing. Fascist movements are usually authoritarian but not all authoritarian regimes are fascist.
It's an especially bad lens when you look outside the West because the second and third world has had plenty of trouble with left authoritarian regimes and comparatively less trouble with fascism and authoritarian right regimes.
fake news
^^^ THIS
If you're part of the minority Hindu and Christian community in Bangladesh you support Hasina, because the opposition made a coalition deal with hard-core Islamists (JeI) who are supporting the gold digger wife of the former (1980s) Military Dictator who was a puppet (like every other politician in Bangladesh sadly)
This does NOT mean Hasina is good.
Anything but.
Authoritarian quasi-secularism means the only organized opposition is fundamentalist, like in Central Asia like Tajikia, Uzbekia, Kyrgyzia, Afghanistan, Parts of Pakistan, etc, or the India my parents grew up in during the 1980s.
Sheikh Hasina (literally) based her public persona on Indira Gandhi. All the Desis on HN know what that implies.
Sheikh Hasina is a left-leaning autocratic. She protects the Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist minority, but her authoritarianism against the religious Islamic community of Bangladesh (plus Khalida Zia's and moreso Shaibur Rahman's Pakistani funded bullshit) means the only organized opposition are non-secular.
As a Koshur-Hindu American, Hasina (and her enabler across the border) are playing with fire.
Bangladesh has strong institutions , diaspora, and economic relations (most factories in WB moved to BD because of bad policies and the FTA). Hasina is squandering them because of her childhood traumas.
Please please please become a Indonesia instead of a Myanmar
A simple example would be hundreds of years of authoritarian monarchies and theocracies. Nobody wants to retroactively label them as Fascist, and for good reason.
I prefer the "Palingenetic Ultranationalism" definition [0], where fascism is largely distinguished by what myths and stories people are using to demand power.
Often along the lines of: "Not too long ago This Nation was the best, but not anymore. There is one and only one chance to fix it, which will require a destructive resurrection that only Pure People Leaders can do. You have to give them all the power right now or else everything will be bad forever because impure people somehow."
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalis...
If Bangladesh is the "Middle East" then so is Burma/Myanmar and Thailand (which is at most 200 miles from the Bangladesh border)
I didn't read this as OP saying Bangladesh is in the middle east, but rather an example of authoritarian countries they'd assume we have all heard bad things about but nobody calls them fascist.
In English, Bangladesh is not Middle East. In German, it is. Israel is Near East from our perspective.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittlerer_Osten
Bangladesh is definitely not the Middle East. I just figured the kind of person who thinks of authoritarianism as fascism is more likely to be familiar with authoritarian governments in the Middle East because they're covered in Western mainstream news outlets and aren't treated as fascist regimes.
Many people want to either tiptoe around or flat out ignore the far right leanings of fascism to avoid what it says about the US
Independent of points for or against their rule, the ageist argument makes little sense. 25 year olds are generally politically naive and easily manipulated. The average person in their twenties has no idea about economics, geopolitics or other such topics that are important to understand for running a country. When you look at uprisings against ancient leaders in countries with very young populations, they regularly end up even worse then before, sadly. Take Sudan as an example.
I am not sure why you are being downvoted but a "youth" revolt will most certainly end up the country in a worst state than it is right now. Much more worse.
Revolutions are always made by young, are not they?
Age profiles of countries are very different around the world. The median age in France is 41, in Sudan it's 18! Just think about what a median age of 18 means - half their population is even younger than that. So when you have Yellow Vests trying to shut down the government in Europe, those are a very different age group compared to Sudanese kids taking to the streets.
I think I can guess why the comment is controversial. Some may have taken it as an authoritarianism apology, which isn't the intention. It's rather a reminder that things are more complex than just rooting for what intuitively feels right, because the average Westerners has little understanding of how such countries work. Since my point is the average citizen doesn't even sufficiently understand, and surely you will agree you understand less about Bangladesh than a student who grew up there.
There are many such examples. Taking out Gaddafi has not proven to be positive for Libya. Sometimes the "old witch" is actually the lesser evil. I'm talking strictly about politics in terms of practical reality, not what we wish were true. Of course we all root for the people to win and then they live happily ever after.
If that's the lens you're looking at, the majority of uprisings in history have ended up worse than they started. Bangladesh is struggling with a democracy that has degraded into authoritarian gerontocracy. It's not as simple as young people dumb old people experienced, there's a lot of issues involved.
^^^ this.
Revolutions turn into civil wars.
We forget but this is the sad reality.
This doesn't mean the students in Gulistan Maidan are wrong, but "Allah, Suriya, y Bashar" and the converse means a 15 year civil war like in Syria or 15 miles away from Chittagong in Myanmar (aka Asian Syria/Libya)
Khuda ki kasm - please walk off this brink Bangladesh (if someone Hasina adjacent is reading).
GP didn't say that 25 years should become the elected leaders. But Sheikh Hasina (the current PM since 2008) was the leader of the opposition in 1986 at 39 years old [1], and then first became PM in 1996 at 49 years old. The ones who were PM from 1986 to today were all born in the 1940s [2].
Same is the case in Pakistan. Every prime minister since 1988 was born in the 40s or early 50s [3]. India's PMs have, on the other hand, been from even an older generation [4].
This post-independence generation captured all the political power in their 40s, and refuse to give it up 40 years later. Is it not reasonable to demand that the PM and Cabinet today are largely in their 40s?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Hasina
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Ban...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Pak...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Ind...
That’s a terrible idea and would set Bangladesh back generations. Hasina is authoritarian, but Bangladeshis need someone like her to run such a disorderly population. She’s not Lee Kuan Yew, but she’s the best in that direction Bangladesh can hope for. And a third-rate copy of LKY is a hell of a lot better than whatever Islamic socialist would replace her.
Idk why you're downvoted, but that aside I'm not sure about your thesis.
It's kinda tough following Desi politics tbh - you want to be honest about ideals, but the reality is everyone in the home country is "Chust".
Idk, if Sheikh Hasina was a LKY or even a Park Cheung He then the protests seen the past week wouldn't have happened.
I guess the BAP is now facing the Zhao question (or Indira in Tughlabad Distict in 1976) - to shoot or not shoot. Either way India, China, Russia, and the Gulf will continue to give her and the BAP sanction relief because she's built strong relations with everyone.
I'm not Muslim so I automatically lean more towards Hasina (Zia's enabling of the JeI is a dealbreaker and would automatically result in a civil war or even Indian intervention if she became PM), but if she decided to remain quasi-democratic she cannot find a middle ground. Either she becomes a full blown authoritarian or she has to cede power. A Hybrid Regime is inherently unstable.
I don't disagree given the political situation in Bangladesh right now but if Hasina were LKY or even Erdogan this wouldn't be happening. The situation is as it is because Hasina couldn't govern it.
The challenge of escalating partisanship is self-reïnforcing polarisation. The worse the leadership, the worse the opposition.
The operant question, thus, is not who is good but who is less evil, in the hope that this ratchet, a few times turned, yields goodness.
I might be a few beers in, but I don't quite understand your thesis.
Politics in developing countries is a business, not ideological.
Ain't no good guys - only bad guys.
Everyone's in on making enough out of the grift to emigrate to the US or the UK (just like Sheikh Hasina and her opponent Khalida Zia's children)
What a joke! Imperialism flourished due to corporates being allowed to own their own private armies. The US is the best example of a country that exists for, and is run by corporates - and that happened because the older European powers clamped down on corporates, and they fled to the US.
Really? Are you going to totally ignore that it is those very 25+ years old that gave the current premiere of Bangladesh her massive majority? (See also https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/88356/why-are-m... ).
Beware of what you wish for! It's all nice and easy to harp at "undemocratic" and "authoritarianism". But understand the political context and history of Bangladesh before passing such blanket judgement. The reality of Bangladesh politics is:
1. Political violence is a fact there - Mrs. Hasina's father, a hugely popular leader, was assassinated and 18 members of her family, including her 10-year-old brother, and relatives were massacred. She had to seek refuge abroad to survive.
2. Bangladesh has also seen many military coups.
3. Some opposition parties of Bangladesh are backed by the military.
4. Some of the opposition lean towards religious fundamentalism and, as you pointed out, also associate with extremist groups.
5. Foreign powers - USA (and other western countries acting in cohort with the US), China and India - often interfere in Bangladesh's internal affairs.
(Source: https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/80654/ )
Being a young democracy, amidst such a political environment necessarily requires an authoritarian streak in a politician to survive and to nurture a secular democracy. As an indian, I genuinely admire her commitment to create a democracy in an Islamic republic that is easily prone to religious fundamentalism and sectarianism - sometimes she reminds me of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who did the same with Turkiye. (Remember that Bangladesh is one of the few islamic Republics that has actually committed to democratic political values).
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All that said, it is very clear that the current protests were very poorly handled and will be politically damaging to her, and could be a turning point in Bangladesh politics. Whether it will be good for Bangladesh totally depends on how her government handles these protest. Even if the matter is sub-judice, and being examined by the Bangladesh Supreme Court, the government should have engaged more deeply with the protestors and anticipated the political violence.
Why are you seething about this from the other side of the world?
You are presumably an intelligent person, but you, and everyone else that could, left your home country for economic opportunities elsewhere. Now, your home country is administrated and governed by the people without the opportunity to leave and you are on the other side of the world.
I think it is extremely weird to see the people with the best opportunity to reshape their country leave and then from overseas complain about the politics in that country.
Huh? Even if he was seethings, why is caring about your family a bad thing? Is your opinion suddenly not relevant anymore when you've fled the country? Weird mindset
Again and again the most intelligent people emigrate to the West and then seethe about the politics in their home country. I get why they do it, but it is really obnoxious. One main reason why developing countries have bad politics, is because everyone intelligent is leaving for the west and the same people who, for their own economic interest have left, are then agitating from the other side of the world for political change.
In some real way, leaving your home country also means leaving behind the ability to change anything about it.
What do you mean by seething? Their comment appears emotionally balanced to me.
Honestly, it sounds like you want to gatekeep political discussion. Am I misunderstanding you?
Seething about the politics of the country you left behind means you have gate kept yourself already.
Thank you for the information. I'm sorry for you and your family. Are public jobs so numerous that a lot of people survive off of them?
Nope. It won't be numerous but grab whatever of the tiny pie is the point. I am from neigboring country but situation is same for jobs. For 10 govt job, 10K people can show up and create riot like situation in little time.
I think it's more about justice than the number of jobs or whether you get it or not. Many people will be happy when they perceive that a fair process has been established in granting these jobs. Especially when income is hard to come by.
I'd call it a US-manipulated military oligarchy with a democratic facade:
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/05/imran-khan-interview/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/did-us-ask-for-imra...
You seem to have confused Pakistan for Bangladesh. Unless I'm misunderstanding your point.
Not sure if you're a troll or not, but that would be related to Israel and Palestine.
Thank you, the news article was suspiciously stingy on these salient details.