I have been in Bangladesh since early November. A survivor of enforced disappearance by the Sheikh Hasina regime, I left my country seven years ago.
My recent return to my country has evoked mixed emotions in me. It is wonderful to return to post-Hasina Bangladesh and be able to meet my family and friends after so many years.
However, many of the youth and students I met over the past three weeks seem traumatized. It brings back memories of my own traumas.
I closely watched the mass protests that forced Bangladesh’s despised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India after ruling the country for 15 years straight. Powerful street protests, mainly by Bangladeshi youth, propelled the regime change.
It is over three months since Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus was appointed head of the interim government. The Yunus government has settled in. University campuses and the streets of the capital city Dhaka that were rocked by the violent battles between protesting youths and law and enforcement agencies in the July-August period are now mostly stable and peaceful.
Despite the calm, the collective mood remains a mix of trauma and hope. Many in Bangladesh are grappling with the scars of state violence while holding on to the belief that the future will resist the return of authoritarian rule.
Some students who participated in the protests shared their stories with me
“My friend was shot by cadres of Hasina’s Awami League during the July protest. Blood was pouring out his chest. I was carrying him to a rickshaw when he asked for some water to drink. I brought out a bottle of water from my rucksack and poured drops of water into his mouth,” recalled a 22-year-old student of North South University.
“But it was too late. He passed away and I was holding my friend’s lifeless body.”
The North South University student remains traumatized several months after the killing of his friend. His body still shakes when he recalls the horrific events of the “July massacre,” as the violent crackdown by the Hasina regime is known in Bangladesh.
The student is among hundreds and thousands of Bangladeshi youths who are still grappling with the trauma of dealing with the immense state violence unleashed by the Hasina regime in July-August.
“I am enraged with Hasina,” the student said, adding that “she was a killer.”
During three weeks of intense protest in July-August 2024, Bangladeshi youths including students from schools, colleges, and universities endured immense brutality that will haunt them in the years to come.
To quell the student protests, which started as an anti-quota movement, and later turned into a movement to oust Hasina, the former prime minister issued a shoot-to-kill order. Snipers and drones were deployed; security forces shot at the protesters from helicopters and on the ground.
A viral social media video lays bare the brutality of the Hasina regime. In the footage, a Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) officer is seen showing a video on his mobile phone to then-Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. The officer can be heard saying, “We have to shoot to bring down bodies, sir. When we shoot, one dies, and another gets injured, but they don’t retreat. This, sir, is the biggest cause for fear and concern.”
The officer’s account reveals the resilient nature of the youth who were not afraid of death.
Yet the state forces continued to fire on them.
Over 1,000 Bangladeshis died and more than 400 became blind as a result of police brutality. The scale of violence remains embedded in the nation’s memory, with public events and discussions keeping the stories of those harrowing weeks alive.
Speaking at an event organized by the U.S-based Benar News at the National Museum auditorium in Dhaka, also attended by The Diplomat, Jahangir Hossain, a grieving father, shared his heartbreaking story with the audience. As tears flowed down his face, he recounted the horrifying experience of struggling to hide the body of his young son, who had first been shot by the police and later killed by Awami League members.
“The police wanted to take away my son’s body so that his death wouldn’t be added to the official count,” he said, his voice trembling. The father wept openly, and many in the audience were moved to tears too.
At the end of his speech, Hossain said that to achieve a democratic Bangladesh, “I have sacrificed one son; if needed another one is ready to die. If he also dies, I will be on the front line.”
Despite the many personal tragedies and traumas, Bangladeshis are showing a spirit of resilience. They are not ready to let their sacrifices go to waste.
Bangladesh youth, many of whom were denied the right to vote during Hasina’s regime, grew up in a society crippled by a culture of fear. Fear was institutionalized through abusive laws such as the Digital Security Act as well as through extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. The politicization of the judiciary, bureaucracy, police and intelligence agencies reached such a level that they acted as extensions of Hasina’s party.
Against this backdrop, the protest of July-August in Bangladesh reveals a widespread social and cultural resistance to state-sponsored human rights violations.
This spirit of resistance is reflected in the graffiti and wall art that now adorn the streets of Dhaka and the university campuses. “Raise your voice against the unjust, otherwise you will end up in Aynaghar,” the illegal secret prison run by the Hasina regime, says one wall-writing in Dhaka University’s arts faculty, while another describes as “Spineless Faculties” the role of certain academics who supported Hasina’s brutality.
To deter the return of a Hasina-like leader in the future, Bangladeshi students are now forming new political platforms like the Jatiyo Nagorik Committee, which will act as a political pressure group. Recently, students announced an 18-member central committee of the Student Movement Against Discrimination, which will work across the country. Talks are on for students who led the protest to form a national political party.
These are signs that Bangladesh may see a rise of a new political force led by the youths. “It’s a long road to reform Bangladesh, but I am hopeful that we will see a new Bangladesh down the road,” said a student leader of the Jatiyo Nagorik Committee.
The transition to peace under the interim government signals a new chapter for Bangladesh. Yet, the memories of the Hasina period continue to serve as both a cautionary tale and a rallying cry for a nation determined never to repeat its darkest days.
How Bangladesh transitions to a democracy through a free, fair, and inclusive election is now the new challenge for the country.
Amid the trauma and grief, there is a flicker of hope that the dark days of the Hasina regime will not return.