Gen Z toppled an autocrat - but old guard tipped to win Bangladesh vote

Rahat Hossain was almost killed trying to save his friend in a youth uprising that became one of the bloodiest episodes in Bangladesh's history.

Footage of him trying to pull Emam Hasan Taim Bhuiyan, who'd been shot by police, to safety went viral during a revolution that toppled the country's leader.

During a crackdown on protests on 20 July 2024, Hossain, 24, and Bhuiyan, 19, took shelter at a Dhaka tea stall but police dragged them out, beat them and ordered them to run.

Bhuiyan was shot. Seeing him sprawled on the ground, Hossain began dragging him away, but police kept shooting. Hossain felt a bullet strike his own leg.

"I had to leave him behind," Hossain says. Bhuiyan was later declared dead in hospital.

Violence like this became the catalyst that turned student-led demonstrations into a mass protest nationwide. with its epicentre in the capital, Dhaka. Within a fortnight, the government had been swept from power, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country.

Up to 1,400 people died during the protests, the vast majority killed in the security crackdown ordered by Hasina, according to the United Nations.

Hasina's downfall seemed to promise a new age. The uprising was considered the first and most successful of a series of Gen Z protests around the world.

Some student leaders in Bangladesh went on to hold key posts in an interim government, trying to shape the kind of country they had taken to the streets to fight for. They were expected to play a role in the country's future administration, after decades of rule by Hasina's Awami League and the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

But as general elections loom next week, the students' newly formed political party is badly fractured and women in the movement largely sidelined. With the Awami League banned, other long-established parties are filling the vacuum.

Hossain joined the 2024 student-led demonstrations - which brought together young men and women, secular and religious - initially to protest against new quotas in civil service jobs, but kept going as they morphed into "a single shared objective" to end "autocratic rule".

However, the interim government has failed to produce the "beautiful Bangladesh based on peace, equality, justice and fairness" he had hoped for, he told the BBC.

He isn't alone in feeling the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) is too inexperienced. Instead, he's impressed by another, much older party: Jamaat-e-Islami.

It's an Islamist party which has served as a minor coalition partner, but gained momentum of its own in the run-up to the 12 February election, from which the Awami League is banned.

Established in 1941, Jamaat has always been dogged by its stance during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and more than 10 million fled their homes. Some of Jamaat's politicians were accused of collaborating with then East Pakistan.

But that history does not seem to bother Hossain, who believes Jamaat has modernised.

"Jamaat supported the comrades of the July uprising and the students in various ways," he explains.

Jamaat's leader Shafiqur Rahman told the BBC the party is pledging to end corruption and restore the judiciary's independence - claims that will be hard to deliver in a country with historically high levels of corruption, but which have resonated with many.

Professor Tawfique Haque of North South University in Dhaka says most younger voters, born long after 1971, can separate Jamaat from its history and don't see it as a red line.

"It's a generational issue," he says, arguing they don't want to be "bogged down with this debate".

Instead, younger voters have seen the party as a fellow victim of Hasina's rule, according to Haque, banned from politics and many of its politicians in jail.

Hossain is not the only one turning to Jamaat: candidates backed by the party's student wing won a landslide during student elections at Bangladesh's top universities last September, in a vote seen as a bellwether of the national mood.

Notably, it was the first time since independence that an Islamist party had won control of the student union at Bangladesh's prestigious Dhaka University.

It was also the first major sign of trouble for the student leaders, in a country where about four in 10 voters are under 37.

The lack of faith in the NCP is a major blow to the student leaders.

"We were hoping to do a lot better," admits Asif Mahmud, 27, a former adviser to the interim government, and now chairman of the NCP's Election Committee.

But, he argues, the odds were stacked against them: "Only two parties have led Bangladesh for the last 50 years… we are trying to prove ourselves."

So the NCP made a choice. In December, they announced a multi-party alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami.

Like Jamaat, the NCP has promised to root out corruption. Its manifesto has other pledges aimed at younger voters: justice for families of those killed in the uprising, lowering the voting age to 16, and job creation through tax and economic reform.

Mahmud argues the NCP needed help from Jamaat's grassroots operation, even if they disagree on certain issues. "We have always said we are not an Islamist party," he said, "This is not an ideological alliance."

But of the 30 candidates Jamaat is allowing the NCP to field, only two are women. Jamaat is fielding more than 200 candidates, all of them men.

That's a compromise senior female members of the NCP like Tasnim Jara have called a "moral red line", and why she and several others have resigned from the party.

"They wanted to sideline us," says Shima Akhter, a 25-year-old student who helped lead the protests.

Despite women playing a leading role in the uprising, Shima argues the interim government under Muhammad Yunus is still mostly dominated by men.

Where are the women?

After the uprising, Shima and other women activists were targeted in social media posts.

Some meme videos were so violent and so frustrating," she recalls. "We were slut shamed, trolled.

Videos began circulating of them, belittling their intelligence, claiming their marriage prospects were destroyed, and some even attacked Shima for the colour of her skin.

Both parties deny sidelining women, instead claiming the numbers of women standing is a result of Bangladesh's "social structure". Jamaat's Shafiqur Rahman added that he hoped that would change.

Shima dismisses that as "just a patriarchal excuse".

She is leaning towards the BNP, which is fielding 10 women out of more than 250 candidates. "Better than bad," she says.

The NCP's lack of support, together with the ban on the Awami League, is also benefiting the BNP, which has rebranded itself as a liberal democratic force.

After seeing thousands of supporters and senior members jailed under Awami rule, the BNP is now the largest party contending - and is further squeezing the student party.

Like the Awami League – whose leader Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, considered the country's founder - the BNP is tied to a political dynasty.

Its new leader Tarique Rahman is the son of the late Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh's first female prime minister. Zia herself came to power after her husband, a former president, was assassinated in a military coup.

"Whether you come from a dynasty or not is irrelevant," former BNP commerce minister, now candidate, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury told the BBC.

Ironically, this dynastic cycle enduring is only possible thanks to the student-led uprising, following which Rahman was able to return after 17 years in self-imposed exile. Hasina's exit allowed both him and his mother to be acquitted of corruption charges they maintained were politically motivated.

He has criticised Jamaat for using religious sentiment to win votes, and is promising economic and democratic reforms, as well as a "rainbow nation", where a new "National Reconciliation Commission" would help the country move past its divisions.

Hasina governed Bangladesh for 15 years, overseeing economic progress, but increasingly attempting to silence opposition, with politically-motivated arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings. She was sentenced to death for the crackdown in 2024 by Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal last year.

From exile, she has denounced the ban on her party. Many other senior Awami leaders are also sheltering in India with her. Some are under arrest back home.

The BBC spoke to a district leader for the party in hiding, and he said: "By excluding the Awami League, a free and fair election is not possible."

Should Sheikh Hasina order it, the party and its supporters would "resist" the elections, he warned. "If she decides that people should not go to polling centres, then we will not go. If she says the election must be obstructed, then we will obstruct the election."

He called accusations by independent human rights organisations of politically motivated arrests and extrajudicial killings during their time in power "false" and "fabricated".

After the vote next week, students will learn whether their revolution, and the bloodshed, were worth it.

Sitting by Dhaka's Jatrabari flyover where he lost his friend, Hossain is still waiting to see the trial against all police officers conclude.

Bhuiyan's own father is a police officer. When he identified his son's body, he called a senior officer in the force and asked: "Sir, how many bullets does it take to kill a boy?"

Hossain says he's still haunted by the day his friend was shot.

He watched the video eight days later, when the country's internet had been restored. "My entire screaming voice can be heard… I cried endlessly."

A year later, he celebrated the first anniversary of Hasina's ousting on 5 August, alongside his other "comrades of the uprising".

But Hossain admits their "new Bangladesh" is not here yet. He believes that can't happen until an elected government reforms the country.

"One cannot expect mangoes from a tamarind tree," he says.

Additional reporting by Charlotte Scarr, Prem Boominathan and Sardar Ronie.

Source: BBC
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