Bay Area’s Bangladeshis Hopeful but Hesitant After Protests Drive Prime Minister From Power

Updated at 4:25 p.m. Monday

After protests and a deadly crackdown by authorities roiled Bangladesh for weeks, Bangladeshi students and community members are hopeful that the resignation on Monday morning of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will bring an end to the violence.

But they’re still unsure what to expect next.

The clashes between student-led protesters and police have killed at least 300 people and injured many more. After resigning Monday, Hasina reportedly fled the country.

San Francisco-based organizer Farhana Sobhan said she knew Sunday night that an army spokesperson would give a speech, but she didn’t expect to wake up to the latest news.

“It was a really exciting way to wake up this morning,” said Sobhan, who volunteers with an organization called the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, working to empower South Asian communities.

Born and raised in Bangladesh, she lived there until age 16 and still has family there.

Despite Hasina’s resignation, Sobhan said she is still “worried about hostilities to minoritized communities — especially towards Adivasis [Indigenous people] and queer and trans people.”

“I’m worried about this being freedom for the majority,” she said. “Or a takeover by Islamic extremism and nationalistic pride.” Bangladesh is the eighth-most populated country in the world and home to a majority Muslim population — 90% Muslim and 8% Hindu.

Some online have called the protests and Hasina’s resignation a win for the youth-led protest movement.

“What Bangladesh has witnessed is nothing short of a political revolution — without any prejudice to the connotation of the phrase — and it is the first in history led and orchestrated by Gen Z,” Nazmul Ahasan, a reporter with Bloomberg News, posted on X.

Sobhan agreed that Gen Z had flexed its political power, but she also noted that Bangladesh has a long history of youth-led activism.

“The student movement is not new,” she said. “It’s been there.”

She hopes student movement leaders have a say in the new government and that queer, trans, housing insecure and Indigenous people are not overlooked.

Tarannum Sahar, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley who helped organize a solidarity rally on campus and has family in Bangladesh, said she was “in absolute awe and gratitude of the 2024 student-led movement that fought against the violent state repression and led Bangladesh to freedom.”

Led by university students, the conflict began with peaceful protests over the allocation of civil service jobs. Since mid-July, protesters have clashed with police and supporters of Hasina’s government. At the end of July, police imposed a strict curfew with a “shoot-on-sight” order across the country as military forces patrolled parts of the capital, and as the deaths mounted in the last week, protesters demanded Hasina’s resignation.

“Even just two weeks ago, we would not have imagined this,” Sahar said. “But the students of Bangladesh led the movement with sheer courage and conviction, and did not back down even in the face of something as horrendous as a ‘shoot-on-sight’ order.”

The Bay Area Bangladesh Association helped organize a protest against the violence at the end of July in Fremont, saying it was “deeply concerned about the recent developments in Bangladesh regarding the student protests for quota reform,” according to a statement at the time from association president Mushfiqur Rahman.

“The violent actions taken against peaceful student protesters are alarming and unacceptable,” he added. “This is a blatant violation of human rights and freedom of speech, which are fundamental to any democratic society. We strongly condemn these actions and stand in solidarity with the brave students of Bangladesh.”

Moving forward, Sobhan and others will monitor the interim government and how the protesters respond.

“There’s freedom now, and this prime minister has resigned. But what’s next?” Sobhan said. “It needs to be done really carefully and sensitively and with a lot of intention and integrity.”