Mystical Beatle George Harrison sang about how “Bangladesh” was “a mess”. He was proved right again last week. With echoes of the ousting of Saddam Hussein, statues were toppled and effigies of the “father of the nation” burned from capital city Dhaka to Tower Hamlets. His autocratic daughter PM Sheikh Hasina who’d ruled for a large percentage of the country’s lifetime (ensuring omnipresent statutes and portraits of her dad) was overthrown in a movement that began with pro-democracy student protests that went wider, with echoes of Tiananmen Square.
UK Bangladeshis taking to the streets of east London confused the “race riots” commentary but, rather than ethnic angry mobs these were crowds celebrating. They were cheering an end to an era of uncontested elections and “communications blackouts” where at will phone signals and the internet could be cut, preventing Bangladeshis communicating with each other and the outside world.
Indeed there is a huge global diaspora. The UK’s 70,000 includes Bake-off’s Nadiya Hussian as well as my sister Konnie Huq. The initial student unrest of past weeks which saw hundreds of unarmed mostly minors killed by the state stormtrooper-like police’s “shoot on sight” policy provoked expat protests in Paris and Rome as well as Manchester and Trafalgar Square. The Bangla labouring classes supplied to middle eastern emirates too rose up as the subject of ire grew from government corruption to wider democratic deficits.
Most of this young country’s young population has never known anything other than the same lot in power or any opposition candidates on the ballot paper – unsurprisingly Hasina secured a thumping electoral win in January. Being a London-born Bangladeshi, as a child I knew Bangladesh through parental anecdote as some sort of paradise of running streams and coconut trees. Only when I went for the first time as a teenager did I see its true chaotic nature and increasingly as an adult began to realise a more sinister side to the outgoing regime who were such a fixture, rigged election after rigged election with their habitual "enforced disappearances" and “extra judicial killings” of critics, condemned by Amnesty International.
Most people’s idea of a brutal tyrant is not a sari clad septuagenarian but as the country burned around her Hasina was helicoptered to exile in India
Most people’s idea of a brutal tyrant is not a sari clad septuagenarian but as the country burned around her Hasina was helicoptered to exile in India. As a British Bangladeshi MP my inbox is a lightning rod for Bangladeshi issues worldwide. At the moment pleading mails ask me to “ban the butcher” and similar as it is rumoured London is her next destination. I personally think given the deep unpopularity of her bloodthirsty regime and political sensitivities around immigration it’d be unwise for the UK to give refuge to such a high profile asylum seeker who is subject of an International Criminal Court application. Many Bangladeshis think she should return to face charges there.
In a swift changing of the guard 84-year-old Professor Mohammad Yunus, who won the Nobel prize for pioneering “microfinance” loans for small business and women, is now interim PM leading a cabinet including students. Until recently Hasina was trying to lock him up on trumped up charges fearful of his popularity threatening her. Ex PM and opposition leader Khaleda Zia has been freed from captivity. Meanwhile Hasina’s US-based son has issued a slew of videos variously labelling opponents Islamist, berating Bangladeshis for ingratitude to his mum and vowing she’ll be back.
There is a sense of collective relief amongst my Bangladeshis cousins. The climate of fear that voicing any governmental criticism risked being bumped off has lifted. But risk abounds: hopefully there can be democracy but the deposed camp stress that they ensured stability. When actual elections come round surely rather than the stale enmity between two families that’s characterised Bangladesh’s history, it’s high time for a reset.
Rupa Huq is the Labour MP for Ealing Central & Acton
