A Student Uprising Forces Sheikh Hasina from Power

On 5 August 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled Bangladesh, ending fifteen consecutive years in power under her Awami League government. The departure concluded weeks of escalating nationwide unrest that had grown from a campus movement into a general uprising. Demonstrations flared in June and July after the High Court invalidated the 2018 abolition of a government employment quota system, which had reserved thirty percent of civil service jobs for descendants of fighters from the war that established an independent Bangladesh. Students organized under the banner of Students Against Discrimination to demand merit-based appointments, setting off campus rallies across the country.

Tensions worsened significantly following a mid-July press conference in which Hasina questioned whether job preferences should instead benefit the grandchildren of Razakars, a derogatory term associated with collaborators during the 1971 war. Protesters interpreted the remark as an insult to their cause and turned the phrase into anti-government chants across major universities. Law enforcement personnel and ruling-party student affiliates intervened aggressively against demonstrations, while the authorities imposed countrywide curfews and enforced extended blackouts of internet connectivity and social media platforms to impede coordination.