How ​​​​Gen-Z defeated South Asia’s longest ruling autocrat

“We are liberated. We are a free country now,” said Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus in comments delivered following the resignation of Sheikh Hasina as Bangladesh’s prime minister. Dr Yunus also thanked the young people of his country, who played a critical role in upending Hasina’s autocratic one-party regime.

The protests began weeks ago following a court order that reinstated a quota system that Hasina’s government had scrapped in 2018. While the Supreme Court suspended the order following an appeal filed by the government, the violent crackdown by the police set off a series of events that ultimately forced Hasina to resign and go into exile.

What led to this moment

Bangladesh was already on the boil for months, with high youth unemployment plaguing the country. The economic stagnation became a growing concern following the coronavirus pandemic, which hurt Bangladesh’s export-oriented economy. Since then, growth has stagnated and unemployment has inched upwards — reports suggest “at least 41 percent of youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four are not in school, employed, or engaged in job training.”

Hasina had only recently won a fourth consecutive term as prime minister in January. Independent experts, however, argued that these elections were neither free nor fair, with the leading opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party alleging that 25,000 of its workers were arrested ahead of polls.

This meant that there were broad questions about Hasina’s legitimacy, and growing economic discontent was beginning to further erode her regime’s stability. The violent crackdown — over 100 citizens were killed just hours before Hasina’s departure — led to rapid erosion of her support across the country. A statement by retired army officers read out by a retired army chief was a clear signal to Hasina that her time was up; within hours she had boarded a helicopter that took her to safety in India.

Leading the charge

But it was younger Bangladeshis, especially Gen-Z students, who led the charge against Hasina’s authoritarian regime. Frequently dismissed as being both lazy and naive by older generations around the world, they were the catalyst that maintained unending pressure on a prime minister who had become used to having her way. A key weapon that they used was the internet, a mechanism to get the message out and organise across communities in a country where mainstream media had been beaten into submission by the regime.

To curb the protests, Hasina blocked the internet for 11 days and issued a shoot-at-sight curfew. A viral video of Abu Sayed, an unarmed protester, being shot to death by police revealed the extent to which Hasina’s regime was willing to go. Hasina even tried to paint the protesters as traitors, using the term razakars — which literally translates to volunteers, but is considered derogatory in Bangladesh as it refers to people who supported the Pakistani military’s operation to quell the Bangladesh liberation war — in a press conference where she asked that “if the grandchildren of the freedom fighters don’t get quota benefits, should the grandchildren of Razakars get the benefit?”

While such terms may have worked in a previous era, younger Bangladeshis were having none of Hasina’s attempts at painting the protesters as traitors. Spreading their messages via social media platforms, tech-savvy students were able to outmanoeuvre the status quo for weeks. Every attempt to violently suppress the protests backfired, culminating in a final weekend of protests where broad swathes of society were mobilised, including retired military officers and citizens belonging to elite segments of society. What was even more powerful was the fact that a generation which is usually thought of as being unwilling to engage in the real world managed to organise protests for weeks on end, risking death and brutal suppression by the state.

Implications for the larger region

In pushing out an authoritarian ruler, Bangladesh’s Gen-Z has signalled to the world that younger generations are not only politically engaged and tech-savvy, but they have the stamina to outlast a brutal regime deploying violence to maintain its grip on power.

The success of the protests is also likely to concern status quo actors not only in the broader South Asian region, but around the world. There are already efforts being made across the region to control decentralised media, both through legislation and other mechanisms. In the coming weeks, these efforts are likely to intensify as ruling classes seek to limit the ways in which the internet can be used to mobilise protests. Going down this path, however, will be folly, because younger generations will continue to find workarounds against such efforts.

What comes next remains to be seen as the Bangladesh army has announced the formation of an interim government. Student protesters have also said that they will reveal their proposals for the interim government. They have also shown great clarity on the need to ensure civilian supremacy, with the coordinator of the Students Against Discrimination movement saying, “if the army chief declares a state of emergency and forms a government, we will not accept that either.”

In the meantime, reports suggest that arson, violence, and looting is continuing across the country. There are also reports of violence against non-Muslims across Bangladesh, and should disorder continue, a transition to a more democratic country may not occur. To prevent this outcome, younger Bangladeshis must leverage their new-found power to articulate a vision rooted in rule of law, equality, and democracy.

There are countless examples of uprisings led by young citizens, including in places like Egypt, failing to bring about the type of change that was envisioned. In many cases, the status quo strikes back quickly, and with vengeance. Bangladesh, given its history of undemocratic military rule, may also end up going down that path.

For the country to ensure that this does not happen, its younger generation will have to ensure that it remains engaged in the country’s politics. Disengagement after protests will only create space for the status quo to reassert itself, and for things to sustainably change, Bangladesh’s Gen-Z will have to keep up the pressure for as long as it takes.

Header image: Anti-government protesters display Bangladesh’s national flag as they storm Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s palace in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. — AFP