Hundreds of protesters in Bangladesh have taken out their anger at exiled former prime minister Sheikh Hasina by destroying a household dwelling that got here to symbolise the nation’s independence – and now, they are saying, the authoritarianism they imagine she stood for.
The assault was sparked by a speech that Hasina deliberate to provide to supporters from exile in neighbouring India, the place she fled final 12 months throughout a lethal student-led rebellion in opposition to her 15-year rule. Critics had accused her of suppressing dissent.
The home within the capital, Dhaka, had been dwelling to Hasina’s late father and Bangladesh’s independence chief, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who declared the nation’s formal break from Pakistan there in 1971. He was assassinated within the property in 1975. Hasina later turned the house right into a museum.
Since she fled the nation, a few of her supporters have tried to assemble there however have been attacked by Hasina’s critics, who’ve attacked different symbols of her authorities and social gathering because the rebellion, ransacking and setting fires in a number of buildings.
On Wednesday, some protesters threatened to “bulldoze” the constructing if the previous prime minister went forward together with her speech, which marked the beginning of a month-long protest programme by her Awami League political social gathering. The social gathering is making an attempt to achieve assist amid allegations of assaults on its members and different Hasina backers.
As Hasina started talking, protesters stormed the home and began dismantling the brick partitions, later bringing a crane and an excavator to demolish the constructing.
“They don’t have the facility to destroy the nation’s independence with bulldozers. They might destroy a constructing, however they gained’t have the ability to erase the historical past,” Hasina mentioned in response throughout her speech, even because the demolition continued.
She additionally referred to as on the folks of Bangladesh to withstand the nation’s new leaders and alleged that they took energy by “unconstitutional” means.
Hasnat Abdullah, a pupil chief, had warned media shops in opposition to Hasina’s speech and introduced on Fb: “Tonight Bangladesh can be free of the pilgrimage web site of fascism.”
Most of the protesters chanted slogans demanding Hasina’s execution for lots of of deaths throughout final 12 months’s rebellion in opposition to her. The rebellion was among the many nation’s worst unrest since independence. Hasina urged a UN investigation into the deaths.
In addition they chanted slogans criticising India. An interim authorities in Bangladesh led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has sought Hasina’s extradition however India has not responded.
The nation’s main English-language publication, Day by day Star, reported early on Thursday {that a} wave of assaults in a single day focused a number of homes and companies belonging to Hasina’s Awami League supporters.
The interim authorities, which has been struggling to keep up order and forestall mob justice in opposition to Hasina’s supporters, has accused the previous prime minister of widespread corruption and human rights abuses throughout her rule, which started in 2009.
Hasina’s Awami League in flip has accused the Yunus-led authorities of violating human rights and suppressing Bangladesh’s minority teams, which authorities have denied.
Whereas New York-based Human Rights Watch has hailed the interim authorities’s reforms measures, it cited “a disturbing sample of safety drive abuses” that has reemerged after Hasina’s ousting, this time concentrating on Awami League supporters, together with journalists.
In a report final month, the group mentioned that police are once more arbitrarily detaining folks and submitting mass felony complaints in opposition to unnamed people, which permits the police to intimidate and threaten nearly anybody with arrest.
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