Joyce Chowdhury
Bangladesh’s Microcredit-famed Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus appealed to world leaders to end violence in Bangladesh where “Students and others protesting alongside them have been attacked by the nation’s police and the Border Guard Bangladesh… High school students have been among the victims.”
Human Rights Watch has urged the international community to pressure on the Bangladesh government to protect rights as “security forces target unarmed students”.
Coalition for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh called on the international community to boycott and sanction rouge individuals, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. And 140 international scholars called on UN rights chief for action against repression in Bangladesh.
Given the extent and ferocity of Shiekh Hasina’s crimes against humanity which she has been committing in her country since 18 July 2024, not only should the international community condemn the regime, but also abandon her by revoking all the awards and recognitions that many of their institutions have conferred upon Bangladesh’s Prime Minister. Sheikh Hasina has successfully used these awards as a veil to hide her gross human rights abuses.
Awards legitimize
So far, Sheikh Hasina has received more than 40 international awards which include UNEP’s 2015 “Champions of the Earth” Award, Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 2021 SDG Progress Award”, Global Centre for Climate Mobility’s 2023 “Asia Climate Mobility Champion Leader Award”, Global Center on Adaptation’s 2024 “Local Adaptation Champions Award”. Several reputable universities, e.g., Boston University and the Australian National University, also conferred upon Sheikh Hasina honorary doctorate degrees.
Part of Sheikh Hasina’s claim to legitimacy lies in her international reputation, which she cunningly cultivated through well-orchestrated public relations gimmicks. For example, even when around 54.40% of funding for climate change mitigation projects was embezzled or wasted through various irregularities and corruptions, she was awarded various climate change and SDG related awards, as listed above!
Sheikh Hasina has built up her international image narrating herself as a victim attributed to her father’s and all his family members’ brutal killing in 1975. Later, she successfully projected herself as the defender of secularism against so-called Islamist extremists to garner support from the West and neighbour India. These well-managed international supports helped her to become and behave as a fascist.
Morphing into a tyrant
Coming to power in 1996 for the first time after successfully co-leading with other opposition parties the movement in 1990 against the decade-long quasi-military-civilian rule of General Ershad, Sheikh Hasina was seen as a champion of democracy. Indeed, she did take some laudable initiatives during her first term.
However, her second coming to power in 2008 marked the beginning of her transformation into an autocrat. Now her regime morphed into a governing arrangement that demonstrate all the “hallmarks of fascism”.
Unsurprisingly, she retained power in successive terms through rigged elections, unprecedented in the history of the country. The elections in 2014 were preceded by a severe government crackdown on the opposition, including widespread arrests, violence, and extrajudicial killings. The ballot boxes were filled the night before the election day in 2018. The recent election on 7 January 2024 was a sham, marked by bans and boycotts, ‘dummy’ candidates, coerced voting and a low voter turn-out.
Following the rigged 2018 election, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported that Bangladesh has turned into an autocracy. In its cover story (30 Nov. 2023), the prestigious Time Magazine expressed grave concerns about the fate of democracy in Bangladesh under the “Hard Power” of Sheikh Hasina.
Intolerance to dissent has no decency under the autocratic regime of Hasina, putting into jail opposition figures and critics among intellectuals and journalists. Torture and forced disappearances by her vicious security forces and party goons have become a common weapon to terrorise and silence critics. Even Nobel Peace Award winning economist, Dr. Yunus is harassed with false criminal cases.
Genocidal brutality
Sheikh Hasina’s fascist character has become manifestly clear to the world during the recent student protests which she attempted to quell with unprecedented brutal force using the armed forces and other state security apparatus. With a “shoot-on-sight” order, they did not hesitate to shoot unarmed people point blank and even from helicopters. Among the killed were an 11-year-old boy, a fifth-grade student, when closing a window of his home to stay safe, and a 6-year old girl playing on the roof of her house.
In the madness of the carnage, the regime used the UN-marked tanks and helicopters to repress unrest and kill innocent people. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed “serious concern” that Bangladesh authorities deployed vehicles with UN markings to suppress protests. The United Nations human rights chief called the attacks on student protesters in Bangladesh “shocking and unacceptable”.
The Council of Foreign Relations has provided a brief account of Sheikh Hasina’s brutal crackdown of popular student unrest, which led to the killing of hundreds of innocent people and injuring many more. The Time Magazine reported, “The ferocity of police and [border guard paramilitary] has surpassed all previous incidents of political violence and state response.” The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published student protesters’ recounts of “brutal” violence by the regime.
Brutality-corruption nexus
The student protests are the expression of pent-up frustrations around the lack of political freedom, government accountability and fair access to opportunities. The New York Times headlined “Behind Bangladesh Protests, Rage Over Inequality”, and says “The protests expressed the “frustration many people feel about how economic growth has been uneven, and there is huge inequality and corruption”.
All the State institutions – the judiciary, bureaucracy, military, and police – are politicised. The capture of the State allowed rampant corruption by the politically connected elites. Bangladesh is the 10th most corrupt country in the world.
As Sheikh Hasina’s regime turned into a kleptocracy after her winning power in 2008, nearly US$50 billion was siphoned off Bangladesh in six years (2009-2015).
There is a clear link between brutality and corruption. The US has imposed sanctions on a former Army Chief for his “significant involvement in corruption”. A former Police Chief is also investigated for wide-scale corruption. Both played a significant role in undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh and institutionalizing political repression.
The veil of Awards must be lifted
Thus, the UN agencies and other organizations must revoke all recognitions conferred on Sheikh Hasina who uses these awards as a veil to hide her regime’s brutality and corruption. Failure to do so will implicate them for complicity in these crimes.