Bangladesh Unrest Updates: About 300 people were killed and thousands injured in violence.
Dhaka:
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was named chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
Muhammad Yunus was appointed to the post by Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin after he held meetings with student leaders and chiefs of the three military services, local media reported late on Tuesday, citing a statement and officials from the president’s office.
Student protesters had threatened more demonstrations if parliament was not dissolved.
The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
About 300 people were killed and thousands injured in violence that had ripped through the country since July.
Here are the LIVE updates on Bangladesh unrest:
Pakistan has said it “stands in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh” as the country witnesses civil unrest which led to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country.
“We are confident that the resilient spirit and unity of the Bangladeshi people will lead them towards a harmonious future,” said a statement from the foreign ministry of Pakistan, from which Bangladesh won independence in 1971.
20 Leaders Of Sheikh Hasina’s Party Found Dead As Protests Continue
Amid the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh, the bodies of 29 people, including 20 Awami League leaders, were found across the country, local media reported. These deaths follow the resignation of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her departure from the country on Monday, the Dhaka Tribune reported.
Sheikh Hasina did not want to resign as Bangladesh Prime Minister and wanted security forces to intensify the crackdown on nationwide protests, but security bosses said the protests cannot be contained by force, according to a report in Prothom Alo newspaper.
The report details what went down in the Prime Minister’s official residence before her last-minute escape in a military aircraft, shortly before hundreds of protesters stormed in and went on the rampage.
Months before her tragic fall as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina had claimed that “conspiracies” were being hatched to topple her government and that she may be assassinated just like her father and independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
She had also alleged a “white man’s” plot to carve a new “Christian country” out of Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Ms Hasina had said she was offered an easy re-election in January – which she anyway achieved in a one-side election boycotted by her arch-rival Khaleda Zia’s party. The condition was that she had to allow a foreign country build an airbase in Bangladesh, she claimed, suggesting this was why her government had always been in trouble.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit this week and fled the country after violent protests demanding her resignation.
Ms Hasina, who started her fifth term as Prime Minister earlier this year, left the capital Dhaka in a military aircraft and landed in India.
Her shocking exit has now impacted the trade between India and Bangladesh, which had grown during her tenure.
- The military-backed appointment of Yunus to temporarily lead Bangladesh is a remarkable turn of events for the economist.
- Over the past couple of years, Yunus has spent much of his time inside Dhaka’s courtrooms, fighting about 200 charges against him and his associates, including allegations of money laundering and graft.
- He and his supporters say Hasina’s government was behind the legal pressure and perhaps saw him as a threat to her power. She denied those accusations.
- Yunus, 84, is best known for founding Grameen Bank and pioneering microcredit – providing tiny business loans to the world’s poorest people, most of them women.
- Though he’s spent much of his life in the public eye, politics is largely unexplored terrain. In 2007, the Bangladeshi government splintered, and the military seized power.
- Yunus, who’d never run for office, considered forming a new party to fill the vacuum, but ultimately scrapped the idea within a few weeks.
- Bangladesh is pinning its hopes on one of the nation’s most acclaimed intellectuals to bring stability to a country scarred by coups and political upheaval.
- Muhammad Yunus, whose work alleviating poverty won him a Nobel Peace Prize, was named the head of a new interim government on Tuesday following the sudden ouster of Sheikh Hasina as prime minister this week.
- Though he’s mostly stayed away from politics, Yunus is one of Bangladesh’s most famous faces and brings considerable clout with Western elites.
- Restoring normalcy to Bangladesh won’t be a small feat for Yunus. Over the past few weeks, clashes between protesters and security personnel cost the lives of more than 300 people, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the South Asian nation’s history.
- nd while Hasina lifted millions out of poverty through garment exports, economic growth has lately stalled in Bangladesh, prompting the International Monetary Fund to step in with bailout funds.