International Crimes Tribunal has sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death for alleged crimes against humanity linked to the deadly crackdown on anti-government protests in 2024. This has led to a huge escalation of Bangladesh’s ongoing political turmoil. The verdict, pronounced under tight security, is one of the most important turning points in Dhaka’s modern political history.

Hasina, who has been living in exile in India since she lost power, has called the trial politically motivated and the tribunal a “kangaroo court." She was tried in absentia and this raises serious concerns about due process, independence of judiciary, and brings into question the credibility of Bangladesh’s democratic institutions.

The protests in 2024 which led to the charges were the culmination of years of planning by Jameet-e-Islami through its student organisation, Islami Chhatra Shibir. Jamaat has never supported a separate Bangladesh and accused Hasina-led Awami League party of repression and the systematic destruction of political opposition.

In mid-2024, Bangladesh experienced a nationwide uprising triggered by the quota issue. What began as a focused protest against job-quotas for families of those that led the country’s liberation was interpreted by students as evidence of widespread patronage and entrenched systemic inequality, soon morphed into a national movement against the Hasina-led Awami League government.

As protests mounted, campuses became sites of resistance with Islami Chattra Shibir leading protests, mobilising tens of thousands of people in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi and elsewhere. Islamists (via student organisations affiliated with Jamaat) and Chinese-backed NGOs and scholars (who studied Bangladesh) seemed to have strategically aligned.

Certain student fronts opposed to the government had connections to Chinese scholarship programmes and madrasa networks in Pakistan if one were to go by intelligence networks. This improbable alliance took advantage of popular turmoil, with religious feelings on one side and economic concerns on the other.

In essence, Hasina’s secular, pro-India stance was opposed by both Beijing’s power cadres and proxies of Pakistani descent in Bangladesh. By the end of July, the issue hit a breaking point when masked students wearing green and red head scarves, colours long linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS) backed by Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami, took control of open microphones.

According to BD News24, the protest narrative shifted from technical reforms to outright regime change as newcomers yelled “Hasina Must Go" and even the wartime chant “Pakistan zindabad". According to a Home-Ministry status assessment which was later reprinted in a white paper published in 2024, ICS cadres were “co-ordinating via encrypted chat groups hosted on foreign servers" and had “embedded themselves in at least nine university convening committees."

Due to rampant unrest and a political landscape that was changing in ways that could no longer be reversed, Hasina resigned on August 5, 2024 and fled to India. This was an extraordinary fall for a democratically elected leader who had been in the seat of Bangladeshi politics for more than 15 years.

In retrospect, a deft........

© News18