A violent coup in Bangladesh went unnoticed as much of the world remained focused on the war in Ukraine & escalations in West Asia. The western media romanticised the coup as a successful student revolution. In reality, it had all the markings of yet another regime change operation by the USA.
This article discusses the reason that sparked the protests in Bangladesh, how the protestors shifted goal posts and escalated the violence leading to the coup, and the reality vs the western media portrayal of the coup.
The official narrative was that Bangladeshi students peacefully demonstrated against a High Court ruling on civil service jobs quota.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina‘s government appealed the decision at the country’s apex court and successfully got the ruling dismissed. However, violent protests continued even after the High Court decision that precipitated the agitation was overturned by the Supreme Court on 21 July.
Following the June 5th controversial high court job quotas ruling that sparked the student protest, on the 16th of July, Hasina’s government filed a leave-to-appeal petition with the Supreme Court. This was just 2 days after the High Court formally published its full verdict on job quotas. The supreme court was set to hear the government’s appeal on the 7th of August.
The protests should have ended right away on the 16th of July if it was really about job quotas and if it were really unarmed peaceful students upset about the high court ruling on job quotas. But the protests did not stop on the 16th of July. Protestors set the headquarters of the national broadcaster ablaze while many people were trapped in the building. They also torched the vehicles outside the office of the Disaster Management Directorate and set fire to police vehicles preventing them from rendering help.
Since the violent agitation did not let-up, Hasina’s Attorney General prayed to the Chief Justice of the country’s apex court to move the hearing up on Sunday, the 21st of July. On the 21st of July, the Bangladesh government successfully got the Supreme Court to dismiss the High Court order on job quotas.
Again, if the official narrative were true, the protests should have ended at least on the 21st of July. But as any regime change operation goes, goal posts were shifted and the agitators coalesced around a one-point agenda — Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina must step down!
Readers should ask this question: If the protests were really about quotas in jobs and the students were opposed to reservations in jobs, then, how come the Bangladesh judiciary which supported the reservation and reinstated it, is still intact whilst Hasina’s government that scrapped the reservation and successfully appealed against it on behalf of the students, is out? This is a very logical question which none of the western or western-influenced media and political pundits have raised thus far.
Contrary to the US state department narrative, the protests were anything but peaceful. Armed protestors attacked the police and their installations, destroyed infrastructure, ransacked government buildings, and torched the properties of government officials.
Violence escalated, protestors set a medical university hospital on fire, beat police officers to death, and the agitators began marching on their way to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s residence. It culminated in Hasina being forced to flee her country on the 5th of August in a military helicopter to India giving her no time to even submit her resignation or make her statement to the public.
What followed was complete lawlessness. Protestors torched several police stations, set Hindu temples on fire, attacked businesses & houses owned by Hindus & Ahmadis (a minority Muslim sect), burnt people alive, ransacked Sheikh Hasina’s residence, vandalised the mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Hasina’s father and the father of their nation), urinated on the head of the statue of their founding father, and toppled it with a bulldozer crane.
Any keen observer of US empire‘s regime change operations would tell you that the CIA loves a good statue-topple as part of their coup efforts (Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Venezuela). But the BBC portrayed this as an act of “euphoria”, the Washington Post continued to claim that this regime change was just an organic “student revolution” led by “19 year olds in T-shirts” who were “very, very powerful” and the CNN glorified the coup as a “Gen Z revolution” by “mostly young student demonstrators.”
