Yunus urges Bangladeshis to resist re-emergence of autocracy

Dhaka, Jul 1 (PTI) Bangladesh's interim government chief Muhammad Yunus on Tuesday urged his countrymen to resist the re-emergence of autocracy as he launched a month-long programme to mark last year's mass protests that ousted longtime prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

"We will observe this (July Uprising) every year so that we do not have to wait 16 years for another uprising again. We will do this every year so that we can destroy it immediately if there is any sign of dictatorship," he said.

Yunus said the celebration was not just a matter of emotion or expression of outrage but rather a manifestation of vigilance so the autocracy or dictatorship could be gouged “before it even shows its first leaf”.

He said throughout July and August, the celebration would revive every day of the last year for which the young students, commoners, rickshaw pullers, and workers were martyred and injured.

"We will do this every year so that dictatorship cannot raise its head again in any way," Yunus said.

  The movement started in July last year under a platform called Students against Discrimination (SAD), demanding reforms in a controversial quota system for government jobs, but turned violent, resulting in the ouster of the government on August 5, 2024, when Hasina left the country for India on a military aircraft.

Yunus flew from Paris three days later to take charge as the interim government’s Chief Adviser as the SAD nominee. He subsequently disbanded Awami League and its students' front, saying the ban would remain enforced until their leaders were tried.

  Most leaders of the Awami League and ministers of the past regime, including several officials, were arrested or were on the run at home and abroad as the government initiated their trial for brutal actions to tame the uprising, leaving several hundred people, including students, dead.

Hasina and her regime leaders are being prosecuted in Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD), formed in 2010 for trying hardened collaborators of Pakistani troops during the 1971 Liberation War on charges like crimes against humanity.

According to a UN rights office report, some 1,400 were killed between July 15 and August 15, 2024, as retaliatory violence continued even after the fall of the past regime.

  "We want the unity that was created among people of all classes, professions and ages of this country in July last year to be consolidated again this July," Yunus said.

  He said the mass uprising’s immediate target was fulfilled, but there was a great dream behind it – to reconstruct a new state system and build a new Bangladesh. PTI AR ZH ZH