What's happening in Bangladesh? Prime minister flees after hundreds killed in 'Gen Z' protests
Sheikh Hasina Wazed, 76, was forced to resign on Monday after more than a month of student demonstrations over government job restrictions. Nobel prize winning banker Muhammad Yunus, 84, has taken over as interim leader.
Thursday 8 August 2024 16:36, UK
Almost 300 people have died in Bangladesh amid protests that have forced its prime minister to flee the country.
Sheikh Hasina Wazed, 76, was forced to resign on Monday after more than a month of student demonstrations over government job restrictions.
Her long-term rival, former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, 78, was freed from house arrest and so-called 'Gen Z' activists called for Nobel prize winning banker Muhammad Yunus, 84, to take over as interim leader.
Why did the protests start?
Protests began at Dhaka University on 1 July with students demanding Bangladesh's 'quota system' be removed.
It meant that 30% of government jobs were reserved for veterans of the 1971 war of independence and their families. The system was reinstated by the High Court on 1 June after being scrapped in 2018.
Critics of the prime minister's Awami League claimed the quota rules were a way of ensuring her allies remained in key government roles.
More generally, tensions have been mounting among young people, who have suffered higher unemployment rates and led to criticism that growth brought about by the Hasina government has been restricted to her peers and members of the elite.
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Why are people rioting across the UK?
More than 30 million of Bangladesh's 170 million people are currently out of work or education.
As tensions rose, Sheikh Hasina stepped up her anti-protest rhetoric, referring to demonstrators as "terrorists" and threatening to "suppress them with a firm hand".
She imposed nationwide curfews and repeatedly cut internet connection in parts of the country to stop protesters organising.
In Dhaka, there were reports of night-long police raids, resulting in more than 11,000 arrests.
Despite the Supreme Court bowing to pressure and repealing the quota on 21 July, discontent and protests continued across the country.
Between 1 July and 4 August, 285 people are reported to have died amid clashes with police, including 91 on the final day, which made it the deadliest of Sheikh Hasina's 15 years in power.
On 5 August, the military intervened and convinced her to resign. A helicopter was seen leaving her residence and protesters stormed it and other government buildings.
The head of the army General Waker-Uz-Zaman promised an investigation into the violence and set about appointing an interim government after parliament was dissolved.
Who is Sheikh Hasina?
Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of Bangladeshi independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who was assassinated in 1975 - four years after the country's liberation from Pakistan.
Bangladesh was established in 1971 after Bengali nationalists fought for the independence of 'East Bengal' or 'East Pakistan' from the main Pakistani state to the west created at the end of British India in 1947.
The ensuing war led to the deaths of three million people and the rapes of hundreds of thousands of women.
Most of the Rahman family were killed alongside Sheikh Mujibur apart from his two daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana.
After returning from exile in India in 1981, she returned to Bangladesh to become the leader of her father's political party, the Awami League, claiming legitimacy through ties to him.
Her popularity rose throughout the 1980s and the uprising against the military dictatorship of General Hussain Muhammed Ershad.
But meanwhile the Bengali nationalists believed it was them - and their assassinated leader - former president Sheikh Ziaur Rahman - who were responsible for the country's independence.
His wife Khaleda Zia became leader of his party, the Bengali Nationalist Party (BNP), following his murder in 1981 - but Sheikh Hasina beat her to the presidency in 1996.
Battle of the Begums
Although they had worked together during military rule, they soon became enemies in a rivalry now known as the 'Battle of the Begums'.
Begum refers to a Muslim woman of the highest social rank.
After years in opposition, Sheikh Khaleda took power from her rival in 2001, replacing the presidential system with a parliamentary one in a bid to decentralise power.
She also lifted restrictions on foreign investments and made primary school education obligatory and free.
Meanwhile both women were accused of corruption, with Khaleda Zia detained for a year on corruption charges in 2007 and 2008.
Sheikh Hasina was re-elected in 2009, winning an unprecedented fourth term in the January 2024 elections, which many claimed were undemocratic.
Sheikh Khaleda boycotted the 2014 elections and she and her son, who had been in exile since 2008, were convicted of stealing $250,000 (£197,000) in foreign donations for an orphanage set up when she was in power.
She was jailed in 2018 but allowed to be put under house arrest in 2020 on account of her deteriorating health.
Autocracy, corruption and Gen Z alienated
As the 15 years of the Hasina government went on, public feeling around her soured.
During that time, Bangladesh went from one of the world's poorest countries to one of the fastest growing in the region.
According to World Bank figures, its GDP tripled over the past 10 years and 25 million have been lifted out of poverty since the turn of the millennium.
This has largely been due to its rapidly expanding textile industry, which accounts for most of its exports and supplies retail sectors in Europe, the US, and other parts of Asia.
But in recent months textile workers have been killed amid a fight for better working conditions, with the president of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers' Federation beaten to death by armed men after a dispute over unpaid wages in June, according to Amnesty International.
And while Sheikh Hasina has funded various infrastructure projects, young people, particularly university students, have grown increasingly critical that economic prosperity has been confined to the country's capital and its ruling elite.
There have also been widespread accusations of autocracy and censorship, with extrajudicial killings - and opposition figures and journalists charged with spurious offences.
And in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, inflation has sent the cost of living spiralling, further alienating young people and leaving foreign reserves low.
Who is Muhammad Yunus?
Student groups asked the armed forces to appoint Muhammad Yunus as Bangladesh's interim prime minister. He was sworn in after flying back to the country from Paris on Thursday.
Dr Yunus came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s after the famine of 1974 killed an estimated 1.5 million people.
His solution was a series of out-of-pocket loans to the poorest people in his home city of Chittagong in the south east of the country.
In 1983 he formalised his microcrediting system and set up Grameen Bank, which expanded with branches throughout the country and created a model for alleviating poverty in other parts of the world.
By the time it won him the Nobel peace prize in 2006, Dr Yunus had lent $6bn (£4.7bn) to help Bangladesh's housing, university, and business sectors - with a particular focus on women.
He also founded the Yunus Centre thinktank in Dhaka to help support social enterprises.
The banker and social entrepreneur has gone head-to-head with Sheikh Hasina over the years. He considered forming his own political party to run against her in parliamentary elections in 2007, but ultimately abandoned the idea.
Sheikh Hasina has accused him of "sucking blood from the poor", while he says her government has "tortured us… [and] made this country unliveable for people".
Bangladesh's central bank removed him as managing director of Grameen in 2011 and he has faced several court cases since - including ones for defamation, tax irregularities, and breach of food safety laws.
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He has also served as chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University and on the board of directors of the UN Foundation.
Dr Yunus denied all the charges against him. Most recently he was convicted of violating labour laws, which Amnesty International condemned as an "abuse" of the legal system.