Students protest for reform of the quota system for government jobs in 2018. Rahat Chowdhury/Wikimedia Commons

Bangladesh is regaining political and social ground after a month of protests, resignations and killings. The unrest began in early July and ended with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country in early August. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), nearly 650 people were killed in the unrest.

In June, a court ruled that a quota system should be reinstated that would reserve 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of those who fought for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971. The quota system was abolished in 2018, and its reinstatement sparked protests by students demanding reforms.

“That’s when the adults joined the students,” says Saqeb Mahbub, liaison officer for the Occupational Wellbeing Commission at the IBA Asia and Pacific Regional Forum and partner at the Dhaka-based law firm Mahbub & Company. “The quota was no longer an issue, and although the government gave in to the original demands and accepted the reforms a few days later, it was too late.”

The protesting students then changed their demands and demanded the resignation of the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, a public apology from then Prime Minister Hasina, and a trial of the police officers who allegedly killed protesters.

As fighting escalated, Hasina fled the country on August 5. Muhammad Yunus, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has since been appointed Bangladesh’s chief adviser, while other key positions such as the chief justice, the inspector general of Bangladesh police and the governor of the Bangladesh Bank have been replaced – a development that many hope signals a move toward democracy. “Now we are in a revolutionary government situation,” says Mahbub.

Since coming to power in 2009, Hasina has used courts, intelligence agencies and police to suppress opposition figures, protesters and human rights activists, says Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladeshi political analyst. According to research by Bangladeshi human rights defenders compiled by the Australian Capital Punishment Justice Project, over 2,500 people are believed to have been extrajudicially executed between 2009 and 2022. Meanwhile, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party claimed in January that over 20,000 of its members had been arrested in the months before, although that figure was denied by Hasina’s government. The cybersecurity law passed in the fall of 2023 only served to further silence dissent, says Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi political scientist and author. The law, he explains, has created a “culture of fear.”

As a result, civil rights organization CIVICUS downgraded Bangladesh’s public space classification to “closed” in December 2023. “For years, law enforcement in Bangladesh was allowed to use both violence and firearms against protesters without being held accountable,” says Josef Benedict, a researcher at CIVICUS who covers the Asia-Pacific region.

The OHCHR has prepared a preliminary overview of the main human rights violations and concerns related to recent events in Bangladesh and published it in mid-August. The OHCHR said there was “strong evidence that the security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force in their response to the situation and this requires further independent investigation.” Benedict says that “the use of force by the Bangladeshi police against protesters resembles patterns we see in countries around the world that are repressive and where human rights and the rule of law are not protected.”

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Police Officers state that any use of force must be guided by the principles of lawfulness, necessity, proportionality and accountability, and that non-violent means must be used before the use of physical force and firearms. “They must use force and firearms only when other means are ineffective or have no prospect of achieving the intended result,” Benedict says. He adds that police officers must only put lives at risk if it is for the purpose of saving or protecting another life.

That the authorities manage the unrest according to such principles is particularly important as, according to the Global Protest Tracker, new protests broke out in 83 countries in 2023 and global peacefulness declined for the 15th consecutive year. Meanwhile, in the context of what it called an unprecedented “supercycle” of elections, commercial insurer Allianz Commercial highlighted in a recent report that “security is a concern in many areas, not only because of the risk of local unrest, but also because of the far-reaching consequences of the election outcome for foreign policy, trade relations and supply chains.”

Amnesty International has launched a global campaign to protect the right to protest and demand accountability for violations of this right. Patrick Wilcken, the expert on military, security and police issues, reminded all states that they have a duty to “respect, protect and enable” the right to protest.

With new leaders in place, there is hope that calm will return to Bangladesh and that reform of the security forces and judiciary will make the country more democratic. In a public statement in August, Yunus said Hasina’s “dictatorship” had “destroyed every institution in the country” and that he would work for national reconciliation. “To say Bangladesh is at a crossroads is an understatement,” Riaz said. The next step, he believes, will be to overhaul the judicial system to ensure the rule of law.

Mahbub believes lawyers and the government should work with the public to restore a culture of constitutionalism in Bangladesh. Hasan urges lawyers to help Bangladeshi activists hold those who have threatened their human rights to account. “They should ensure that the laws are properly followed and things are done by the book,” he says. “They need to organize themselves to uphold the rule of law.”