Mehnaz Tabassum, a Bangladeshi Canadian, was relieved to learn Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned without further bloodshed.Supplied
It was a sleepless night for Mehnaz Tabassum and her husband at their Toronto home as they closely followed the news in Bangladesh, where student protests have turned deadly in the past few weeks.
Around 4:30 a.m. on Monday, the Bangladeshi Canadian received a phone call from her brother-in-law back home and heard him screaming: “We won, we won.”
She jumped out of bed, turned on a YouTube live-streaming channel and saw hundreds of thousands of people out on the street in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, celebrating the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled the country after 15 years in power that have been marred by accusations of repression.
“I feel very relieved,” said Ms. Tabassum, a PhD student at Western University. “I just sat down on the couch, because I was just like, ‘Oh my God, this actually happened without any further insane bloodshed this morning,’ which was something we were really, really, really scared of.”
The protests that began in June with students peacefully demanding reforms to the government job quota system had morphed into a national uprising against Ms. Hasina, after the government cracked down with force. At least 11,000 people have been arrested and 300 people were killed in recent weeks.
It has not been easy for Ms. Tabassum to get hold of her family, as Bangladesh’s internet has been cut off by authorities at times. She said she was particularly worried about her elder sister, Fahima Tabassum, a professor at Jahangirnagar University, who was among other teachers and parents traumatized by the attack on her students on campus.
The last message Ms. Tabassum received from her sister on Sunday night was asking her to pray for them and hope they would make it through the next day, when protesting students were calling on people from across the country to march to Dhaka to force Ms. Hasina to resign.
After she stepped down Monday, Bangladesh’s army chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, announced that an interim government will be formed and that the deaths of protesters will be investigated. People cheered and waved flags, defying a military curfew and storming the Prime Minister’s residence.
In Toronto, at least 50 Bangladesh community members had a celebration in Dentonia Park around 5 a.m., chanting slogans and singing after they heard the news. They have organized daily protests in the park that houses the Shaheed Minar, the monument to commemorate those killed during the Bengali Language Movement demonstrations of 1952 in then-East Pakistan, which gained independence as Bangladesh in 1971.
“We are feeling very much happy. We are very much excited. We’re feeling like we got the independence for the second time. Now no one is afraid of raising their voices,” said Md. Mustafizur Rahman, who just graduated from Centennial College as an international student.
Another international student, Samiya Arefin Katha, also went to Dentonia Park in the early morning and said she exchanged messages with family members back home who were overwhelmed with joy about how they celebrated the victory in different parts of the globe.
The night before, United Bangladeshi Students in Canada, which Ms. Katha is a part of, organized a solidarity protest along Danforth Avenue. Ms. Katha said she feared a massacre in Bangladesh on Monday and worried about whether her marching friends would be able to return home.
“I’m terrified that this might happen to my family. However, my family and me, we never cared. We are really daring. We would be like, okay, die for my country,” she said, adding that her father was often on the front line of the protest and made their home a shelter for protesters to rest.
While Bangladeshis in Canada are excited about the victory back home, they also worry about whether the new government would bring the justice and peace the people hoped for.
Mr. Rahman said he heard some current members of Parliament in Bangladesh may flee the country, and he called on Ottawa to ban them from entering Canada.
“The people of Bangladesh don’t want to live in the same place as those who have killed innocent children, like students as little as six years old, to 24 years old. We don’t want the Canadian government to allow them to enter into Canada to give them a safe exit,” he said.
Saad Hammadi, a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont., said that, while the interim government faces challenges to recovering the state and the economy, “the only way to get out of this volatile situation is by ensuring people’s participation in the decision-making process, transitioning to a democratically elected, transparent and accountable government at the earliest.”
But a more immediate demand among protesters is accountability for the Hasina government’s deadly response to their demonstrations.
“It’s just not the end yet. We still have to get a proper trial for those who have been killed. We still have to have those who actually were the attackers being brought under proper judgment,” Ms. Katha said.
Mr. Hammadi said the new government has the opportunity to bring perpetrators to justice by proactively inviting the United Nations to form a commission of inquiry and extending its full co-operation with the procedure – adding that the international community must press for the same.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Samiya Arefin Katha. This version has been updated.