This is how Hasina loses control and falls

Assigned defenders pulled the rug from under her feet and the prime minister lost her control over the helm of affairs and eventually fled the country amid a student-mass upsurge.

This is how Sheikh Hasina was ousted as premier on August 5, 2024, as reported in detail by the UN fact-finding mission on what happened in Bangladesh during the changeover.

According to the report, released Wednesday, extrajudicial killings took place to suppress the 'March on Dhaka' (5 August) announcements by the protest leaders. And information obtained by intelligence agencies gave Bangladesh's political leadership the knowledge that the protest movement was planning a major protest march towards the centre.

On the morning of 4 August, the then Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the National Security Council which the chiefs of Army, Air Force, Navy, BGB, DGFI, NSI, Police and its Special Branch, and the Ministers of Home Affairs, Education and Foreign Affairs attended, according to participants. "They discussed re-imposing and enforcing a curfew to prevent the 'March on Dhaka'."

After the meeting, the Home Affairs Ministry declared that "a strict curfew would continue indefinitely without breaks, while the Prime Minister issued a statement describing the protesters as terrorists and appealing to countrymen to suppress these terrorists with a strong hand", the report says.

A second meeting was held in the late evening of 4 August at the Prime Minister's residence, attended by the Prime Minister herself, the Minister of Home Affairs, the heads of Army, Police, RAB, BGB and Ansar/VDP, the Principal Staff Officer of the Armed Forces Division and the Army's Quartermaster-General, among others. During the meeting, the Army Chief and other security officials reassured the Prime Minister that Dhaka could be held, according to senior officials.

"A plan was agreed in which the Army and BGB would deploy alongside police to block protesters from accessing central Dhaka, if necessary by force. The Army and BGB were to block access routes into central Dhaka by deploying armoured vehicles and troops and not letting protesters pass, while the police was to "control mobs," the UN report quotes senior officials who participated in those meetings as saying.

"Consistent with these testimonies, at 00:55 am on 5 August, the former Director-General of the Special Security Force, which was Sheikh Hasina's personal bodyguard force, sent two consecutive WhatsApp messages to the Director-General of the BGB.

"According to hardcopies of those messages provided to OHCHR, the first message forwarded a broadcast message that appeared to be from protest leaders informing marchers on routes to take into central Dhaka. The second message appeared to contain a video outlining an order of battle, distinguishing a first and second line of defence, a third long-range unit, a backup unit and a rearguard, along with advice from protest leaders on how to circumvent these lines of defence."

On the morning of 5 August, as the report runs, "Army and BGB personnel largely stood by and did not implement their assigned roles in the plan."

"One senior official testified that the Army had not deployed the forces that it promised to deploy, while another noted that BGB let some 10,000-15,000 protesters per hour pass by entry points it was supposed to control. A third senior official recounted how he knew that something was going wrong when he saw CCTV footage showing 500-600 protestors moving from Uttara towards central Dhaka without the Army stopping them.

"A fourth senior official personally called the Prime Minister to inform her that things were not going according to plan."

The UN Human Rights Commission report described how loss of life and property took place during the turmoil. "Based on deaths reported by various credible sources, the report estimates that as many as 1,400 people may have been killed between 1 July and 15 August, and thousands were injured, the vast majority of whom were shot by Bangladesh's security forces," the report reads.

At least six journalists were killed at or around protests in Dhaka, Sylhet and Sirajganj. Around 200 journalists were injured, according to figures provided by a reputable civil-society organisation.

In some of the cases, for which OHCHR obtained firsthand testimony, journalists were victims of security forces indiscriminately firing at protesters.

However, in other cases, journalists were directly targeted with violence due to exercise of their profession, including in some cases by protesters. "Photojournalists were especially subject to aggressions by different actors who did not wish their involvement in events to be recorded, says the report.

mirmostafiz@yahoo.com