Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Student protest movement ignites Bangladesh

Origins

I first came to Bangladesh in 2014. I came to speak at a graduation ceremony and the Board of Trustees members gave me a tour of their facilities. They said to me, “No Bangladeshi student should have to leave Bangladesh to get a world-class education.” They toured U.S. university campuses often to see what new ideas they could bring to Bangladesh. And, they created an excellent English language institution. I wanted to stay, and so I did. With the exception of the COVID years, I have been here ever since.

I have found Bangladeshis to be courteous to a fault; their food is scrumptious with lots of pepper, just the way I like it, and they have a sharing culture. One of the first things I noticed was how they share with each other. Made me realize just how selfish we are in the U.S. And, juxtaposed to attitudes in the U.S. and U.S. behavior as a state, I found Bangladesh to be refreshing and so out of the way that I could leave behind the stalkers that persisted to harass me in the U.S. 

As a professor here, interacting with hundreds of students in a single semester, I also came to realize how siloed the education system is in the U.S. in terms of understanding historical facts: In the U.S., students aren’t exposed to a 360 degree view of historical events and so, in many respects, the worldview of “We the People” has become warped and inaccurate. The students seemed to shock me with their understanding and perspectives every week! I thrived in such an academically salubrious environment. And, the students seemed to thrive with me. 

As police approached his university firing rubber bullets, Quota Reform Movement student leader Abu Sayeed spread his arms to show his disdain, modeling extraordinary courage. – Screenshot: Jamuna Television

Every year, I toy with returning to the U.S. and every year I decide to stay for “just one more year!” It’s been like that the entire eight years that I have been here. First of all, it’s a long trip to get here from the U.S., either across the Pacific Ocean or deep into Eurasia. So, to get friends and acquaintances to visit me here is quite an undertaking. Plus, Bangladesh doesn’t market itself as a tourist destination, so I’ve had a few visitors but not too many.

Bangladesh is a new country – newer than me! It was born in 1971 after India conspired with Israel to balkanize the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which, at the time, consisted of East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Urdu-speaking Pakistan, today, is what used to be West Pakistan and Bangla-speaking Bangladesh today is what used to be East Pakistan, populated by Bangla speaking Muslims and Hindus. 

Unfortunately, West Pakistani mistrust of East Pakistan paved the way for the country to fracture. India, which is mostly Hindu but has a sizable Muslim population, didn’t want to be surrounded by a powerful and nuclear Muslim state and so enlisted the help of Israel to balkanize Pakistan. India, in concert with the U.S., continues to threaten Pakistan with further balkanization, while India has wrapped itself politically, geographically and economically around Bangladesh. The entire area was once colonized by the U.K., which left this area simmering with unresolved issues as a political hotspot from Myanmar to Kashmir. And, of course, the entire formerly colonized world has now been neocolonized by the United States and The West: globalized and neoliberalized.

Bangladesh is a textiles powerhouse – along the old silk road – and in today’s economy, inexpensively produces readymade garments for the U.S.and The West. Bangladeshis are industrious, capable, honest, conservative and deeply religious. Bangladeshis are mostly Sunni Muslim with some Shia Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Indigenous religions and beliefs, and non-believers. In colonial times, this was all a part of “India” ruled by England. Thus, some Bangladeshis have lived through Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi identities. 

The colonial legacy is more reality than legacy as colonial attitudes still thrive amidst the neocolonial international structure that the U.S. governs on behalf of the former colonial masters of Western Europe. Thus Bangladesh, in the conduct of its foreign policy, strives to live up to its motto: Friendship To All, Malice Toward None. Therefore, Bangladesh, despite its domestic political turmoil, has held on to its stable personality toward its neighbors and the international community.

As I previously wrote, neocoloniality pervades the country in which the most prestigious and sought after job is with a company that produces a product that causes cancer; prestigious jobs are the ones available at U.K. companies like Unilever and the prestigious lifestyle is Western, even if it’s accompanied by pornography, drug abuse, sexual deviancy, amorality and the like. The idea of a culture war is very real here with the “pull” of the idea that Westernization equals modernization. 

The Chinese model of development by eliminating dire poverty within a generation is a very real model to emulate when just a few generations ago, Henry Kissinger labeled Bangladesh “a basket case.” My aim is to emphasize that these concepts of colonialism, neocolonialism, globalization, neoliberalism, and more are alive and breathing in Bangladesh.

‘The Great Culling Machine’ and the quota system working in tandem in Bangladesh

Bangladesh quota system graphic by Prothom Alo newspaper

Catherine Austin Fitts was one of my visitors. She came to have some deep discussions with me about U.S. politics but also took the opportunity to meet and observe my students. She theorized what she saw in operation as “The Great Culling Machine,” with The West able to thrive by pulling the best and the brightest Bangladeshi students away from Bangladesh in order to feed the beast of neocolonialism and neoliberalism. She saw this international economic structure serving the interest of The West to the detriment of developing countries like Bangladesh. Of course, participating in this structure is marketed to students in Bangladesh (and I would say all over the so-called Third World) as a badge of prestige. After all, The West is best. 

And, for generations, few openly questioned this setup. But, behind the scenes, I believe that Bangladeshis were not satisfied to leave their country, to leave their family and friends to help build other countries while their own country remained in dire need of their brains and brawn. (I remember attending a conference in Mexico City at which Mexicans expressed their desire to NOT be a part of the Great Culling Machine and leave their family and friends to go and serve new U.S. masters as day laborers, lawn manicurists and construction helpers. I believe it was this very same sentiment that was percolating inside Bangladesh, also.) This is yet another example of the neocoloniality of the current structure of the international system which still benefits a few – that Vladimir Putin calls “The Golden Billion” – at the expense of the many and is a part of the colonial legacy, a centuries-old form of globalization.

This prestige-seeking in foreign Western lands gave political and economic “space” for the creation of a quota system, originally devised to reward the Freedom Fighters of 1971 who helped to liberate the country from West Pakistan. But, that same quota system evolved to include Freedom Fighters and their children, women, Indigenous, persons from rural areas and physically disabled individuals. As the Freedom Fighters and their children died, even their grandchildren were included in the expanded quota system. 

The quota system came to represent how 56% of the public sector jobs available would be filled, including the much-coveted Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) which actually runs the state on behalf of the people. Unfortunately, with endemic corruption at epidemic levels, the governing Awami League Party has been able to use the expanded quota system to embed its operatives into every sphere of state activities. What started out as a 7% quota, ballooned into a 56% quota system. That means that only 44% of the most important jobs in the country were selected on merit. And in reality, it was even less than that due to corruption of the quota system and endemic corruption in Bangladesh. More on that later.

So, the governing party was able to embed its members in the state apparatus on the one hand and. on the other, shield the entire system from competition from Bangladesh’s best and brightest. Add to that, Bangladesh’s “development” strategy of sending its unskilled and semi-skilled workers out of the country and you have a formula to entrench political partisanship within every aspect of the political and social and economic life of the state.

Every year, thousands of Bangladeshis leave Bangladesh to go and work to build other countries in very much the same way Mexicans and other Latin Americans are pouring across the U.S. border now – except these Bangladeshis are sought after by labor syndicates in other countries. like United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia etc. Many of these workers return to Bangladesh in body bags because they are worked to death or worse. Remember, more than 6,000 such foreign workers ventured to Qatar to ready Qatar to host the FIFA World Cup in soccer, but returned home in body bags. Many of them were Bangladeshis. Yet, Bangladesh, itself, is in need of their labor for the completion of its own road and sewerage, clean water, and education and health projects. 

However, every worker in a foreign country represents money in the form of remittances returned to Bangladesh for family upkeep, etc. Thus, both the quota system and the “development” policy and the Great Culling Machine all work together to the detriment of building healthy democratic institutions for the people. Despite all of this, Bangladesh has sustained over 8% growth each year that I have been here, which I believe is due to the hard working entrepreneurial people who live here. Imagine how much more they could have grown, with equity in mind, if they did not have the pull of the Great Culling Machine and the push of petty political interests and a development model that relies on sending the strongest and the best workers out of the country.

Bangladeshi police block a mass march that the Quota Reform Movement calls the “Bangla Blockade” on July 6, 2024. – Photo: Rayhan9d

Now, to begin to wrap this up, I wrote that the 7% quota system soared to more than 56%. It was 56% on paper but ended up being even more due to a phenomenon that I learned about upon arriving here called “Question Leak.” That means that politically connected or wealthy students, or families who were hungry enough for their students to do well could “buy” the exam answers, thereby inflating the scores of the non-meritorious. Sometimes even the teachers would sell the exam to students so that they could earn a little extra income because they are so underpaid. It was a system that worked well for the individuals involved, but was a terrible drag on the country. However, nonetheless, very few participants in the Question Leak schemes were thinking about the country. There were also examples of slots to other family members in order to advance the entire family. 

In other words, with the “Question Leak” as a persistent problem, those who could – but refused to – participate in the corruption were put at a distinct disadvantage. I know lots of students who refuse to participate in the corruption, but their acts of conscience were swamped by those who didn’t care, and the honest and ethical students, sadly, paid the price. And so did Bangladesh. Because now, they were pushed to get culled by The West, building other people’s countries. But, they were looked up to for doing it! Even praised. But, suppose they love their country and they don’t want to see it languishing (even at 8% growth rates per annum) without them when it could thrive with them! This is the backdrop for what happened over the past few days. 

#SaveBangladeshiStudents

On July 1, 2024, history began anew in Bangladesh with the Quota Reform Movement. Students in every corner of the country were organized and participated overwhelmingly in these protests. The reason you are reading this article now and are wondering what happened is not even because of the actions and transformational leadership of these students. It is because of the overwhelming and shocking violence that was visited upon their peaceful movement by the Bangladeshi police at the behest of the prime minister and other ministers of the state. 

Bangladeshi police officers opened fire on innocent students with backpacks on their backs. One student, a friend of a student of mine, was shot in the mouth by the police. That student died almost instantly. Video can be seen of Bangladeshi police firing their weapons on the campus of BRAC University in Bangladesh’s largest and capital city, Dhaka. There is even video of a young student, lying dead, atop a tank which was used to ram protesting students. The tank continued to drive around the city with the student’s lifeless body on top. 

How could the driver of the tank not know of the dead body’s continued presence on the tank? 

Deutsche Welle German TV reports that the Bangladesh police even used at least one APC vehicle with United Nations marking on it to attack the protesting students. Outspoken Bangladeshi government leaders called the students insulting names to the international press; they used characterizations like “razakars” (which means traitors who did not support the 1971 Liberation War from Pakistan) and “rioters.” 

But, I was here real time and my students were communicating with me – hysterical that they were being targeted and that their friends were being attacked and murdered. It seems to me that the police were the rioters. And, these brave students are the truest patriots of Bangladesh. Incredibly, the prime minister and her ministers engaged in a war of words with the students even as the students were being murdered on the streets of the major cities across the country, not just in Dhaka. 

Bangladesh Quota Reform Movement student leaders Asif Mahmud, Abu Baker Majumdar and Rifat Rashid

The scions of the Awami League Party, the ruling party of Bangladesh, unleashed their ambitious student supporters who even threatened to kill the student protesters and seemed to target their attacks on the protesting women students. Yesterday’s news was that 21 bodies, including a child, had been turned over as “unclaimed” to be buried. At the same time, the prime minister toured government facilities and demanded justice for those who had damaged government property. The blood frenzy was so bad that more than one student likened what the Bangladeshi police were doing to what Israel does as it routinely targets and kills Palestinian children.

Even more shocking, the government seemingly all along was on the side of the students on the substantive matter of quota reform. So, how did it all go so wrong?

I am absolutely certain that this movement and the government’s response to it will be studied for a long time to come. I have already identified four academic papers that could come from my observations over the past few harrowing days. And I have only touched the surface of my thoughts as a result of the student movement. And … it’s not even over yet. The government has not acceded to the four immediate demands laid down by the students:

A) Return the internet access to the status quo ante;

B) Eliminate the curfew;

C) Withdraw law enforcement from school campuses; and

D) Ensure the security of the protest coordinators (who have been kidnapped, attacked, and in one case that we know about, killed).

And, it’s my understanding from at least one news report that the governing party might be planning a rally for tomorrow (Friday, July 26)! So, even as the government is filing cases against the protesters as a beginning of its law fare against the students, the situation is still quite fluid and anything can happen. In the meantime, I will continue to make the most of the limited internet access that we now have; I will keep you updated as events unfold. And I will continue to read – the best activity in which to partake when there is no internet access! I have been reading the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, a revolutionary who opposed Marxism and is known as the father of anarchism. I found many of his quotes to be applicable to the current situation, but since I am a student of and teach “Leadership and Change,” I think for now I’d like to focus on what I learned about my students that isn’t really new news at all. 

Bakunin said, “A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions.”

That is the way I have tried to live my life and I think these Bangladeshi students just learned their own truths – about themselves and about their country. I know that they are 100% of my future and of Bangladesh’s future. And from what I have seen, Bangladesh and I are secure with these young people in stewardship of our futures. I do believe that these protesting students are the transformational leaders that Bangladesh has been waiting for. They have already made their mark on the conscience of this country. This movement has created too many martyrs and at the same time an abundance of transformational leaders.

I can hear the Eshar Prayer Call – the last prayer call for the day. It’s also time for me to wrap up this installment of what I am witnessing in Bangladesh. Ever since July 1, Eshar Prayer has sounded so beautiful to me and at the same time so sad. It is clear that many Bangladeshis will be taking stock of their country and looking at it and its governance in a much different light. One student remarked, “Quota Reform? Looks like we need Country Reform!”

Source: https://sfbayview.com/