When the movement began, there was little to suggest that it would end with Bangladesh’s prime minister fleeing the country and thousands of people surging into her official residence.

There were no vast crowds then, no nationwide shutdown, no soldiers on the streets. There was a court ruling, a gathering outside a university library and a political grievance that many Bangladeshis believed they had encountered before.

On June 4, 2024, the High Court Division of Bangladesh’s Supreme Court declared invalid a government circular concerning the quota system in public-sector recruitment. The next day, students gathered outside the Central Library at the University of Dhaka, demanding the restoration of the previous quota arrangement. 

Leaders of Chhatra Shakti, including Nahid Islam, were among them. Students formed human chains and held small protest programs. I was there, covering the events as a journalist.

At the time, the quota protests were only one source of unrest on campus. University teachers were waging a separate movement against the government’s newly announced pension scheme. 

The two campaigns unfolded alongside each other until educational institutions closed for the Eid-ul-Azha holidays. The student organizers decided to wait, assess the situation and determine their next steps.

The thing that followed was an escalation that even those of us watching closely could not fully anticipate.

Small demonstrations began appearing across campuses. Then July arrived, and the movement acquired structure and momentum. Blockades followed demonstrations; shutdown programs followed blockades. 

Protests spread beyond Dhaka. At the center of it all were Dhaka University and Shahbagh, places that have repeatedly served as stages for Bangladesh’s political ruptures.

On July 11, the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student organization affiliated with the governing Awami League, held a news conference at Madhur Canteen. Its leaders said they supported a “logical” resolution of the quota dispute, urged students to return to classes and examinations and announced a door-to-door campaign to explain their position.

I asked Saddam Hussain, then the BCL president, about the organization’s record.

The BCL had previously supported the movement demanding an end to the affiliation of seven government colleges with Dhaka University, I said, but was later accused of disrupting that movement. Would it do the same thing now?

Saddam rejected the premise. It was unfair, he said, to accuse the BCL in that manner. He called my question inappropriate.

Outside Madhur Canteen, the political ground was already shifting.

The protesters intensified their programs. The BCL announced counterprograms. Yet the dividing line was not as clear as the competing announcements suggested. Many BCL activists themselves supported quota reform. 

They were increasingly trapped between their views on the issue and their allegiance to the organization. Then, on July 14, came the remark that changed the emotional character of the movement.

Sheikh Hasina had returned from China and was holding a news conference. Responding to a question from the journalist Prabhash Amin about the quota protests, she made a remark that students understood as suggesting that they were the “grandchildren of Razakars” — a reference to those who collaborated with Pakistan’s military during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.

The video spread rapidly. At Dhaka University, indignation turned into something more volatile. Students poured out of the residential halls. Female students broke open locked gates to join the demonstrations. Across the campus, one slogan began drowning out almost everything else:

“Tumi Ke? Ami Ke? Razakar, Razakar.” Who are you? Who am I? Razakar, Razakar.

The students had taken an insult and turned it into an accusation against the government.

The next day, Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader summoned BCL leaders and affiliated organizations. The “BCL is enough,” he said, to tackle the protesters.

By noon on July 15, groups of protesters were heading toward Dhaka University’s residential halls to bring students outside. BCL leaders and activists were trying to keep protesters inside, in some places by standing at gates or hanging locks.

Several movement coordinators called me, asking what was actually happening.

From what I could determine then, I told them the situation was not yet as grave as it appeared. If they arrived in a large procession, I thought, they could probably manage it. Most ordinary students were sympathetic to the movement. Even a significant number of BCL activists privately supported the demand for quota reform.

Then the provocations began.

As protesters made announcements over microphones, BCL activists around Zia Hall, Jasimuddin Hall, Mujib Hall and Bijoy Ekattor Hall mocked them. Words became arguments. At Bijoy Ekattor Hall, arguments became a clash. Several students were injured, including Asif Mahmud.

Soon, central BCL leaders and leaders of its Dhaka University units emerged aggressively from the residential-hall areas. BCL activists attacked protesters, scattering them. Female students were severely assaulted.

Activists from Dhaka city, Dhaka College, Jagannath University and the seven affiliated colleges joined the attacks. The protesters fought back in places.

For hours, the campus remained a battleground. Only after nightfall did the clashes begin to subside.

But by then, something more consequential than the street fighting was happening inside the university.

Shahidullah Hall, Amar Ekushey Hall and Fazlul Huq Hall, which housed students from the university’s science faculties, had effectively fallen under the control of protesters. Students declared that BCL members would no longer be allowed inside.

BCL activists tried to return. They could not. Students stood guard at the gates.

At about 7 that evening, I was standing outside Shahidullah Hall when a young man approached me. “Brother, I am Hasib,” he said.

He was Ubaydur Rahman Hasib, now the assistant general secretary of Amar Ekushey Hall Sangsad. Hasib knew me. I still do not know how.

Around us, protesters had set tires on fire. Students guarded the entrances. The university I knew was being reordered, hall by hall, gate by gate.

Nationwide protests were announced for the following day.

At Dhaka University, students gathered around the Shaheed Minar alongside activists from Chhatra Dal, Chhatra Shibir and left-wing student organizations. The BCL positioned itself around the Raju Sculpture.

This time, the protesters came better prepared. Yet fear remained everywhere.

Rumors raced through university Facebook groups: senior BCL figures had disappeared; hall presidents and general secretaries were leaving; prospective leaders were fleeing one after another.

At first, they were rumors. Then BCL leaders actually began leaving.

That night, around 10 female BCL leaders, including Atika, were reportedly dragged out of Ruqayyah Hall. A source inside the hall sent me photographs and videos, and I was the first journalist to publish the news with their names.

Female BCL leaders then began leaving other halls. Reports circulated that leaders at Eden College had escaped wearing burqas. Around 3 in the morning, students at Zahurul Haque Hall were chanting anti-BCL slogans.

I tried to sleep. I could not close my eyes. After Fajr prayers, I remained awake, exhausted. Then I heard protests coming from Zia Hall.

BCL leaders from other halls tried to persuade the students to stand down. Their efforts failed. Students chased them away and vandalized their rooms, targeting them because of their alignment with the government.

A political organization that had dominated Dhaka University’s residential halls was losing them in a matter of hours. By July 17, the movement had crossed another threshold.

With the BCL pushed out of the halls, the protesters were no longer confronting primarily a student organization. They were confronting the state.

Security forces fired tear gas. Confrontations broke out repeatedly. Near TSC and Ruqayyah Hall, police arrested Akhter Hossain, now the member secretary of the National Citizen Party.

That day, protesters had planned a gayebana janaza, a funeral prayer in absentia, for those killed in the unrest, including Abu Sayed, Faisal Ahmed Shanto and Wasim.

Akhter had been expected to lead the prayer. After police arrested him, Tarek Reza, who is now also associated with the NCP, took his place. Despite the tense environment and numerous obstacles, the prayer was held.

By evening, the Dhaka University administration had announced the indefinite closure of the university and its residential halls. Water and electricity were cut off to force students to leave.

They left the buildings. The movement did not leave with them.

Some students moved into friends’ homes or stayed with relatives in Dhaka. Others returned to their villages. But the confrontation was spreading beyond the university.

The Awami League government shut down the internet. Security forces raided residential neighborhoods across Dhaka. Arrests mounted. Protesters announced a “complete shutdown.”

And every day, the number of dead grew. I continued speaking with the coordinators. On July 19, my phone rang from an unfamiliar number. It was Abdul Kader.

By then, Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder had been taken away by law enforcement agencies from different locations.

Kader began reading. There were nine demands. He asked me to record his words and write them down carefully. He would send me the written version afterward, he said.

Inside newsrooms, there was uncertainty over whether the demands were authentic and whether newspapers should publish them. I knew Kader personally and confirmed that he was indeed one of the movement’s coordinators. The nine points were genuine.

Several newspapers subsequently published them.

The first demand called for Sheikh Hasina to apologize. Some newspapers omitted it and therefore presented the document as an eight-point program.

But there were nine. I also knew that Kader was communicating with various anti-authoritarian political and social forces during this period. For journalists covering Dhaka University, ordinary reporting had become an improvised exercise.

The internet disappeared completely, returned partially and disappeared again. Many of us took shelter in the TSC guest room, gathering information and trying to transmit reports whenever communications allowed.

People came to the University Journalists’ Association office searching for information. Protesters came asking us for updates about the movement in which they themselves were participating. Food became difficult to find.

I eventually found someone who could provide meals for those of us staying at TSC.

By August 1, six coordinators who had been held by law enforcement agencies and allegedly subjected to abuse were released. While in custody, they had announced that the movement was over, an announcement they later said had been forced upon them.

But the movement had already grown beyond the ability of six people to end it.

Chhatra Dal, Chhatra Shibir, left-wing student organizations, other student groups, cultural activists, the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and other political forces were participating through different networks and strategies.

That afternoon, the government issued a notification banning Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatra Shibir as political organizations.

Jamaat and Shibir condemned the decision, as did other political parties. But they did not organize separate street programs over the ban. The uprising remained the priority.

The following day produced an image of Bangladesh that would have been difficult to imagine only weeks earlier. On August 2, Muslim worshippers marched from Baitul Mukarram National Mosque.

Another procession, led by Anu Muhammad, set out from the National Press Club. One crowd chanted “Naray-e-Takbir.”

The other invoked the old internationalist slogan: “Duniyar Mojdur, Ek Hou” — workers of the world, unite. They came from ideological traditions that had spent decades opposing one another.

At the Shaheed Minar, they converged.

From there, the “Droho Jatra,” or March of Resistance, demanded the resignation of the government. Professor Salimullah Khan had earlier organized a human chain calling for Hasina’s resignation, drawing people from different professions and backgrounds.

The quota movement was disappearing into something larger. By August 3, it had acquired a single demand.

Part of the student-citizen solidarity gathering at the Shaheed Minar that day was coordinated by Mahfuz Alam. He had been involved with the movement in various ways from its early stages and would later be described in a newspaper report as its “mastermind.”

At the Shaheed Minar, organizers declared the one-point demand: The government must resign.

A “March to Dhaka” was announced for August 6. Then, for strategic reasons, organizers moved it forward to August 5. Rumors again flooded social media.

Pro-Awami League and pro-BCL accounts claimed that thousands of their activists were gathering at TSC at night. Old videos circulated, creating the impression that a massive pro-government mobilization was already underway.

Several journalists, including me, went to see for ourselves. There was no such gathering. We photographed the empty scene. My colleagues broadcast live on Facebook, showing what was actually happening and debunking the claims.

On August 4, people began entering Dhaka from across the country. They were coming for the March to Dhaka. The attacks by law enforcement agencies continued. Then came August 5.

Police were everywhere around Dhaka University. Teachers affiliated with Sada Dal held solidarity programs. Professional organizations joined the demonstrations.

At Chankharpul, I watched police open fire on people. I saw people collapse in front of me and die. At Palashi, I saw people resist.

Somewhere amid the chaos, I became separated from my senior colleagues. Eventually, only Borhan Uddin, Channel 24’s university correspondent, remained with me. Around noon, police stopped us.

They appeared to think we were students participating in the uprising.

We showed them our official press identification cards. They still refused to accept that we were journalists. Then, suddenly, the mood among the police began to change.

Information was circulating that the chief of army staff would address the nation. There were reports that Sheikh Hasina might resign.

Security forces began preparing to retreat to safer positions. Police started stepping aside. And the people came through.

The streets that had been controlled by security forces began filling with protesters. The balance of power seemed to change almost visibly, minute by minute. I moved with the crowd.

Jobair, the Dhaka University correspondent for Samakal, was with me as we headed toward Ganabhaban, the official residence of the prime minister.

We entered with the human tide. Inside, I watched the end of an era through the behavior of ordinary people. There was anger, certainly. Years of accumulated resentment against Sheikh Hasina seemed to spill into the rooms and grounds of the residence. 

People expressed frustrations and emotions that, for years, they had felt unable to express openly.

But anger was not the only emotion there. There was relief. Some people fell to the ground in prostration. They prayed. They thanked God. The government that had seemed immovable only weeks earlier was gone.

I thought back to June 5: a small gathering outside the Central Library, a few human chains, students arguing about quotas. Then came the slogans, the locked halls, the attacks, the nights without sleep, the disappearing internet, the arrests, the funeral prayer, the nine demands, the one demand and, finally, the crowds moving toward Ganabhaban.

A movement over government jobs had become a revolt against a government. But removing a government is easier than fulfilling the expectations created by its fall.

—

Siddik Faruk is a Researcher of the Press Institute Bangladesh