Bangladeshi democracy is just window-dressing 

By Claudia Webbe 

Support for both the students and the workers of Bangladesh is an imperative, as they fight unjust and brutal government impositions, says CLAUDIA WEBBE

DESPITE brutal state repression of protest including the murder of protesting students, the public desecration of the bodies of victims and a shutdown of educational institutions in Bangladesh, the resistance movement of students and others in that country has continued to gather strength.

The Bangladeshi government has admitted that at least 147 protesters have been killed so far by state police and militias, but Amnesty International puts the number at over 200 and says that the Bangladeshi government has issued “shoot to kill” orders to its forces, including army units and militias, to put down the unrest.

Anger at unfair and nepotistic government employment practices has swelled into a general rage at what protesters consider to be structural injustice and corruption under a dictatorial regime.

As well as the violence already inflicted on demonstrators, the government has declared a nationwide curfew, imposed a communications blackout, arguably to try to limit international awareness, and has used troops against protesters.

In one viral and shocking video, the body of a student was carried through Dhaka on top of an armoured troop carrier before falling off and being left in the street.

The unrest began as protests against the Bangladeshi Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate a quota system that reserved government jobs for descendants of those who fought in the 1971 liberation war — a system that has often been used to reward government loyalists and led to protests in 2018 that saw more than 250 casualties but ultimately led to the revocation of the quota system that reserved more than half of Civil Service jobs for privileged categories, and including admirably for women and disabled people, but the protesters have called for an end to the reservation of around a third for the descendants of liberation war veterans.

Such government positions are among the best employment opportunities available for young people in a country still on the United Nations’ Least Developed Countries list.

Official government figures say that 41 per cent of Bangladeshi youth are economically inactive and two-thirds of university graduates are unable to find work — the real situation is likely to be far worse.

In an economy where exploitation and abuse are rife in the workplace, many of those who can find work face poverty pay, long hours and unfit workplaces, as international buyers demand prices that are often less than the cost of production, as notorious fast fashion scandals and a string of fires and garment building collapses have underlined. These factors have played a major role in driving the outrage among young people at the injustice of the reservation system.

Young people represent a majority of Bangladesh’s population: almost two-thirds of Bangladeshis are below 35 years of age, of whom almost half — around 45 million people — are aged 15-24.

With only about 1.2 per cent of people able to access university, disadvantage and hopelessness are baked in, condemning millions to a life of poverty at levels that preclude even adequate food and shelter.

These realities mean that the current protests largely involve young people from the middle class but, many would argue, it is still a struggle that international socialists must support, because if it succeeds it can represent a first step in unpicking a capitalist and corrupt system designed to keep millions poor and underemployed so that employers can keep wages and prospects low and profits high.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government has been in power since 2009 and has grown increasingly neoliberal and authoritarian, repressing dissent generally and particularly on university campuses, arbitrarily arresting critics and even imprisoning teenagers for online comments about the government.

The 2018 Digital Security Act allows the regime to arrest without warrants, enabling the detention and trial of human rights activists just for speaking out against injustice. This year’s general election was boycotted by the opposition when over 20,000 of its activists were arrested.

Even more than in Britain and US, Bangladeshi democracy is window-dressing to the interests of the elite. The government’s brutality may be heightened by a fear of the potential for the student protests to spread to a general uprising.

That fear is not without foundation: the liberation war against Pakistan began with an uprising of students in 1968 who, outraged at the murder of a student by police, started protesting against the military dictatorship.

The working class in general joined the resistance against capitalist exploitation — capital, as always, sided with fascism against the workers — and the uprising brought down the military regime.

The imposition of martial law by the Pakistani government in response to the left’s successes in the ensuing elections led to the deaths of at least 300,000 people and by some estimates, as high as three million.

In the mass revolt and civil war that followed, Bengali students were again at the forefront of the fight for freedom and the advancement of the working class, ultimately leading to the liberation and independence of Bangladesh. But the forces of capital and reaction were able to maintain and then tighten their hold, leading Bangladesh back toward exploitation and the bulk of the population into poverty.

As ever, the regime lives in constant fear of the masses realising their power, making the current movement an existential threat not only to those in government but to the capital and corruption that support them.

As suppression continues to fail, the government is likely to resort to offering the students minor concessions in the hope of sapping their resolve. If the students are tempted by this tactic, capitalism will manage to stave off another culmination of its crisis and the ruling classes will again find ways to erode and undo any reforms, leading to a situation even worse than the one that led to the protest movement, just as they did with the temporary victory of 2018 against the quota system.

It can be argued that if the will of Bangladeshi students falters before a decisive victory, this will create a setback not just for our class in Bangladesh but worldwide.

On the other hand, if the students of Bangladesh achieve decisive change, that will foster class awareness in other nations of the ongoing crisis of capitalism and the opportunity for real change to be turned into a global phenomenon.

As we saw in the protest movement against the war in Vietnam and others since, students are often the first to rise against injustice, but without the support of the organised working class generally they cannot maintain the drive toward lasting change and capitalist structures are able to divert and dissipate their energy and resolve until much or all of the impact of their efforts, dissolves.

This makes the conscious and persistent support of our whole movement, in Britain and elsewhere, for both the students and the workers of Bangladesh, an imperative. This applies, of course, everywhere that workers and students rise up, but Bangladesh is at least one major front in the class struggle and the prospect of its advancement.

Just as capital is facing an existential threat, so does our class around the world as those enjoying privilege resort more and more to oppression and outright fascism to try to maintain it. But we also have an almost-unprecedented opportunity, as the uprising in Bangladesh, mass protests in Kenya, Kashmir, Argentina and other places, and the awakening of millions uniting against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians recrystallises a class awareness that capital has spent decades and billions shutting down.

If we are to move forward, we must give our consistent support to the resistance in Bangladesh and wherever else it rises.

Claudia Webbe MP is the former member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe