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the stuff I’ve read indicated that she was actually quite popular, within the context of the country’s incredibly polarized politics.

Bangladesh has a very poor press freedom ranking and people have been persecuted for posting on social media. My impression is that she was despised, or at best tolerated

Having her toppled by a mob like this… while hoping for the best for Bangladesh, I can’t help but feel quite pessimistic for the future of the country. For one thing, there’s the distinct possibility that this is a military coup disguised as a popular insurrection. Hope that’s not the case.

I would come to the same conclusion if I had not followed this for the past dew weeks. It sounds like a coup from the headline.

I'm cautiously optimistic. The country has a chance for the first time in decades to establish a proper democracy, weed out corruption, and restore press freedoms. Anything can happen in a power vacuum, but I remain hopeful.

Hello, a Bangladeshi here. Let me explain what happened so you have a better understanding:

"Bangladesh has actually been doing pretty well in the past decade, no?"

No, not at all. It's still one of the least developed country with one of the most corrupted governments. Development is very slow and very unsteady. And if any development actually happens, 90% of the money goes to the politicians, only 10% to actual development.

"but the stuff I've read indicated that she was actually quite popular"

You read her propaganda. She's not popular at all, most ordinary people despised her. In her rule, the elections have been more fixed than pro wrestling. No democracy what so ever. There were rampant oppression upon anyone who dares to even slightly criticize the government. They regularly detained the supporters of opposition parties for no reason. She was a autocrat hiding behind a mere facade of democracy.

They have a student wing called Chattra League. They are nothing short of a terrorist group. Look them up on Wikipedia, there's an entire article on Wikipedia about their violence alone. They have murdered, raped, tortured, ran forced prostitution rings, etc. Just in 2019, they beat a uni student to death in campus for criticizing the government's relationship with India in a Facebook post. They also attacked the protestors during the quota movement.

"there's the distinct possibility that this is a military coup disguised as a popular insurrection."

That is absolutely not true. For one, the current army chief is her relative. And she killed most of army generals with actual backbones that can do such a thing in a staged mutiny in 2009.

Also the whole thing started from student protests, and when the government (the police, and the military) started shooting and mass detaining everyone, other people joined in too. 300+ deaths is a very, very conservative estimate. A truer number is probably as high as 1000+. And when that many people gets killed, it's hard to stay silent anymore. People from literally everywhere in country started protesting as a response. This was, by all sense, the movement of people. It was the people that were in the streets. It was the people that led it, it was the people that stormed her residence. The military had nothing to do with it other than the murders.

"Riots caused by court rulings don't usually topple prime ministers"

Yeah it usually doesn't. But after almost two decades of violent oppression, that protest was just a nucleation point for a mass movement against the regime that was a long time coming. That was the tipping point, the point when enough was enough. It only seems off because you are missing the whole context.

There's another thread on this with a constantly-updating Al Jazeera article that included a timeline of events which I pasted over there before It got too far down the page. I'll paste it here too:

Timeline: How the unrest began

• Students began protesting last month when a controversial government job quota system that favoured children of war veterans was reinstated by the High Court.
• The government responded by shutting down universities and using the police and military to crack down on protesters.
• Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina imposed a nationwide curfew and cut off access to phones and the internet.
• Some 200 people, mostly students, were killed. Thousands were arrested.
• On July 21, Bangladesh’s top court stepped in, ruling that the quotas should be scaled back from 30 percent to 5 percent, with 3 percent for relatives of veterans.
• Last week, demonstrations resumed with protesters issuing new demands, including bringing justice and accountability for those killed and for Hasina to step down.
• The prime minister had pledged a strong response, calling the demonstrators criminals and saboteurs.