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Shahidul Alam is a Bangladeshi photojournalist and the founder of Drik Picture Library (1989).

A photographer for over forty years, his work has been featured in leading publications across the globe. In the course of his career, Alam has documented the forced migration of Rohingyas, migrant labor, sex workers, and environmental devastation.

In 2022, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Arts in London, which he returned in 2024 because of the university's complicity in Israel's occupation of Palestine.

For issue #95 of The Internationalist, Alam reflects on the recent student protests in Bangladesh and the aspirations of the Bangladeshis and their interim government. 

Tanya Singh: Thank you for joining me today, especially during such tough times.

Shahidul Alam: Thank you for inviting me today.

TS: Could you tell our readers about Bangladeshi students' protests?

SA: The demands of the students were based on a simple observation: to remove a discriminatory quota policy which effectively favoured government loyalists and denied much sought-after government jobs to legitimate applicants. The quota, originally intended as a temporary gesture to war fighters at the time of Bangladesh’s liberation, made no sense fifty years later. However, the government found it a useful mechanism for filling government positions with party loyalists.

In 2018, the government tried to suppress a similar movement by force since it was facing an election. However, having failed to quell the movement, it had withdrawn the quota. In 2024, it was trying to find a back door to reinstate the quota and decided to use the Supreme Court as a scapegoat. The students saw through the ruse and took to the streets in protest.

While the Awami League was justified in taking credit for the liberation movement of 1971, its misrule leading to the assassination of Bangladesh's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family in 1975, as well as its extreme repression over the last 15 years, have led to public contempt for the regime. It had lost all legitimacy and was clinging on to power with brute force. This kind of repression worked with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which is the main opposition party. The students were a different matter, and having a decentralised command, were much more difficult to manage.

TS: How do you assess the Bangladesh government’s use of disinformation and state-sanctioned violence as tools for maintaining power? 

SA: The authoritarian government had used the ‘Islamist’ card as a way to justify its repression and to convince Western governments that it was needed to prevent the country from being taken over by Islamic radicals. Instead of recognising the legitimate protests by students, it tried to colour it by painting it as a movement instigated by BNP and Jamaat-e-Islam. The Sheikh Hasina government’s vast trolling army was also active during this time. However, when that didn’t work, the government turned off the Internet, hoping it could bury the information on the mass killings. It was murder on a scale the nation had not seen since 1971.

So you see, the disinformation was not working on the Bangladeshi public. 

However, it did seem to affect Indian media, who (with notable exceptions) took on the propaganda role with gusto. 

TS: What were some of the responses to the students’ protest from the international actors?

SA: Well, the US levied sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and select perpetrators of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture. Because of that, repression in Bangladesh abated, but not for long. We saw even more violence following those sanctions. And our key neighbour, India, supported Sheikh Hasina’s regime and not the students.

During the uprising, the authoritarian Bangladeshi government largely ignored the international solidarity that we received. So, in the end, it was the students and the general public and their enormous sacrifices which made the difference. Western governments largely paid lip service to calls for democracy and human rights. 

The students are now taking a greater interest in building international coalitions and the interim government is also trying to build an accountable structure. 

TS: What are the stated goals and strategies of the interim government, and how do they align with the aspirations of the country's citizens?

SA: Internal security, economic stability and prosperity, accountability and transparency are the stated goals of the interim government. They are also the aspirations of the citizens. While the entire nation is rooting for the government to succeed, whether the interim government stays true to its stated goals will determine whether the aspirations are met.

There is also the elephant in the room: India. 

It propped up the illegitimate regime throughout the last fifteen years, ran roughshod over Bangladesh at every opportunity possible and deprived the nation of its legitimate share of water while blatantly ignoring international law. India has regularly killed Bangladeshis along its long border and even refused to hand over their bodies. 

India’s hold over Bangladesh was glaringly visible when Abrar Fahad, an engineering student at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, was bludgeoned to death on campus by students belonging to Sheikh Hasina’s party, which was in rule. Why? Because he had critiqued the water-sharing arrangement between the two countries. India has received every concession possible from Bangladesh and provided very little in return, except for keeping the oppressive regime in power. 

However, now there is a new sense of pride in the nation, and the government of Bangladesh and its people are prepared to stand up straight against its hegemonic neighbour. Indian media’s fictional account of Bangladesh slipping into Islamic radicalism and its vitriolic doomsday account of where the nation is heading is a sad reflection of its blinkered approach to India-Bangladesh relations. We want to be friends and allies, but that requires mutual respect.

Fifteen years of misrule has caused huge damage to state institutions. Awami League cadre are present at all levels of government. Corruption and nepotism have become the dominant culture for so long, that these shifts will be resisted. An untainted government, on the other hand, with public goodwill, may provide an opportunity we might never get again. 

It is for all Bangladeshis to ensure we do not waste such an opportunity.

The Internationalist Archive