Massive protests erupt in Bangladesh as demonstrators raze buildings linked to former leader

Hundreds of protesters in Bangladesh launched a wave of destruction on Thursday, tearing down buildings associated with ousted former leader Sheikh Hasina.

The unrest came just hours after students, armed with excavators, began demolishing a museum dedicated to her late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president.

The museum, which also served as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s former residence, had been set ablaze during last year’s student-led revolution that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule.

Late on Wednesday, marking six months since Hasina fled to India on August 5, crowds wielding hammers and metal rods descended on the structure in Dhaka, smashing its walls and dismantling key sections of the building.

Protests were triggered in response to reports that 77-year-old Hasina who has defied an arrest warrant to face trial in Dhaka for massacres would appear in a Facebook broadcast from exile.

On Thursday morning, diggers were being used to knock down the remaining fire-blackened walls.

Protesters also vandalised and torched other houses across the country linked to Hasina, including an arson attack on the Dhaka house of Hasina’s late husband.

Prothom Alo, the largest Bengali daily, reported crowds used government-owned excavators to smash down a building owned by Hasina’s family in the city of Khulna.

– Vandalised homes –

In the western city of Kushtia, protesters vandalised the house of a leader of Hasina’s Awami League party, Mahbubul Alam Hanif.

In Chittagong, protesters held a torch procession and smashed a mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

There has been no formal comment on the wave of attacks from the interim government, and security forces stood by allowing protesters to storm the buildings.

A private security guard in the neighbourhood said he had called the fire service more than a dozen times fearing that the flames would spread to nearby buildings crowded with families.

“We cut off the electricity line ourselves,” Jamal Uddin said. “I don’t know when the situation will return to normal.”

A shopkeeper living near Rahman’s former home said he was worried about the chaos.

“This vandalism is not a good sign,” he said, asking not to be named as he was fearful of reprisal for speaking out.

(AFP)