On Thursday, the Australian government donated $1.8 million to aid Bangladesh in the recovery from widespread flooding. It’s been a challenging time for the South Asian nation – the abrupt departure of Sheikh Hasina and toppling of her government after weeks of intense mass street protests has upended many rosy assumptions about the trajectory of Bangladesh.
But this moment also offers a chance for countries such as Australia to better calibrate relationships with Bangladesh, starting with the interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.
The 15 years of Hasina’s rule were built upon an authoritarian edifice, within which rampant corruption flourished and severe violations of human rights took place, including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Hasina’s government was never a solid partner for the international community. Brushing aside such abuses also left the international community at odds with the aspirations of Bangladeshis themselves.
So, Australia should consider strengthening a rights-based engagement and development policy for Bangladesh. There is a strong demand from the interim government for ensuring rights and justice. Yunus’ cabinet consists of 19 advisers and two special assistants including student leaders, academics, human rights activists, jurists, retired civil servants, former military officials, economists and a religious cleric. It has already signed the UN convention against enforced disappearance and invited the UN to investigate human rights violations during Hasina’s time in power.
Now is the time to invest more in the Bangladeshi people.
In a bid to quell the street protests led by the university students, Hasina had shut down the internet and employed a range of repressive tactics, including imposing a curfew, adopting torture and enforced disappearances of protestors, and mass arrests. There was even deliberation on a shoot to kill policy. UNICEF reported at least 32 children among the hundreds of people killed.
The protests came barely six months after a contested election in January, widely considered rigged to keep Hasina in power. By standing up for their rights, Bangladeshis showed they were unwilling to trade apparent economic success for severe state repression. A large number of girls and women defied curfews and took to the streets in support of political freedoms.
This reflects a strong desire for liberty in the country. Last year, a 30-country poll conducted by the Open Society Foundation found that respondents in Bangladesh showed higher support for civil and political rights (36 per cent) over economic and social rights (28 per cent). Hasina misjudged this sentiment – and many in the international community did, too.
My co-authored research into democratic resilience in Bangladesh over the past decade illustrated that while Hasina was able to capture and establish full control over the state, people from various walks of life in Bangladeshi society continued to protest authoritarianism in innovative ways. This support for democracy helps explain why junior Bangladeshi officers told their commanders that they would not shoot protestors. That pushback changed the political dynamics in the country very quickly. Along with students and people on the streets, junior army officers have emerged as one of the catalysts for change.
The 2017 Australian foreign policy white paper put liberal democratic values at the centre of the country’s international engagement. How much of a priority this was for the Australian diplomats working in Bangladesh during Hasina’s regime can be debated. But now is the time to invest more in the Bangladeshi people. Beyond emergency relief funding, such as with the floods announcement this week, or the ongoing support to the Rohingya sheltering in the country from neighbouring Myanmar, Australia could do more to assist Australian and Bangladeshi NGOs focused on rights-based development programs.
This ties in with regional dynamics. It is a widespread view in Bangladesh that the Indian government was a strong backer of Hasina’s rule. The Washington Post reported that India pushed the US administration and other Western countries not to pressure Hasina. India may have seen a national security interest with one political party in Bangladesh, but the broader interest is in supporting the people of all Bangladesh. It is a lesson that Australia should heed.
Rebuilding ties and trust between the neighbours will be essential to a regional vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Australia can help by ensuring the democratic aspirations of the Bangladeshi peoples are the main priority.
