Police have fired tear gas and used grenades and batons to disperse protesters gathered outside Bangladesh’s national Parliament complex to express dissatisfaction with the interim government’s new political charter.
The charter was drafted more than a year after Gen Z demonstrations that led to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s removal.
Bangladesh’s most powerful political parties signed the charter on Friday aimed at ensuring democratic reform after next year’s elections, but celebrations by the government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus were muted after one party refused to sign and by the clashes on the capital’s streets.
The clashes broke out after several hundred people, who described themselves as those whose protests toppled Hasina, started demonstrating on Friday. They were expressing anger that their concerns had not been addressed in the new charter, despite their loved ones dying during the mass uprisings against Hasina, who fled to exile in India.
Some protesters vandalised a police vehicle and makeshift tents, while others clashed with soldiers and security officials in the capital Dhaka. Witnesses said several people were injured.
The interim government, headed by Yunus, had invited the country’s main political parties to sign a new political charter to pave the way for a number of political reforms.
The “July National Charter”, named after the national uprisings that started last July, outlines a roadmap for constitutional amendments, legal changes and the enactment of new laws.
A National Consensus Commission formed by the Yunus government prepared the charter after a series of talks with the major political parties, except Hasina’s Awami League party.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and eight like-minded parties said they would sign the charter.
Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including mass detentions and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
Protests against Hasina’s rule began on July 1, 2024, with university students calling for changes to a quota system for public sector jobs. They culminated on August 5, 2024, when thousands of protesters stormed Hasina’s palace as she escaped by helicopter to India, where she remains in exile.
She has defied court orders to attend her ongoing trial on charges amounting to crimes against humanity. The United Nations has said up to 1,400 people may have been killed in the weeks-long uprising last year.
Yunus has promised to hold the next national election in February, before the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people celebrates the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. But questions remain whether the election would be inclusive without Hasina’s party and its allies in the race.
The country’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has remained undecided about signing the charter, while a newly-formed student-led party, National Citizen Party, said it would not take part.
