August 12, 2024 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
Monday the 5th of August, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rose up and the Palace of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, who had been in power for 15 years, was stormed. Faced with this spectacular success of popular mobilization, the army quickly took power and installed in government the oppositional Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and pioneer of microcredits (small loans at low interest to new businesses in the poorest nations).
Gold medal for the students and workers of Bangladesh!
The invasion of the palace is the outcome of student demonstrations, obstinate and massive, since the start of July. In reaction to the government’s terrible repression since mid-July (more than 400 dead, many by live ammunition, curfew, suspension of Internet access), the protests against the regime has grown in scale: hundreds of thousands of students have been joined by their parents, teachers and workers in the textile industry, the country’s main industrial branch and a recognized focal point of struggle against the bosses. In a country in which the richest 10% own 41% of the national wealth (whereas 1.3% is owned by the poorest 10%), where inflation is rampant and where more than one young person out of three can find neither an education nor a job, anger ended up bursting out and swept away a regime known for its harshness and corruption.
The army quickly took back power, to avoid a political vacuum from taking hold. It presents itself as “at the service of the people,” but, along with the police, it helped repress the population nonetheless! Under popular pressure, they have been forced to appoint Professor Muhammad Ynuns as head of the interim government, flanked by two student leaders, who are supposed to oversee him.
The world leaders hold their breath
From the U.S.A. to China and Europe, every great power has greeted the “democratic transition” led by the army, whereas they had not uttered a word during the repression led by Sheikh Hasina. Is the great celebration of the Olympics to blame? Or the will to maintain at all cost the exploitation in the textile factories that supply multinationals such as Zara or H&M? Anyway, with a new leader like Yunus in charge, those imperialist predators can sleep soundly. The man is presented like an old sage, but it is out of the question for this entrepreneurship-lover to touch the profits of big conglomerates, nor for the world order to challenge the existence of big bosses imposing their law over those they exploit. But students and workers have certainly not said their last word.
A spark from which will burst the fire?
Bangladesh is not the only country where popular protests are challenging employer violence and the state repression that supports it. Right now, in Nigeria and in Kenya, the working classes are defending themselves against the attacks of their bourgeoisie in massive demonstrations. These mobilizations echo the Arab spring of 2011 and the popular revolts scattered around the world in recent years, from Egypt to Chile, from Algeria’s Hirak of 2019 to Sri Lanka’s Janatha Aragalaya of 2022.
While the Palestinian population continues to suffer the bombings of the Israeli army and the threat of a spreading war grows greater in the Middle East, the popular masses of Bangladesh show it is in their power to victoriously oppose capitalist barbarism, up to the point of throwing out the dictators that represent them. It is also in their power not to let the victory be stolen from them, by laying down the basis of a power that would be their own, a democracy that springs from the grassroots, from the mobilization.
The claims of the working classes of Bangladesh are our own: to live and not just survive, to decide our fate democratically! We express our total solidarity with the students and workers who keep on fighting.
