Bangladesh: Can Protests Avoid Conspiracies?
The brutal crackdown on the Bangladeshi protestors led to the ouster of Shiekh Hasina, the ruling queen of Bangladesh. Well, my area of expertise is not Bangladeshi political sensitivities. I want to discuss a broader perspective on the right to protest, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India.
The addition of India to the list may not be appropriate for developing countries, but considering the recent outrage of its citizens against the brutal violations of citizen rights whether they are farmers, doctors, or athletes adding India to the list is also making sense as the people condition is similar as the people of south Asia as well.
The part that worries me about that protest is how these protests are hijacked by the big geopolitical crisis when they are actually about the violations of local and domestic abuse of human rights and ignorance of sustainable development goals. at the same time, their authoritarian leaders are enjoying economic progress at the cost of sustainable development goals.
Whenever these big leaders like Hasina are ousted from power they accuse big power politics for their ouster as well, and the recent trends that were witnessed in Sri Lanka and Pakistan when there was a wave to uphold the rule of law against the violation of human rights. The protest turns into riots and very incendiary scenes appear on the television and because of the social media, it goes viral. These heated images of chaos take away the rights of people who have been protesting and give an opportunity to leaders like Hasina to escape from the exploitation that they have been doing for ages and using their powers to silence the protest against them.
Well, what is important in this age, the right to protest is a vulnerable right and it can be easily hijacked by the miscreant elements in society who seek to disrupt the polity and maintain the status quo. Well, the job of protestors is not finished with the change of leadership or the one man. The protesting is a perpetual struggle against the injustice and deprivation of human rights when they ignore sustainable development.
The caution is not to be fooled by the statistics of economic data, but to see the matter holistically to improve the polity so that leaders like Hasina cannot exploit the sanctity of protest. The examples of Syria, the Arab Spring and the recent uprising in Sri Lanka are a testament that protesting is a double-edged sword and it can be easily exploited by the global big powers, geopolitics and the politicians who exploit the rights of the people. In order to do meaningful protest finding the right leadership and guidance is also crucial to save the protest from conspiracies and global geopolitics.
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