Abu JakirA year ago, the streets of Dhaka thundered with anger that had been building for decades. What began as a modest student protest over a civil service quota exploded into a mass revolt that brought down one of South Asia’s most entrenched political leaders.
By August 5, 2024, the former and exiled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled, uninterrupted, for fifteen years, was escorted across the border into India by military convoy.
This week, the country marked the first anniversary of a pro-democracy people’s uprising, as it has come to be called. In Shahbagh, a neighbourhood long associated with protest and memory, parents held up photos of children who never came home. Students lit candles. Officials delivered speeches.
“The July movement gave us a vision of a just, equal, and corruption-free Bangladesh,” said Dr Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who now leads the interim government. “But we are still far from realising that promise.”
Appointed on August 8, just days after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, Muhammad Yunus began his tenure as chief advisor with broad support. Student activists, opposition parties like the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, and even the Army backed his leadership. For a moment, he seemed to unite a disjointed nation.
The uprising began on July 1, 2024, after Bangladesh’s High Court reinstated a 30 percent job quota in the public sector for descendants of freedom fighters–a group that constitutes less than one percent of the population.
For Bangladesh’s underemployed youth, the decision was less a policy shift than a symbol of something deeper: a system of exclusion, entitlement, and dynastic privilege that many felt had come to define the Hasina years.
At first, officials ignored the protests. Then they tried to suppress them. Within days, universities across Dhaka, Chattogram, Rajshahi, and Khulna became staging grounds for an organised resistance that demanded not just policy reform, but systemic change.
“We weren’t just fighting a policy, we were fighting a system,” Tahmid Al Mudassir, one of the uprising’s lead organisers, tells TRT World. “We knew the regime would fall. We just didn’t think it would unravel so fast.”
On August 4, government forces launched a brutal crackdown. More than 140 people were killed in a single day. By dawn, Hasina was gone. A grainy clip of her arrival in India’s eastern state Kolkata began circulating on social media within hours.
For many in Bangladesh, the uprising is a source of both pride and pain.
‘Wounds are still there’
“We gave everything for this,” Nasima Khatun, whose 19-year-old son was shot dead during the crackdown, told TRT World. “They may have fled, but the wounds are still here. The question is: will we finish what we started?”
Today, Bangladesh exists in a kind of in-between space. The Yunus-led interim government has vowed to hold free and fair elections by February. It has promised trials. It has spoken of accountability and institutional reform. But for many, the pace of progress seems tenuous.
“The collaborators of fascism still exist,” journalist Syed Mehedi Momen, who documented the uprising, tells TRT World. “They’re entrenched in institutions, slowing our progress. We expected more assertiveness from the interim government.”
Talking to TRT World, Subaha Dihee, a college student who marched in the protests, put it more bluntly: “The blood of 2024 must not be spilled in vain. We want trials. Without justice, there can be no healing.”
So far, the International Crimes Tribunal has opened one case against Hasina, related to the August 4 violence. Dozens more remain unresolved, including the case of Abdullah Siddiq, a 22-year-old protester shot in Jigatola.
“Before anything else, I want justice for my son,” his father, Abu Siddiq tells TRT World. Siddiq stood outside the courthouse last week holding a framed photo. “Bring the killers to court. Let the world hear what they did.”
‘Second liberation day’
Still, there are gestures toward nation-building. A new political charter, the July Declaration, was unveiled at a public rally earlier tonight.
Amid pouring rain, Yunus read it out aloud on Manik Mia Avenue.
He declared the day an unforgettable moment in Bangladesh’s history, marking the nation’s liberation from long-standing authoritarian rule.
Addressing thousands outside parliament in the rain, he and key political leaders issued a proclamation to be added to the constitution, affirming the people’s demand for fair elections, rule of law, and democratic reforms.
"The trust of the people... as expressed by the mass uprising for addressing the political and constitutional crisis in Bangladesh is justified, legitimate and internationally recognised," he read from the document.
"The people of Bangladesh express their desire for ensuring good governance and fair elections, rule of law and economic and social justice, and for introducing lawfully democratic reforms for all state and constitutional institutions".
The crowd, including families of those killed in the protests, applauded as Yunus called the uprising legitimate, justified, and internationally recognised. Some of the people in the crowd were wearing headbands made from the national flag.
Urging unity, Yunus called on the people to remember last year’s sacrifices and to come together.
“Let us rise above all divisions to confront and overcome these threats,” he said. “Together, we will build a Bangladesh where tyranny can never return.”
Is consensus fraying for Yunus?
Political factions that once stood together are now split over constitutional reforms, electoral models, and the nature of the new state.
Resignation rumours were sparked between May 22-23. Three events converged.
First, the BNP accused Yunus’s government of blocking their candidate Ishraque Hossain from assuming a disputed mayoral post, blaming adviser Asif Bhuiyan.
Second, the student-led NCP turned against the BNP, demanding electoral reforms and accusing the Election Commission of partisan bias. They stated that they want an “honest assessment” of the past year’s achievements.
Third, Army Chief General Waker-uz-Zaman publicly urged elections by December 2025. He has criticised key policy moves such as allowing UN-backed humanitarian corridor for Rohingyas to Myanmar’s Rakhine State, saying they require an elected government’s mandate.
Together, these crises shook the interim government, and Yunus’s grip on it.
His interim government had circulated a draft of the July Declaration to political stakeholders ahead of its finalisation.
While many welcomed the process, the BNP submitted formal revisions, including demands for greater emphasis on the 1971 Liberation War and constitutional clarity on the uprising’s recognition.
“The nation’s history begins with 1971,” Salahuddin Ahmed, a committee member of the BNP, referring to the country’s independence war, tells TRT World. “Any foundational document must reflect that with dignity. We have also insisted that the July Uprising be given full constitutional recognition, ideally within the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution.”
The NCP, too, wants a reset.
On Sunday, the party released a 24-point manifesto calling for a new constitution and the establishment of a “Second Republic.”
“This was never about replacing one leader with another,” Nahid Islam, the NCP’s convener, addressed at a public rally. “It was about replacing the system that allowed fascism to flourish.”
Others are more sceptical.
Jamaat-e-Islami, while supportive in tone, has raised doubts about the legal force of the July Declaration.
“Without legal grounding, this process could falter,” Syed Abdullah Mohammad Taher, a senior leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, tells TRT World. “We propose enacting it either via presidential ordinance or national referendum.”
Criticism has also emerged around the electoral process itself.
The Islami Andolan Bangladesh criticised the draft declaration for omitting proportional representation (PR) in the lower house, an omission they describe as a "missed opportunity" to end the majoritarianism that fuelled authoritarianism in the past.
Justice amid diplomatic efforts
Despite political turbulence, the Yunus-led interim administration has won praise for its handling of its resilient economy.
Inflation has cooled, foreign reserves are up, and the IMF and World Bank have signalled cautious confidence. The garment sector remains strong, and remittances have hit record levels.
In June, foreign exchange reserves reached $31.7 billion, up sharply from $25.8 billion in May.
Yet vulnerabilities remain.
The World Bank predicts GDP growth will slow to 3.3 percent in the current fiscal year. Youth unemployment remains high. The looming threat of Trump tariffs could further disrupt Bangladesh’s export economy.
In March, Yunus travelled to Beijing and secured nearly C$3 billion in Chinese loans and grants, twenty times more than China offered under Hasina.
Nearly 30 Chinese companies have pledged another C$1.3 billion to establish a Chinese Industrial Economic Zone in Chattogram, home to 90 percent of Bangladesh’s maritime trade.
In May, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao brought 100 firms to Dhaka to explore investment opportunities.
Yunus has also made 11 international visits, including to the United States, Japan, and several Gulf states, to diversify Bangladesh’s trade and investment portfolio and mending ties strained during the previous regime.
“Make Bangladesh your home and your production hub,” he told investors at a recent trade conference.
The US, Bangladesh’s top export market, is reportedly reassessing its trade preferences, citing ongoing “concerns about governance and human rights”.
On the domestic front, a commission investigating the crackdown has heard over 900 testimonies from survivors, journalists, and even former security personnel. But not a single senior officer has been indicted. The Awami League’s feared paramilitary youth wings have dissolved into the shadows, their leaders still unaccounted for.
“We cannot heal without justice,” says Shireen Akhter, whose teenage nephew was killed in Mirpur during the final crackdown. “We demand trials, not statements.”
