The photographer, curator and activist Shahidul Alam, who was arrested by Bangladeshi government officials in August 2018, has described the end to prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s reign as “historic”, saying that after weeks of violent protests on the streets of the capital Dhaka, the mood is one of “euphoria”.
Hasina resigned on 4 August, reportedly fleeing the country for India in a helicopter. She first came to power in 1996 and has been accused of human rights abuses and corruption in recent years. According to Al Jazeera, General Waker-uz-Zaman, the chief of army staff, said in a statement on 5 August that an interim government will take over with immediate effect. In Dhaka on Monday, police and other government buildings were attacked and set on fire, reported the BBC. Protesters attempted to tear down a statue of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina’s father.
Demonstrations were sparked last month by the reinstatement of a job quota scheme which reserved 30% of government jobs for descendants of veterans who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. More than 300 people have reportedly been killed in the subsequent government crackdown. President Mohammed Shahabuddin said that students detained would now be released.
Speaking to the Wfdd US public radio station, Alam said “I think [the unrest] was triggered initially by the arrogance of the prime minister. The fact that she called [demonstrators] ‘razakars’, which is collaborators of the freedom movement, that is the worst thing you can say. The point is, over the last 15 years, what this government has done, people have been disappeared, people have been killed, people have been tortured. And even today, there are thousands of people in jail who have no reason to be in jail.”
He added: “It’s complete euphoria. I have never seen something like this since the war of liberation in 1971. In 1971, before the crackdown, we used to say ‘Joy Bangla’. That was the rallying cry we had. And I was on a rickshaw, and I said ‘Joy Bangla’ to a friend on the street, and my rickshawala [rickshaw driver] would not take my fare because I’d said ‘Joy Bangla’.”
Alam has provided an ongoing commentary on the breakdown of government rule in his blog. In an installment published on 3 August, Alam wrote: “The people will triumph, but a lot more blood is likely to be shed and all those who turn a blind eye to this grotesque injustice will have blood on their hands. The government is right when it says we must fight disinformation and terrorism. The biggest source of terror is the Bangladesh Chhatra League [a student political organisation] and the biggest source of disinformation is the government. We should certainly get rid of them.”
Alam has been instrumental in the establishment of an array of key initiatives such as the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, which trains young photographers in the region, and the Majority World Agency, which sources photographs by artists in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East who often struggle to gain access to a wide network of clients. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Humanitarian Lucie Award.
Munem Wasif’s photographs show a protestor on 5 August holding national flags of both Bangladesh and Palestine
© Munem Wasif
Meanwhile another Bangaldeshi photographer connected to the Pathshala Institute, Munem Wasif, has been capturing the demonstrations on the ground. In an Instagram post on 5 August, Wasif documents a number of young adults atop lampposts and bridges holding the national flags of both Bangladesh and Palestine, drawing connections between the upheaval in Dhaka and the ongoing war in Gaza.
“The fearless students of public and private universities gave their lives,” Wasif said in the post. “They were in the streets day and night, beaten and shot by goons and police, but they stood firm. As journalist Shaifqul Alam said, ‘It is a victory for citizen journalists and the rappers who put the words of revolution into the mouth of every revolutionary!'”
Wasif, who began his career as a photojournalist, makes work around the reported recent forced disappearings enacted by the Hasina government.
Other artists connected to Bangladesh have also reacted to the regime change. The Belgian artist Miet Warlop was invited by officials at the Dhaka Art Summit to open the 2023 event with a new performance work, Chant for Hope, centred on students who “spoke to the general action of freeing the voice”, says the artist, highlighting that the piece is prescient with its emphasis on freedom of speech.
The piece, made in collaboration with Micha Volders, was a “participatory sculpture in which a group of performers create a variety of words by filling moulds on the floor with plaster, inspired by the history of language and its evolution in Bangladesh”, says an online statement. “One year later it is devastating and amazing at the same time that students took power and risked their lives to open up the country—it is amazingly powerful,” Warlop tells The Art Newspaper.
Warlop says she has “so much respect for them [the students] and now even more. We talked about the sadness of sharing such an important work only in the art world but it is now a reality and a real concern.” Chant for Hope was commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation and realised in partnership with Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels. “We are also working on a film about the project to be presented at the opening at Kanal [scheduled for later next year]” adds Warlop.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Dhaka Art Summit officials said that “the reports of police brutality, mass arrests and the loss of so many lives are profoundly alarming… The summit supports the students’ quest for justice and calls for urgent action to address these injustices.” Nadia Samdani, the co-founder of the Samdani Art Foundation and the director of the Dhaka Art Summit, did not respond to a request for comment.
