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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (43268)	8/13/2024 10:17:40 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50512

Bangladesh: Becoming Pakistan or worse? Even before the parliamentary elections of 7 January 2024, moves to implement a regime change in Bangladesh were afoot. In September 2023, the US State Department imposed visa restrictions primarily on Bangladesh’s ruling party officials and law-enforcement officers for allegedly “undermining the democratic election process.” Almost on cue, the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami took to the streets and started a reprehensible saga of protests. The US also supported Muhammad Yunus, who had been convicted of defrauding the people through his Grameen Bank. A Nobel Prize winner, Yunus had been awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010. What the regime-change planners failed to understand was that in the 15 years in which Sheikh Hasina had been at the helm of affairs, the per capita income of Bangladesh had increased a whopping 3.7 times—from US$687 to US$2528, which was why she was swept back to power in 2024. However, the regime change operatives did not respect the people’s mandate. For their geo-political interests, they were prepared to destroy democracy in Bangladesh and install, in its place, a fundamentalist Islamist regime. The Biden administration’s apparent support for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), a radical Muslim outfit, was, as stated by one political observer, similar to the US backing of coup supporters in Ukraine during the Maidan Protests in 2014. In June 2024, it was the students’ turn to enter the fray. The cause célèbre was the issue of reservations in government jobs. The movement, which started on 6 June 2024, received little attention from the world media. It was soon to engulf the country and lead to a change in regime. Was this orchestrated, or was it a genuine student movement? Time will tell. What was strange about the protests was that both the government and the protestors were initially on the same page. The Sheikh Hasina government abolished the quota for government jobs in 2018. It was reimposed by a court order on 1 July 2024. On 21 July, the Supreme Court scaled back the High Court’s order to 5% for the wards of freedom fighters and another 2% for other categories. But the damage had been done, and violence engulfed the streets. Why the issue took such a violent turn baffles the imagination. There were possibly powers behind the students who did not want the movement to fizzle out, and they succeeded. After the Supreme Court order, the agitating students suspended their protest, but certain additional demands came up, and the movement got a fresh lease of life, eventually leading to the resignation of an elected Prime Minister. What remains unanswered is: when the government and the protestors were on the same page, what was the rationale for the protests? It points to external instigation and internal abetment. With the protestors nearing the gates of the Prime Minister’s residence, Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee to India on 5 August. An interim government under the charge of Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on 8 August, and a semblance of order now stands restored. When asked about the violence inflicted on the minority Hindu community in the wake of the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, Yunus refused to take responsibility for the violence unleashed on the hapless minority population. Discounting the violence, he referred to the events as celebrations, much akin to Bangladesh’s Liberation Day. Even after all the mayhem, he did not have one word of solace for the weakest of his fellow citizens. sundayguardianlive.com Similar to Maidan protests where the violence by the US-backed Nazi strongarm group caused the leadership to flee the country in fear. Sheikh Hasina speaks up on US plot Donald Lu fingered as State Department hitman. indianpunchline.com