DHAKA: Mobs vowing to guard Bangladesh’s student-led revolution roamed the site of a planned rally for ousted premier Sheikh Hasina on Thursday, beating up some of her suspected supporters with bamboo rods and pipes.
Hasina, 76, fled to neighbouring India by helicopter last week as student-led protests flooded Dhaka’s streets in a dramatic end to her iron-fisted rule of 15 years.
The interim government replacing her, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has invited UN investigators to probe the violent “atrocities” that accompanied her ouster, which saw hundreds killed by security forces.
Thursday is the anniversary of the 1975 assassination during a military coup of Hasina’s father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a date her government had declared a national holiday.
Huge rallies around Bangladesh marked the occasion in previous years but those glad to see Hasina toppled were eager to ensure supporters of her Awami League party did not have a chance to regroup.
“Fugitive and dictator Sheikh Hasina has ordered her goons and militia forces to come to the site so they can produce a counter-revolution,” Imraul Hasan Kayes, 26, told AFP.
“We are here to guard our revolution so that it doesn’t slip out of our hands.”
With no police in sight, hundreds of men — most of them not students — formed a human barricade across the street leading to Hasina’s old family home, where her father and many of her relatives were gunned down 49 years ago.
The landmark was a museum to her father until it was torched and vandalised by a mob hours after Hasina’s fall.
Several people that the crowd suspected of being Awami League supporters were thrashed with sticks, while others were forcibly escorted away.
Hasina, in her first public statement since her abrupt departure, asked supporters this week to “pray for the salvation of all souls by offering floral garlands and praying” outside the landmark.
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