Hundreds of Bangladeshi protesters smashed down buildings connected to ousted former leader, Sheikh Hasina, on Thursday, hours after students with excavators began demolishing a museum to her father.
The museum and former home of Hasina’s late father, Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had been set on fire last year during the student-led revolution that ended her 15 years of autocratic rule.
Late Wednesday, six months to the day since Hasina fled by helicopter to old ally India on August 5, crowds carrying hammers and metal rods began beating down the walls of the building in the capital Dhaka.
Protests were triggered in response to reports that 77-year-old Hasina — who has defied an arrest warrant to face trial in Dhaka for massacres — would appear in a Facebook broadcast from exile.
On Thursday morning, diggers were being used to knock down the remaining fire-blackened walls.
Protesters also vandalized and torched other houses across the country linked to Hasina, including an arson attack on the Dhaka house of Hasina’s late husband.
Prothom Alo, the largest Bengali daily, reported crowds used government-owned excavators to smash down a building owned by Hasina’s family in the city of Khulna.
In the western city of Kushtia, protesters vandalized the house of a leader of Hasina’s Awami League party, Mahbubul Alam Hanif.
In Chittagong, protesters held a torch procession and smashed a mural of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
There has been no formal comment on the wave of attacks from the interim government, and security forces stood by allowing protesters to storm the buildings.
A private security guard in the neighbourhood said he had called the fire service more than a dozen times fearing that the flames would spread to nearby buildings crowded with families.
“We cut off the electricity line ourselves,” Jamal Uddin said. “I don’t know when the situation will return to normal.”
A shopkeeper living near Rahman’s former home said he was worried about the chaos.
“This vandalism is not a good sign,” he said, asking not to be named as he was fearful of reprisal for speaking out.
The PUNCH
