Bangladesh tense as protesters demand President’s removal for comments on Hasina’s resignation

Several hundred protesters on Tuesday (22) tried to storm the presidential palace, demanding President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s resignation for his recent comment on deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

In an interview with Bangla daily Manab Zamin last week, Mr. Shahabuddin said he did not have any documentary evidence of Ms. Hasina resigning as Prime Minister before she fled the country on August 5, 2024, amidst student-led mass protests.

Witnesses and TV footage showed protestors under different banners scuffling with police as they barred the demonstrators from entering the Bangabhaban.

The police eventually fired sound grenades, prompting army troops to later intervene and then send policemen inside the palace.

The situation eased a little as the military, using loudspeakers, requested agitators to leave the Bangabhaban gate.

The Business Standard, a Bangladeshi daily, quoted hospital sources as saying that two people sustained gunshot injuries when security forces fired shots to contain protesters from breaking the barricades of the presidential palace.

It said a third person was wounded by a sound grenade used to create a sound explosion to disperse violent mobs.

The Anti-discrimination Student Movement (ADSM), which spearheaded the campaign that led to the ouster of Ms. Hasina, rallied in front of the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka, demanding Mr. Shahabuddin’s resignation.

It set a 7-day deadline for Mr. Shahabuddin’s removal, as they laid a 5-point demand, including the scrapping of Bangladesh’s 1972 Constitution.

Our first point (of the 5-point demand) is immediate scrapping of the ‘pro-Mujb (Bangladesh’s founding leader) 1972 Constitution’, which kept Chuppu (the president’s nickname) in office,” said Hasnat Abdullah, one of the coordinators of the ADSM.

Abdullah, who spoke as the concluding speaker of a massive rally at Central Shaheed Minar here, said: “The (1972) Constitution will have to be replaced by writing a new one against the backdrop of 2024 mass upheaval.” He said the protestors would “return to the streets with full force” if the government failed to meet the demands by this week.

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