How Bangladesh’s Gen Z women led the movement that toppled ex-PM Sheikh Hasina

Adored by her classmates and defiant even after police seized her, student Nusrat Tabassum is one of the many women who helped spearhead the movement that toppled autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina.

Sizeable protests against Hasina’s 15-year rule were nothing new, but this was the first time that young women took to the streets against her in large numbers.

Soldiers refused to fire on them, a pivotal moment in Hasina’s ouster.

“The people had no way back,” Tabassum, 23, told AFP. “Anger was increasing, and the demand for equality was increasing.”

Tabassum is a campus hero for helping lead a movement that began as a protest against civil service job quotas and ended in revolution.

As she strolled the grounds of the elite Dhaka University, friends and other pupils rose from their seats to offer handshakes, hugs and high-fives.

Two weeks ago she was among six top student leaders snatched by plain clothes police and held in custody for several days, officially for their own safety.

With Hasina’s grip on power slipping, her security forces held the group at gunpoint and made them sign a statement calling off the protests.

“I thought of suicide several times,” Tabassum said. “I could not bear the thought of the people of this country thinking that we had cheated, that we had sold out.”

But Bangladeshis saw through the ruse.

“When we saw people did not misunderstand us, and were still protesting on the street, then I regained my strength and power to continue,” she said.

Protests began last month over a court decision to reintroduce loathed quotas for government jobs, seen as a tool for Hasina’s government to stack the bureaucracy with loyalists.

One aspect was a 10 per cent reservation for women applicants, but Tabassum said the