Wednesday, 13 August, 2025
AUGUST 5, 2025
Some now call August 5, 2024, Bangladesh’s “second liberation”—the day a nation, battered and betrayed, rose to shatter the iron grip of Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic reign. It was a victory torn from the jaws of oppression, a triumph clawed from the depths of darkness.
But that freedom came drenched in blood. Thousands of unarmed souls stood defiant against the regime’s bullets, sacrificing their lives to reclaim the liberty their forefathers had bled for on December 16, 1971, in the crucible of a brutal war against Pakistani tyranny.
On that fateful August afternoon, as the tide of outrage surged toward Ganabhaban, Sheikh Hasina was whisked away by military helicopter—escaping to India just hours before the reckoning she could no longer postpone. She fled a people’s justice, but she could not outrun history.
In July 2024, Dhaka’s streets overflowed with a human tide — students, workers, academics, and the invisible multitudes long ignored by the ruling elite. They weren’t merely chanting for elections. They were demanding justice, economic dignity, and an end to the suffocating impunity of the powerful. This disciplined uprising—now immortalised as the July Revolution—rekindled a hope that many had dared not utter aloud. It was proof that Bangladesh’s youth had not surrendered their dream of a nation for all, not just the privileged.
A Human Tide Engulfs Dhaka Streets in July 2024 Uprising
History often whispers as it returns, but on August 5, 2024, it roared.
Protest leaders had called for a final march, demanding Hasina’s resignation. By 3:00 p.m., she had fled. The impossible had unfolded before a stunned nation. But this was never just a dictator’s downfall. It was the reawakening of a people.
Hasina’s collapse echoed the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania — the tyrant toppled and executed in 1989 after years of repression, surveillance, and economic decay. Like Ceaușescu, Hasina dreamed of monuments to her legacy. But where Romania’s despot met his end before an enraged populace, Hasina escaped with her life, but not her shame. From exile, she now plots a return, but her name is forever stained with betrayal.
What the Awami League dismissed as mere street noise erupted into an unstoppable force. Years of frustration, suffocation, and broken promises coalesced into a tidal wave that drowned the regime in a matter of hours. Yet, history never repeats itself perfectly. Unlike Ceaușescu’s brutal execution, Hasina was airlifted to safety. But her legacy was left to smoulder in the ashes of a toppled regime.
Amid Mass Uprising, Sheikh Hasina Airlifted from Ganabhaban to India on August 5, 2025
What began as a sweltering, stagnant summer cracked open into something raw, defiant, and profoundly human. The so-called “apolitical generation”—mocked for chasing passport queues rather than protest slogans—found itself leading the charge. Not as passive onlookers, but as the vanguard that altered the nation's destiny.
When the state crumbled, it wasn’t institutions that rose to fill the void. It was the people.
By noon that day, the Prime Minister was gone. The government had evaporated. Dhaka — chaotic, sprawling, magnificent — was left to fend for itself.
With no traffic police, intersections became battlefields. Criminals didn’t wait for orders. Pharmacies were looted. Delivery vans hijacked. Homes ransacked. Grocery shops smashed open. Rumours spread like wildfire—some true, some half-true, many sounding like dystopian fiction. The most terrifying truth was stark: no one was in command.
The first nights descended into lawlessness. Fires illuminated the night sky. Gunshots echoed in alleyways that had once only known the soft chime of rickshaw bells. Panic gripped the city. And yet, amidst the chaos, an unexpected solidarity began to take root.
This wasn’t utopia. It was survival. But it was also a resilience that had been buried for far too long.
We didn’t wait for saviours. We became our own.
For a few strange, unforgettable days, Dhaka transformed. Strangers became allies. Mosques turned into community command centres. Imams issued midnight loudspeaker warnings to neighbourhoods. Social media, for once, shed its veneer of frivolity—flooded instead with live videos of citizens guarding streets, cooking communal meals at dawn, singing by torchlight to stay awake.
And as the city clung to this fragile order, a question loomed in the air:
Why now? Why us?
Our generation — Generation Z — grew up disillusioned. We had never cast votes. We watched corruption thrive, heard the weary sighs of elders who had given up. “This is just how things are,” they said. We were tired before we even got the chance to try.
But when the system collapsed, something deep within us stirred.
Dhaka Chokes In Traffic As Processions By Various Groups Snarl City Streets
The so-called “apolitical” didn’t stay sidelined. They stood up — not out of duty, but because they had to. Doctors volunteered without pay. Lawyers offered legal advice on Facebook Live. “Resilience” — a word overused in glossy NGO brochures — suddenly found meaning in WhatsApp groups, rooftop meetings, and late-night kitchen tables.
No official directives came. No SMS alerts. Yet somehow, we knew exactly what needed to be done — and we did it.
Now, as Dhaka drifts back into its familiar rhythms—traffic jams, press briefings filled with recycled platitudes from new faces—one question refuses to fade:
Why must everything collapse before we remember how to rebuild?
We shouldn’t need catastrophe to rediscover our collective strength. Solidarity must become instinct, not just a reflex. Vigilance must be a habit, not an emergency measure.
Yet, I remain cautious. I do not share the utopian hopes some attach to the July Revolution.
Students break secretariat gates, vandalise vehicles
Overthrowing a regime is one battle; safeguarding freedom is another, far harder one. The coming months will reveal whether this uprising was a fleeting moment or a turning point. Much depends on whether the promised elections under Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus’s interim government are genuinely free and fair.
History reminds us that these moments are not isolated. From the Language Movement of 1952, the Liberation War of 1971, the Mass Uprising of 1990, to the July Revolution of 2024 — these are not events. They are chapters in an unfinished, relentless story. The question is: will our new leadership grasp the weight of these sacrifices, or will they too become footnotes in yet another betrayal?
This July-August 2025 is no ordinary commemoration. The tragic deaths of schoolchildren in Uttara serve as a painful reminder that progress demands constant vigilance and accountability. Yet amidst this mourning, a flicker of anticipation remains. The upcoming general election could be more than just a ballot — it could be Bangladesh’s long-delayed reckoning.
Today, as The Bangladesh Express marks its 31st anniversary, we extend our deepest gratitude to our readers, patrons, and advertisers. From a modest bi-weekly magazine in July 1994 to a nationally recognised English daily, your unwavering support has been our greatest strength through storms that might have silenced us.
Together, we have endured. Together, we will witness what comes next.
(The writer is the Editor of The Bangladesh Express, Chairman of BJFCI, and former Information & Research Secretary of JASAS. He can be reached at: [email protected])
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AUGUST 5, 2025
Some now call August 5, 2024, Bangladesh’s “second liberation”—the day a nation, battered and betrayed, rose to shatter the iron grip of Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic reign. It was a victory torn from the jaws of oppression, a triumph clawed from the depths of darkness.
But that freedom came drenched in blood. Thousands of unarmed souls stood defiant against the regime’s bullets, sacrificing their lives to reclaim the liberty their forefathers had bled for on December 16, 1971, in the crucible of a brutal war against Pakistani tyranny.
On that fateful August afternoon, as the tide of outrage surged toward Ganabhaban, Sheikh Hasina was whisked away by military helicopter—escaping to India just hours before the reckoning she could no longer postpone. She fled a people’s justice, but she could not outrun history.
In July 2024, Dhaka’s streets overflowed with a human tide — students, workers, academics, and the invisible multitudes long ignored by the ruling elite. They weren’t merely chanting for elections. They were demanding justice, economic dignity, and an end to the suffocating impunity of the powerful. This disciplined uprising—now immortalised as the July Revolution—rekindled a hope that many had dared not utter aloud. It was proof that Bangladesh’s youth had not surrendered their dream of a nation for all, not just the privileged.
A Human Tide Engulfs Dhaka Streets in July 2024 Uprising
History often whispers as it returns, but on August 5, 2024, it roared.
Protest leaders had called for a final march, demanding Hasina’s resignation. By 3:00 p.m., she had fled. The impossible had unfolded before a stunned nation. But this was never just a dictator’s downfall. It was the reawakening of a people.
Hasina’s collapse echoed the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania — the tyrant toppled and executed in 1989 after years of repression, surveillance, and economic decay. Like Ceaușescu, Hasina dreamed of monuments to her legacy. But where Romania’s despot met his end before an enraged populace, Hasina escaped with her life, but not her shame. From exile, she now plots a return, but her name is forever stained with betrayal.
What the Awami League dismissed as mere street noise erupted into an unstoppable force. Years of frustration, suffocation, and broken promises coalesced into a tidal wave that drowned the regime in a matter of hours. Yet, history never repeats itself perfectly. Unlike Ceaușescu’s brutal execution, Hasina was airlifted to safety. But her legacy was left to smoulder in the ashes of a toppled regime.
Amid Mass Uprising, Sheikh Hasina Airlifted from Ganabhaban to India on August 5, 2025
What began as a sweltering, stagnant summer cracked open into something raw, defiant, and profoundly human. The so-called “apolitical generation”—mocked for chasing passport queues rather than protest slogans—found itself leading the charge. Not as passive onlookers, but as the vanguard that altered the nation's destiny.
When the state crumbled, it wasn’t institutions that rose to fill the void. It was the people.
By noon that day, the Prime Minister was gone. The government had evaporated. Dhaka — chaotic, sprawling, magnificent — was left to fend for itself.
With no traffic police, intersections became battlefields. Criminals didn’t wait for orders. Pharmacies were looted. Delivery vans hijacked. Homes ransacked. Grocery shops smashed open. Rumours spread like wildfire—some true, some half-true, many sounding like dystopian fiction. The most terrifying truth was stark: no one was in command.
The first nights descended into lawlessness. Fires illuminated the night sky. Gunshots echoed in alleyways that had once only known the soft chime of rickshaw bells. Panic gripped the city. And yet, amidst the chaos, an unexpected solidarity began to take root.
This wasn’t utopia. It was survival. But it was also a resilience that had been buried for far too long.
We didn’t wait for saviours. We became our own.
For a few strange, unforgettable days, Dhaka transformed. Strangers became allies. Mosques turned into community command centres. Imams issued midnight loudspeaker warnings to neighbourhoods. Social media, for once, shed its veneer of frivolity—flooded instead with live videos of citizens guarding streets, cooking communal meals at dawn, singing by torchlight to stay awake.
And as the city clung to this fragile order, a question loomed in the air:
Why now? Why us?
Our generation — Generation Z — grew up disillusioned. We had never cast votes. We watched corruption thrive, heard the weary sighs of elders who had given up. “This is just how things are,” they said. We were tired before we even got the chance to try.
But when the system collapsed, something deep within us stirred.
Dhaka Chokes In Traffic As Processions By Various Groups Snarl City Streets
The so-called “apolitical” didn’t stay sidelined. They stood up — not out of duty, but because they had to. Doctors volunteered without pay. Lawyers offered legal advice on Facebook Live. “Resilience” — a word overused in glossy NGO brochures — suddenly found meaning in WhatsApp groups, rooftop meetings, and late-night kitchen tables.
No official directives came. No SMS alerts. Yet somehow, we knew exactly what needed to be done — and we did it.
Now, as Dhaka drifts back into its familiar rhythms—traffic jams, press briefings filled with recycled platitudes from new faces—one question refuses to fade:
Why must everything collapse before we remember how to rebuild?
We shouldn’t need catastrophe to rediscover our collective strength. Solidarity must become instinct, not just a reflex. Vigilance must be a habit, not an emergency measure.
Yet, I remain cautious. I do not share the utopian hopes some attach to the July Revolution.
Students break secretariat gates, vandalise vehicles
Overthrowing a regime is one battle; safeguarding freedom is another, far harder one. The coming months will reveal whether this uprising was a fleeting moment or a turning point. Much depends on whether the promised elections under Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus’s interim government are genuinely free and fair.
History reminds us that these moments are not isolated. From the Language Movement of 1952, the Liberation War of 1971, the Mass Uprising of 1990, to the July Revolution of 2024 — these are not events. They are chapters in an unfinished, relentless story. The question is: will our new leadership grasp the weight of these sacrifices, or will they too become footnotes in yet another betrayal?
This July-August 2025 is no ordinary commemoration. The tragic deaths of schoolchildren in Uttara serve as a painful reminder that progress demands constant vigilance and accountability. Yet amidst this mourning, a flicker of anticipation remains. The upcoming general election could be more than just a ballot — it could be Bangladesh’s long-delayed reckoning.
Today, as The Bangladesh Express marks its 31st anniversary, we extend our deepest gratitude to our readers, patrons, and advertisers. From a modest bi-weekly magazine in July 1994 to a nationally recognised English daily, your unwavering support has been our greatest strength through storms that might have silenced us.
Together, we have endured. Together, we will witness what comes next.
(The writer is the Editor of The Bangladesh Express, Chairman of BJFCI, and former Information & Research Secretary of JASAS. He can be reached at: [email protected])
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