2024 is the year of elections, with 72 countries around the field, including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the US and Syria, having held elections.
While most had been contentious, the fallout from two – Bangladesh and Syria – develop into into protests and uprisings.
The year started with the Bangladesh elections on 7 January. The election was largely criticised as biased and unfair.
This was the third consecutive election below the guideline of Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president.
One match after any other led to a peaceful pupil-led motion against the quota machine for presidency jobs in July.
The then-high minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime launched massive crackdowns on the protesters, turning the peaceful pronounce into an uprising against the regime.
Hasina fell and fled the nation on 5 August when of us from in each set the nation entered Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and started their march against Gonobhaban.
Hasina ruled Bangladesh for 15 years prior to fleeing, typically claiming that she was following her father’s legacy.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad moreover shares a same fate.
Bashar assumed vitality on 17 July 2000 following the demise of his father, Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian president who ruled the nation since 1971.
Born and raised in the capital metropolis of Damascus, Bashar wasn’t purported to be the president as he had an elder brother, an heir obvious after his father’s demise.
So he graduated from clinical faculty, specialising in ophthalmology, and started working as a health care provider in the Syrian Military.
But it all modified in 1994.
Bashar’s elder brother, Bassel al-Assad, died in a car accident.
This establish the stage for Bashar to be recalled to Syria to rob over Bassel’s position because the heir obvious.
The ophthalmologist without note needed to enter a militia academy and rob fee of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1998.
True alarmed of a month after his father’s demise, Assad needed to rob the position of Syria’s president.
Even calling Bashar’s 24-year-long rule a rollercoaster wander could presumably be an underestimation. It was marred by protests, violence, civil battle, and excessive human rights violations that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of Syrians looking out out for refuge in assorted countries.
To for the time being, Syria is tranquil the field’s good refugee disaster, representing nearly 25% of the worldwide refugee population, in step with Notify Worldwide.
Bashar’s rule ended this present day (8 December) with him fleeing the nation and heading to an undisclosed living.
This reminds us of how Hasina fled. The nation did now not know where its fallen premiere was heading prior to she entered Indian airspace.
Bangladesh and Syria: Republic on quilt, autocratic in pages
Each and every Syria and Bangladesh are republics. One is “The Syrian Arab Republic”, and the quite loads of is “The Other folks’s Republic of Bangladesh.”
On the other hand, in fact, neither Bashar nor Hasina’s rule exhibited the qualities required for a democratic machine.
Syria had been a one-celebration reveal for a protracted time, while Sheikh Hasina, over her 15 years of rule, effectively muzzled the nation’s media and centered the opposition leaders in an strive and cripple any individual who would dare to scenario her.
In each and every countries, residents knew the outcomes of the next elections even prior to the dates had been revealed.
Even amid the full authorities crackdowns, of us revolted various situations. In her rule, Hasina efficiently contained the full protests introduced out against her regime apart from the July uprising.
On the quite loads of hand, many of the 24-year-long rule of Bashar contained the ongoing Syrian Civil War that started in 2011, adopted by Arab Spring protests that called for political reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights in Syria.
Syria had a reveal of emergency since 1963. The protesters moreover demanded that it stop.
International powers started entering Syria, making the scenario great extra hard than in any assorted nation around the field.
For the the rest of the Arab countries, it was a serious warning name when the Arab Spring protests, starting in Tunisia, spread to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.
But when Bashar ordered a crackdown on protesters in March 2011 that spiralled the nation into a civil battle and killed nearly half of 1,000,000 of us, the Arab League suspended Syria from the league.
Sooner or later, the US intervened, with the then-US president Barack Obama imposing exiguous sanctions against the Bashar authorities in April 2011.
Russia, on the quite loads of hand, took Bashar’s facet.
Even in 2015, at a time when all hopes regarded bleak for Bashar, Russian President Vladimir Putin talked about Russia was offering the Bashar authorities with sufficiently “serious” abet, each and every logistical and militia.
At some level of the Syrian Civil War, Bashar’s authorities faced allegations of excessive human rights and battle violations, including carrying out on the least 300 chemical attacks.
More nowadays, France issued an arrest warrant against Bashar over the usage of banned chemical weapons against civilians in Syria on 15 November 2023.
Loss of life of dynasties
The fall of Sheikh Hasina did now not only bring an stop to her 15-year-long rule. It moreover led to the commence of the erasure of the Mujib Dynasty.
This develop into obvious when Sheikh Mujib’s statues, murals and his Dhanmondi 32 home develop into targets as almost at this time because the news of Hasina fleeing broke out.
A same scenario took living even prior to the news of Bashar al-Assad fleeing Syria broke out.
Protesters introduced down the statue of Hafez al-Assad, ex-Syrian president and the dull father of Bashar, effectively ending the Assad Dynasty.
Syria is what Bangladesh could even indulge in change into
The events that led to the autumn of the Assad dynasty in Syria are great extra hard than the events that ousted Hasina.
On the other hand, the history of Syria foreshadows what is going to indulge in been if the July uprising was now not a success.
Bashar was the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces. With the military at his disposal, he led the battle against his of us.
Capturing at your have of us, ensuing in hundreds and hundreds turning into refugees, is the worst thing any chief can attain.
Bashar al-Assad did precisely that.
From the discussions that came to mild between Sheikh Hasina and the militia prior to she fled the nation, it’s miles terribly obvious that Hasina wished the security forces to intrude and dwell the protesters who had been heading to Gonobhaban.
In step with sources, the security forces declined to avert extra bloodshed in spite of Hasina blasting them for his or her “failure,” ordering them to face up to the of us and declining to resign.
They argued it would establish off extra casualties. There will doubtless be a sea of blood but no assurance of holding of us away from the Ganobhaban.
