Last week’s slogans demanding the resignation of the “killer dictator” are gone: if you ask Bangladesh’s young people whether they are hopeful about the future, the answer is clearly on the wall.
Students, who have been protesting for weeks to oust dictatorial Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from power, have once again taken to the streets to demand a transformation of the capital Dhaka.
They are whitewashing walls to clean off politically charged graffiti accusing him of murder and demanding his resignation at the height of this month’s unrest.
In their place, they are creating elaborate and colourful murals that signal the widespread faith among Bangladeshis in a better tomorrow.
“We want improvements in our Bangladesh,” said Abir Hossain, 21, as he and a half-dozen classmates decorated a roadside wall with a picture of a bird flying out of a cage.
“We feel proud. The bird is free now. We are free now,” he told AFP.
Students in paint-stained shirts laughed and joked with their friends, updating the visual landscape of Shabagh, a leafy central area where the prestigious Dhaka University is located.
Colourful graffiti called on the public to “break the iron doors of the prison” and celebrated the “rebirth” of Bangladesh.
“When the protests started there were a lot of negative things written here,” Fayaz Hussain, 21, told AFP.
“We’re erasing them … so that people younger than us don’t say it,” he said.
“We’re writing down other things they might say in the future.”
“Shoot me in the chest”
As protests against her 15-rule intensified, graffiti denouncing the “killer beauty” appeared on walls around Dhaka, and is disappearing just as fast.
“We want to send a message to the public that we have liberated this country from a dictator and now we have to work together,” Nafisa Sara, 19, told AFP during a break from painting.
He said, “People will see that if students and all of us work together, we can build the country.”
But the sudden launch of the public works project also shows that antipathy towards the former leader is still widespread.
More than 450 people were killed in the riots that ended last week when Hasina abruptly resigned and fled to India.
One of the graffiti depicts a student named Abu Sayeed, who was shot dead in the northern city of Rangpur, the first student to be killed in a police crackdown on protests.
Since Hasina’s departure, footage of Saeed’s final moments has been shown repeatedly on Bangladeshi television, breathing new life into a repressed media landscape.
The painting depicts an image that is now etched on the national consciousness: a 25-year-old man with his arms outstretched in a confrontation with riot police.
It bears his alleged last words: “Shoot me in the chest”.
On Tuesday, a Dhaka court ruled that a criminal murder investigation could be launched against Hasina, two of her senior aides and four police officers in another case of police killings during the unrest.
The caretaker government that took power after her departure has not yet commented on whether it supports the case, or whether Hasina should return from exile to face justice.
In recent times, student groups have taken out rallies demanding the same.
“He should be brought back to the country, and he should face trial,” said Mohiuddin Rony, 25.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
