World Tour: A reset in Dhaka

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

Last week, the South Asian country of Bangladesh held its first free and fair elections in more than a decade and a half.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: They came after student demonstrations against the prime minister turned violent and led to her resignation. She has been in exile since 2024. Now, the country has officially signified it’s ready to move in a new direction.

WORLD Correspondent Amy Lewis has this report.

AMY LEWIS: The outcome of Bangladesh’s general election last Thursday left no doubt about what voters wanted.

ANNOUNCER: The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has scored a sweeping victory in the country’s general election, setting the stage for a major political re-set.

The moderately Islamic Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, won more than 70 percent of the 300 available seats. These are the first elections the country has held since student uprisings in 2024 ended with more than 1,400 dead and many injured in clashes with police.

SOUND: [Student protests in 2024. Yelling. Blasts.]

Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of 15 years, led the other dominant political party, the Awami League. She was once seen as a pro-democracy figure in Bangladesh–the 8th most populated country in the world. 

But during her second term as prime minister, more than a thousand opposition leaders and family members disappeared or were arrested. Students called for her resignation. She escaped to India in a helicopter.

BBC: The Prime Minister has now resigned and according to reports, has fled the country. That’s as protestors have stormed her residence…

Nobel Laureate Muhommed Yunus became the country’s chief advisor during the interim government and helped set up the most recent elections.

FIRSTPOST: Yunus also barred Hasina’s Awami League from contesting elections. Her exclusion from the polls led to backlash…

Suddenly, many minorities who regularly voted for candidates from the Awami League had to figure out who to vote for.

KAIN: The Christians were traditionally very attached to Awami League. So I think they were, there was a question in the mind, who are they going to vote for?

Asa Kain pastors the Dhaka Assembly of God Church in the country’s capital and heads a large Christian school. He says with the Awami League candidates banned from running, Christians had few choices.

KAIN: Either you had the, the BNP, who have been in power for many years in the, in the beginning, and then you had the Islamic party, Jamaat e-Islami.

Just a few weeks before the election, polls showed the more secular BNP and the pro-Sharia Jamaat parties nearly tied. Then the extremist Jamaat party leader said in a speech that it would be un-Islamic for women to lead, even though 44 percent of voters are women and 42 percent of voters are Gen Z.

KAIN: Our people are pretty progressive, and our women are pretty outgoing, you know, so they did not like it. I think that has backfired against them.

Very few candidates are Christians in this Muslim-majority nation of 170 million.

KAIN: More than 90 percent are Muslims, and about 8, more than 8 percent are Hindus. So Christianity is a very microscopic minority in Bangladesh. So according to the government estimation census, about 0.5 percent Christians, you know, a half of 1 percent.

Pastor Asa told those who asked to look at the integrity and character of each candidate instead of their party. 

In spite of their small numbers, Christians have a very good reputation among government workers because of their good schools and hospitals.

KAIN: I get called from the government ministers and, ‘please take my child. Please give him a chance.’ So they know that our education is the best.

But there’s still a tension.

KAIN: In one hand, they're saying that you've done a lot of good work. Other hand, there's an apprehension that ‘You must be converting people by doing all these good works,’ you know. But we're Christians, we love to do good work, and that's our calling.

Changing religions is legal for anyone over 18, but Pastor Asa says Christians face societal pressure from other sources.

KAIN: It comes from the local people, the community. Because Islam is a very community religion, so anybody leaving that community and going out, they have to face certain difficulties, definitely.

In the run-up to the election, Pastor Asa says Christians prayed fervently for his country. Not so much about which candidates would win, but for peace.

KAIN: But on the whole, it was so peaceful, I couldn't even believe it. I mean, they're, they're saying also that, "I'm really suprsied, how come we are so quiet?" I think it's, it's the prayer of God's people.

Besides forming a new government, the country’s new prime minister, Tarique Rahman, will have to decide what to do about the former prime minister. Last year, Hasina was convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. 

Audio here from CNN’s News18 from India:

ANNOUNCER: If there’s one thorn in the flesh between the India-Bangladesh ties, it is the issue of Sheikh Hasina.

Hasina’s exile in India complicates the tense diplomatic relations between the two countries.

ANNOUNCER: The fact remains that the BNP will certainly want Sheikh Hasina to face trial. They have now said it very very openly that India must hand over Sheikh Hasina… It’s certainly a Catch-22 diplomatic situation as far as the Indian government goes.

During the election, millions of Bangladeshis also approved a referendum about constitutional amendments, term limits, and a change to the governmental power structure. Basically, putting checks on the system so that someone like Sheikh Hasina doesn’t stay in power too long.

KAIN: So just pray that God will give us some good, righteous people in place.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Amy Lewis.

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