What’s Next for Bangladesh’s Student-Led Revolution?
Nobel Peace Prize–winning economist is Bangladesh’s new interim prime minister. Yunus stepped into the role after the South Asian nation experienced a that forced the now-disgraced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to end her 15-year term. Hasina was the target of weeks of mass protests and stands of ordering police to kill hundreds of student activists.
Bangladesh is the eighth most populous nation in the world, and its garment industry is a top global exporter. Labor expert and City University of New York School of Law associate professor Chaumtoli Huq was in Bangladesh when the protests began. She spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about what happened and what lessons the student-led revolt offers for the United States.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Ƶ Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 of the same name.
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