DHAKA: Bangladesh’s Chief Justice Obaidul Hassan resigned Saturday following protests by a group of students and other demonstrators as the country’s interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus started functioning days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign and flee to India.
Asif Nazrul, law, justice and parliamentary affairs adviser to the interim government, said in a video message posted on Facebook that his office received the resignation letter and they would forward it to the country’s figurehead President Mohammed Shahabuddin for further procedures.
Five other top judges in the Supreme Court were also expected to resign.
Tensions gripped Saturday morning after the chief justice called for a meeting of the judges of the country’s High Court and the Supreme Court to discuss the working of the judiciary under the new government. The protesters thronged the court premises and demanded that the chief justice and other judges of the top court step down.
A key student leader Asif Mahmud — who was appointed as an adviser at the Ministry of Youth and Sports — urged his supporters to gather at the court premises to press for an unconditional resignation, in a Facebook post in the morning.
On Thursday, Yunus was sworn in, and 16 other members were included in his interim Cabinet, who were drawn mainly from civil society and included two student protest leaders after the president dissolved Parliament. New Cabinet members were chosen after talks earlier this week between student leaders, civil society representatives and the military.
Protests by students began in July against a quota system for government jobs that critics said benefitted people with connections to Hasina’s party. She resigned and fled to India Monday after the protests morphed into a movement against her government, leaving more than 300 people dead including students and police officers in the ensuing violence.
Yunus, who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work developing microcredit markets, was in Paris for the Olympics when he was chosen for the interim role.
He called for peace and promised to bring reforms. The interim government is expected to announce a new election, but it is not clear how long they wish to stay in power and when the elections could be held. The country’s main opposition demanded a new election in three months, but that is unlikely to happen, according to analysts.
Nazrul said that the Yunus-led government would remain in power as long as necessary, trying to address the desires of people and political parties for “reforms” and “election.”
Hasina’s Awami League party has not said anything specific about the election timeframe, but her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said that an election without their party would not be acceptable as it is “the largest” party in Bangladesh.
Yunus, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for helping the poor through his rural finance organization — had a frosty relationship with Hasina, who had called him a “bloodsucker” allegedly for using force to extract loan repayments from rural poor, mainly women. Yunus denied the allegations.
He faced many court cases and was convicted by a court for violating the country’s labor law and sentenced to six months in jail. But he was on bail upon appeal, and before his appointment, he was acquitted of the charges.
He was quickly selected as the head of the interim government when Hasina’s downfall created a vacuum and left the future uncertain for Bangladesh, which has a history of military rule and myriad crises.
Hasina, 76, was elected to a fourth consecutive term in January, but the vote was boycotted by her main opponents, with thousands of opposition activists detained beforehand. The US and UK denounced the result as not credible. Hasina’s critics say her administration increasingly was marked by human rights abuses and corruption, and was following a streak of authoritarianism.
The chaos on Bangladesh’s streets continued after her resignation on Monday. Dozens of police officers were killed, prompting police to stop working across the country.
The military is helping police officers to return to work but it will take more time to get rid of their trauma and to restore the police administration to its full functionality.
Bangladesh’s chief justice resigns under pressure as Yunus-led interim government starts working
https://arab.news/cbeyb
Bangladesh’s chief justice resigns under pressure as Yunus-led interim government starts working
- Five other top judges in the Supreme Court were also expected to resign
- Protests by students began in July against a quota system for government jobs that critics said benefitted people with connections to Hasina’s party
Fossils of ‘Java Man,’ first known Homo erectus, return to Indonesia
- Netherlands to repatriate more than 28,000 items in Dubois collection in 2026
- Fossils excavated in Indonesia were ‘removed against will of people’
JAKARTA: Prehistoric bones belonging to “Java Man” — the first known fossil evidence of Homo erectus — went on display at Indonesia’s National Museum on Thursday, more than 130 years after they were taken to the Netherlands during Dutch colonial rule.
The parts of the skeleton — a skull fragment, molar and thigh bone — were uncovered along the Bengawan Solo River on Java island in the late 19th century by Dutch anatomist and geologist Eugene Dubois.
The three items, and a related shell that was scratched by early Homo erectus, are the first in the planned repatriation of more than 28,000 fossils and natural history objects originating in Java and Sumatra that Dubois had removed.
“Repatriation is a national priority,” Indonesian Culture Minister Fadli Zon said during an official handover ceremony in Jakarta.
“We bear the responsibility to protect cultural heritage, restore historical narratives and ensure public access to the cultural and scientific heritage that belongs to Indonesia.”
Fossils of the Java Man, which was hand-carried in a GPS-tracked, climate-controlled suitcase with a diplomatic seal, were some of the first pieces of evidence showing links between apes and humans.
The fossils are part of the larger Dubois collection that was managed by Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a 200-year-old scientific institution in Leiden.
The rest of the collection will be transferred to Indonesia in 2026, the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta said in a statement, adding that Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency will take a lead role in preserving and managing the items.
“This handover marks the beginning of the next phase. We intend to repatriate thousands of items excavated in Indonesia over 130 years ago,” said Marcel Beukeboom, general director of Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
“This fossil bears witness to an important link in human evolution, while also representing part of Indonesian history and cultural heritage,” he said.
Jakarta started to campaign for the Dutch government to return stolen Indonesian artifacts after declaring independence in 1945, but the Netherlands started to return stolen items only in small numbers in the 1970s.
Recent efforts by the Indonesian Repatriation Committee have brought back home hundreds of artifacts since 2023, bringing the number to more than 2,000 items so far.
The repatriation of the Dubois collection was first announced in September, following recommendation by the Netherlands’ Colonial Collections Committee.
“The Colonial Collections Committee has concluded … that the Dutch state never owned the Dubois collection,” the Dutch government said in a news release issued at the time.
“The committee believes that the circumstances under which the fossils were obtained means it is likely they were removed against the will of the people, resulting in an act of injustice against them.
“Fossils held spiritual and economic value for local people, who were coerced into revealing fossil sites.”
The returned fossils are now a centerpiece of “Early History,” a new permanent exhibit at the National Museum in Jakarta that opened to the public on Thursday.
It explores the history of human civilization throughout Indonesia, with displays including a replica of one of the world’s oldest cave paintings from South Sulawesi and inscriptions from the 4th-century Hindu Kutai Martadipura Kingdom in East Kalimantan.
