‘She’s the one who shattered us’: families of slain Bangladesh students wantk to hold Sheikh Hasina to account

The protest movement that instigated her unexpected downfall began small, as student protests on campuses. But Hasina, notoriously intolerant of dissent, was rattled; in response, she authorised a campaign of terror and vengeance led by the most feared battalions of police and paramilitary. Protesters were met with batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, metal pellets, beatings, mass arrests, judicial torture and eventually live ammunition, sometimes fired from helicopters. Yet as the crackdown intensified and more bodies lay in the streets, the movement swelled into an all-out revolution.