When Sajeeb Wazed Joy’s mom got into hot water, he did what many of us do these days: he messaged the family WhatsApp group. But the trouble in question wasn’t a parking fine or mystery ailment. Joy’s mother, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, was facing a popular uprising intent on forcing her ouster. The cause was the reintroduction of employment quotas for descendants of heroes of the South Asian nation’s 1971 independence struggle led by Joy’s grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
“We were all surprised at the quota movement,” Joy tells TIME in his first U.S. media interview since his mother’s toppling. “In fact, I said in the WhatsApp group, ‘30% quotas are too much; we should reduce it to 5%.’ And someone chimed in, ‘Hey, we’re grandchildren of freedom fighters too.’ And I jokingly replied, ‘That’s why I left 5%!’”
In the end, the quota issue was simply the spark that ignited a powder keg of public discontent over inequality and political repression that exploded over two weeks in July. After a violent crackdown on peaceful protesters that claimed at least 1,000 lives, the last the world saw of Hasina was as she was being bundled into a military helicopter with protesters closing in. As intruders ransacked her official residence in Dhaka, carrying away keepsakes like clothes and ornaments, Hasina floated through the smoggy skies to India, where she remains till this day, licking her wounds far from public view.
“She’s quite upset and frustrated at the situation in the country that all her hard work over the last 15 years is pretty much coming undone,” says Joy, who runs an IT business in the U.S. and formerly served as an honorary adviser to his mother on technology matters.
Back in Bangladesh, an almighty reckoning is underway. Following 15 years of uninterrupted rule, practically every government institution has been politicized by Hasina’s Awami League party, engendering deep distrust of the…
