DHAKA, Bangladesh — December 19, 2025. Dhaka’s winter air was thick with tear gas, burned paper, and the lingering smell of destruction. Near Shahbagh Square, students and workers surged toward the charred remains of the Prothom Alo and the Daily Star newspaper buildings, waving banners that read “Who Killed Hadi?” and “Media of the Elite, Enemy of the People.”
Streetlights flickered over broken glass and debris of the previous night’s violence. Police crouched behind water cannons. This time, the protesters chanted not for wages or jobs but for justice for Sharif Osman Hadi, the thirty-three-year-old firebrand whose life and death have once again turned Bangladesh into an epicenter of revolt.
On December 12, Hadi was shot by masked assailants while leaving a mosque in central Dhaka. He had been preparing to contest the February 2026 elections as an independent candidate — the first political figure to emerge from the post-2024 youth uprising to challenge the country’s entrenched political order at the ballot box.
After nearly a week fighting for his life in a Singapore hospital, Hadi died on December 18. The arrival of his coffin at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport ignited the spark. Within hours, thousands poured into the streets.
By December 19, Dhaka was under curfew. But the uprising had already spread — from Chittagong’s industrial belts to Rajshahi’s university campuses, from the border towns of Jashore to the tea gardens of Sylhet. Protesters attacked police outposts, government offices, and, most symbolically, the headquarters of the country’s largest media networks.
For fifteen years, Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father and the country’s longest-serving prime minister, governed with an iron grip, cloaked in the institutions and language of democracy. Her government presided over years of economic growth but also crushed dissent, muzzled the press, and reduced elections to rituals of…
Auteur: Sajad Hameed
