The head of the movement, which spearheaded the protests in Bangladesh, called for 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed Yunus to head the interim government. It is recalled that yesterday the army took control of the country and the prime minister fled abroad.

“We decided to form a temporary government” with a “principal adviser”, i.e. head, “the Nobel laureate acts Muhammad Yunuswho enjoys international fame and is widely recognized,” says Nahid Islam, head of the Students Against Discrimination collective, in a video released to the public.

Demonstrations against quotas in public administration recruitment, which since the beginning of July have claimed the lives of 366 people, led yesterday, Monday, to the flight by helicopter of 76-year-old Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Yunus, 84, is known for lifting millions of people out of poverty with his bank, which became a pioneer in microfinance. But he dislikes Sheikh Hasina, who has accused him of “sucking the blood” of the poor.

Yunus is currently in Europe and a close aide said last night that he has not received any proposal from the military to lead the interim government.

Nahid Islam and other student leaders were due to meet today at noon (local time, 09:00 Greek time) with army chief General Waqar-Uz-Zaman. Zaman announced Hasina’s resignation and declared that an interim government would be formed.

Islam, 26, a sociology student who often appears in public wearing a bandana-like Afghan flag across his forehead, became famous in the country in mid-July when police detained him along with other Dhaka University students as protests they were getting bloody.

Islam stated that the students would not accept any government led by the military or backed by the military and proposed that Yunus be made its head.

“Any government other than the one we propose will not be accepted,” he wrote in a Facebook post this morning.

Yesterday, Monday, flanked by other student leaders, Islam told reporters: “We will not betray the blood shed by the martyrs for our cause. We will create a new democratic Bangladesh through our promise of life security, social justice and a new political landscape.”

He vowed to ensure that the country of 170 million people never returns to what he called “fascist rule” and asked his fellow students to protect its Hindu minority and its places of worship.

Islam, who was born in 1998 in Dhaka, is married and has a younger brother, Naqib. His father is a teacher and his mother is a housewife.

At 409 the dead from the riots

At least 109 people were killed in violent clashes that rocked Bangladesh on Monday, a day marked by the prime minister’s flight abroad, police and doctors said, revising an earlier toll.

It was the deadliest day since early July, when protests against public service quotas began, with the death toll reaching 409, according to an AFP tally based on police data. , official and hospital sources.