Comment by polygamous_bat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by polygamous_bat | Hacker News Reader

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> Sheikh Hasina's government, while repressive, is also extremely popular. Her tack to neoliberalism has been enormously successful for the country, and most Bangladeshis do not want to change course. Her approval rating in multiple polls is 70-80%: https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/322206/why-sheikh.... She has the popular mandate.

I don't know how connected you are with Bangladeshi politics right now, but poll-hacking through extreme repression is the first trick Sheikh Hasina/her party Awami League mastered. I am not surprised to see such a high approval rating, rather, I'm surprised to see 30% people signal disapproval in an environment with extreme political speech suppression. If you doubt that, read the story we're discussing under again. This is a government that's been jailing people without trial for their Facebook posts.

If you want to know some indication of the true feeling of the people, go check out the Facebook posts of anything related to the ruling party, and check the ratio of "haha" reacts to likes or hearts. Generally, that's 4:1 in my experience.

That polling is conducted by US organizations. I have quite a bit of family left in Bangladesh, and my dad is very political (he was a student activist during independence). I don’t think I know anybody who supports the BNP, including folks who are MAGA when it comes to American politics. But I come from Dhaka so maybe I live in a bubble, who knows.

My Bangladeshi immigrant boss (from Dhaka) in Portland a decade ago supported the BNP and was pretty vocal about it and about how pre-1971 Pakistan was a great country.

Then again, he also complained about dressing up on Diwali maybe turning his daughter Hindu so IDK

Edit: AFAIK (edited because I’m rate-limited for some reason) he did support independence or was at least reconciled to it but was nostalgic for the unified country.

Wow. I’ve never met a Bangladeshi that didn’t support independence (though obviously I knew they exist).

My BNP supporting boss always used to claim that Chhatra league was not far behind Shibbir in killing people.

I have seen people claiming Western polls are wrong across al sorts of spheres for decades and almost always I find that the person claiming the polls are wrong has some political motive and the polls are later vindicated with a move to free, fair, monitored elections on the same questions.

Western polls are pretty accurate. Modi is popular, Hasina is popular, Erdogan is popular, Crimeans in 2014 wanted to join Russia... all of these things are likely true.

Erdogan is not that popular. The election was very close and went to a runoff. And that's after the political speech repression that happens on Twitter and Wikipedia bans.

> This is a government that's been jailing people without trial for their Facebook posts.

In this specific case, the woman was likely arrested because of her son's post, which is obviously worse.

But the rest is common even in so-called "liberal democracies": folks are jailed after arrest for months or years before trial, and folks are arrested and jailed for "hate speech" and "causing offense" via online posts -- or the government just creates a pretext for arrest, but it was really because of the person's legal speech.

So, yes, Bangladesh is worse, but the Good Guys™ are increasingly authoritarian. The gap isn't as large as most folks think.

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