Politics & Power Quote by Sheikh Hasina

“Absolute barbarism” is a deliberately blunt moral indictment, not a policy critique. Hasina’s phrasing strips the state of its usual alibis - “order,” “security,” “necessary force” - and reclassifies police violence as something pre-political: savagery. That word choice matters. “Barbarism” doesn’t invite a debate about proportionality; it frames the act as beyond the bounds of legitimate governance. It’s a rhetorical move designed to shame, to make neutrality feel complicit.

The second sentence tightens the screw by juxtaposing two models of power: governance as problem-solving versus governance as coercion. “Instead of solving their problems” implies an unfulfilled social contract, the idea that protest emerges from unmet needs the state could address if it cared to. “Trying to suppress the people by force” recasts citizens not as a threat but as “the people” - the foundational source of political legitimacy. The subtext is clear: a government that fires indiscriminately has stopped governing and started occupying.

Coming from a career politician who has wielded state power herself, the quote also functions as positional politics. It’s a bid to stand on the side of public suffering, to convert outrage into moral authority. The line “indiscriminate firing” does double duty: it condemns violence while emphasizing randomness, suggesting the state has become reckless, unaccountable, even panicked. The intended takeaway isn’t merely that policing went too far; it’s that the regime’s relationship to dissent has curdled into fear - and fear is being outsourced to guns.