This week on Foreign Correspondent, can you remake a country?
One year ago, student protestors led an uprising in Bangladesh to overthrow a brutal dictator. Sheikh Hasina ruled for 15 years by murdering and jailing political rivals and ruthlessly cracking down on dissent. She fled the country after a violent crackdown on protesters where 1,400 people were killed. Now the student leaders have emerged as a new political force as Bangladesh prepares to hold its first free and fair elections in almost two decades.
On Foreign Correspondent reporter Ellie Grounds travels to the capital Dhaka where election season has begun in earnest. She meets students who put everything on the line to overthrow Hasina and who are determined to remake Bangladesh from a dictatorship to a democracy. But their path won't be easy – established political parties who had effectively been sidelined during Hasina's reign are coming back strong. Conservative religious groups suppressed under the Hasina regime have also re-emerged, and are loudly protesting plans for progressive reforms, in particular changes that would give equal rights to women. The dream for the ‘new Bangladesh' is radical, but is it realistic?
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