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DHAKA: Once a heavily guarded palace, the former official residence of Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina is being turned into a museum as a lasting reminder of her autocratic rule.

Photographs of jubilant flag-waving crowds clambering onto the rooftop of the Dhaka palace after Hasina fled by helicopter to India were a defining image of the culmination of student-led protests that toppled her government on August 5, 2024.

One year later, with the South Asian nation of around 170 million people still in political turmoil, the authorities hope the sprawling Ganabhaban palace offers a message to the future.

Graffiti daubed on the walls condemning her regime remains untouched.

“Freedom,” one message reads. “We want justice.”

Hasina’s rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024 in her failed bid to cling to power, according to the United Nations.

The 77-year-old has defied court orders to attend her ongoing trial on charges amounting to crimes against humanity in Dhaka, accusations she denies.

“Dictator,” another message reads, among scores being protected for posterity. “Killer Hasina.”

Muhammad Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who is leading the caretaker government until elections are held in early 2026, said the conversion to a museum would “preserve memories of her misrule and the people’s anger when they removed her from power.”

Mosfiqur Rahman Johan, 27, a rights activist and documentary photographer, was one of the thousands who stormed the luxurious palace, when crowds danced in her bedroom, feasted on food from the kitchens, and swam in the lake Hasina used to fish in.

“It will visualize and symbolize the past trauma, the past suffering — and also the resistance,” he said.

“Ganabhaban is a symbol of fascism, the symbol of an autocratic regime.”

The complex was built by Hasina’s father, the first leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Hasina made it her official residence during her 15 years in power.

Tanzim Wahab, the curator of the under-construction museum, told AFP that exhibits would include artefacts of the protesters killed.

Their life stories will be told through films and photographs, while plaques will host the names of the people killed by the security forces during the longer period of Hasina’s rule.

“The museum’s deeper purpose is retrospective, looking back at the long years of misrule and oppression,” said Wahab.

“That, I believe, is one of the most important aspects of this project.”

Wahab said the museum would include animation and interactive installations, as well as documenting the tiny cells where Hasina’s opponents were detained in suffocating conditions.
“We want young people... to use it as a platform for discussing democratic ideas, new thinking, and how to build a new Bangladesh,” Wahab said.

That chimes with the promised bolstering of democratic institutions that interim leader Yunus wants to ensure before elections — efforts slowed as political parties jostle for power.

The challenges he faces are immense, warned Human Rights Watch ahead of the one-year anniversary of the revolution.

“The interim government appears stuck, juggling an unreformed security sector, sometimes violent religious hard-liners, and political groups that seem more focused on extracting vengeance on Hasina’s supporters than protecting Bangladeshis’ rights,” HRW said.

But while Hasina’s palace is being preserved, protesters have torn down many other visible signs of her rule.

Statues of Hasina’s father were toppled, and portraits of the duo torn and torched.

Protesters even used digger excavators to smash down the home of the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — that Hasina had turned into a museum to her father.

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said President Donald Trump needs to do better next time to get bipartisan support for his nominees, instead of trying to “streamroll” the Senate.

In his parting shot as the Senate adjourned for a recess until September, Schumer said that contrary to Trump’s claim of being master in dealmaking, he said the president threw in the towel “in a fit of rage” after the Democrats refused to budge.

Schumer was responding to the president’s tirade on social media, in which he said Schumer can “GO TO HELL!”

Pointing to Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform that was flashed on screen, he said, said, “Trump tried to bully us, go around us, call us names, but he got nothing. He walked away with his tail between his legs.”

In his post, Trump said: “Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country,” Trump added.

Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee.

Schumer said that Trump attempted “to steamroll the Senate, to put in place his historically unqualified nominee, but Senate Democrats would not let him.  In a fit of rage, Trump threw in the towel, sent Republicans home, and was unable to do the basic work of negotiation. 
Is this the art of the deal, cajoul, stomp your feet, the give up?” Schumer said.

“We should be working together on legislation, to get things done to the American people. That’s the way to go, not changing the rules, because when they change the rule, they say ’only we are going to decide what’s good for the American people, and every time they do that the American people lose,” she added.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune suggested a change Senate rules after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. “I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.”
Schumer said a rules change would be a “huge mistake,” especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward.
The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party’s executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations — and make them less bipartisan.
In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump’s nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead, and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration’s spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues.
The Senate held a rare weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and as the two parties tried to work out the final details of a deal. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told Republicans to pack it up and go home.
Thune said afterward that there were “several different times” when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end “we didn’t close it out.”
It’s the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn’t allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump’s nominees as possible.
But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation.
“We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,” Schumer said.

(With AP)