Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India following violent protests in 2024, has demanded that the ban on her party be lifted
Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, gave a public media address on Wednesday – her first since she fled Dhaka following a violent uprising.
“I was forced away from my country, but I was never separated from my people,” she declared defiantly in a virtual address to the gathered media in Delhi.
She said fear has entered people’s lives. “This is not the Bangladesh that 3 million people sacrificed their lives for.”
The daughter of the country’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, broke down briefly as she remembered the members of her family at the start of the address. Rahman was assassinated in a 1975 military coup along with her mother, brothers, and several other relatives in their Dhaka residence.
Hasina demanded that the ban on her party, the Awami League, be lifted, that political prisoners be released, false cases dropped, freedom of speech restored, and judicial independence guaranteed.
The former PM said the uprising that led to her ouster “was not a peaceful student movement. My government tried to resolve the issue peacefully through dialogue, legal process and patience.”
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She said that organized groups had used the movement as a cover for violence, and the quota movement was turned into a one-point demand for her resignation.
Hasina previously told RT in written responses to questions that there was evidence suggesting “foreign mercenaries” were present at the protests, instigating the masses.
Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury, a former minister in Hasina’s government, also told RT that the 2024 riots “bear all the hallmarks of a foreign-funded, meticulously planned regime change operation.”
The uprising that started in June 2024 over job quotas intensified by mid-July. After nearly 100 people were killed in clashes on August 4, crowds stormed Hasina’s official residence and she fled by military helicopter to India.
Explaining the police violence, Hasina said law enforcement agencies had come under “organized attack” and “the state has a duty to protect life, property and public institutions.” She noted that she had formed a judicial inquiry commission “so every casualty and every incident could be investigated.”
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But she said that the interim government under Muhammad Yunus, which took over after she fled, stopped the investigation.
“They did not want an investigation. They wanted the evidences (sic) buried,” she said.
She alleged that in August that year the violence became a campaign of political persecution, that leaders and workers of her party, the Awami League, were killed, persecuted, arrested, and driven from their homes.
At least 10,000 people have been killed or disappeared in the last two years, she alleged, adding that more than 600 cases have been filed against her, and women party workers were tortured in custody.
The interim government was replaced by the government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party on February 17 this year.
“Bangladesh remains in the grip of fear, terror, aggression, economic hardship and deep insecurity,” Hasina alleged. “No one who stands for the spirit of the liberation war is safe.”
Hasina said last month in a telephone interview that she would return to Bangladesh in December where she faces a death sentence handed down in absentia.
Bangladesh renewed its extradition demand for Sheikh Hasina ahead of her address. New Delhi said the event was private.
Most Bangladeshi media did not cover her address live.
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