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Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister of 15 years, fled the nation after protesters demanding that she step down stormed her residence on Monday.
Ms Hasina, 76, reportedly handed over the nation’s reins to the navy earlier than flying out on a helicopter to India, her strongest ally, bringing to an ignominious finish her iron-fisted rule.
Bangladesh, a rustic of 160 million individuals, plunged into turmoil in late June when Ms Hasina’s authorities launched a crackdown on primarily pupil protesters demanding the rollback of a contentious quota system for presidency jobs. The crackdown noticed dozens of protesters killed, many extra injured and hundreds detained.
The protests subsided after the Supreme Court docket slashed the roles quota for family members of the veterans of the 1971 battle of independence with Pakistan from 30 per cent to five per cent, solely to erupt extra strongly this weekend.
Not less than 95 individuals had been killed on Sunday because the protesters clashed with safety forces, taking the demise toll within the demonstrations to greater than 300.
Taking energy after ‘trauma’
The unrest that compelled Ms Hasina to flee was an eerie reminder of the mob rampage at her residence throughout the bloody navy coup nearly 50 years in the past that ended within the assassination of her father, Bangladesh’s first prime minister Sheikh Mujib Rahman.
Ms Hasina misplaced 18 members of her household and family workers within the coup. She weaponised the trauma, stated Avinash Paliwal, a senior lecturer at Soas College of London specialising in south Asian strategic affairs, calling it her “one very highly effective high quality” as a politician.
Proudly carrying the label of being the daughter of Bangladesh’s founder, Ms Hasina got here to energy in 1996 however misplaced the subsequent election in 2001.
Imposing an iron grip
She returned as prime minister in 2009 and promptly went about tightening her maintain on energy. She was broadly accused of muzzling dissent, finishing up extrajudicial killings, shrinking press freedom and cracking down on civil society.
Her Awami League social gathering received the 2014 election nearly unopposed after opposition events boycotted it over allegations of vote rigging. It was the identical story in 2018.
Forward of the nationwide election in January this yr, the Hasina authorities allegedly arrested almost 20,000 employees of the Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion. The mass arrests led to protests by the principle opposition social gathering’s members, inviting a violent state response.
The social gathering’s chief, former prime minister Khaleda Zia, was “getting ready to demise” beneath extended home arrest, the opposition alleged in June final yr.
Human rights teams accused Ms Hasina’s administration of forcibly disappearing her critics, an allegation denied by her.
After her inauguration as prime minister for a fourth consecutive time period, observers famous many pink flags of impending bother in Bangladesh.
“There’s a historical past of an autocratic slide in Hasina’s decision-making,” Dr Paliwal stated on the time. “The present elections could also be a closing stamp on a full-blown one-party state.”
Chequered human rights document
In 2023, Amnesty Worldwide criticised the Hasina authorities for human rights violations, not least her jailing of critics and journalists beneath the draconian Info and Communication Know-how Act, 2006.
Ms Hasina accused the nation’s largest newspaper Prothom Alo of being an enemy of the Awami League, democracy, and the individuals of Bangladesh.
“The federal government intensified its crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceable meeting forward of common elections scheduled for January 2024,” the group stated in its annual report.
“Authorities used powers within the Digital Safety Act and different laws to focus on journalists and human rights defenders, subjecting them to arbitrary detention and torture. There was a regarding enhance in enforced disappearances and lack of accountability for deaths in custody.”
This document was attribute of Ms Hasina’s rule, specialists stated.
She tallied an extended listing of political enemies whilst she survived 19 assassination makes an attempt and had “no secure exit”, Zillur Rahman, director on the Centre for Governance Research in Dhaka, instructed the Related Press.
“She is at all times beneath risk,” he stated, “and he or she needs to be in energy.”
