In rare interviews, ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that she was living freely but cautiously in Delhi and had no intentions of leaving India. She also warned that millions of voters would boycott the election in Bangladesh if her party, the Awami League, wasn’t allowed to participate in it.
Ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday said she had no plans of leaving India, warning that millions of voters would be boycotting the election in Bangladesh if her party, the Awami League, wasn’t allowed to participate. In interviews to a news agency and the UK’s Independent, Hasina refused to apologise for the killings that took place in July-August 2024 during the agitation that led to the toppling of her regime. Hasina told Reuters she “lives freely in Delhi but remains cautious given her family’s violent history”.
Hasina, advised by Bangladesh Army Chief Waker-Uz-Zaman, left for India on August 5 last year on a self-imposed exile as tens of thousands of protesters marched towards her residence in Dhaka. Since then, she has been in a safehouse in Delhi, according to reports. A Reuters journalist had seen Hasina taking a stroll at Delhi’s Lodhi Garden and nodding to passersby who recognised her.
In an e-mail interview to Reuters, Sheikh Hasina said that “she would not return to Bangladesh under any government formed after elections that exclude her party, and plans to remain in India”.
“I would of course love to go home, so long as the government there was legitimate, the Constitution was being upheld, and law and order genuinely prevailed,” she told Reuters.
Hasina and several leaders of her government and party are facing charges of murder and a trial has just concluded at the International Crimes Tribunal-1 in Dhaka where the government prosecutor sought the death penalty for her.
Around 1,400 people were allegedly killed in Bangladesh in July and August last year as a students’ protest against quota in jobs turned into a movement against the Sheikh Hasina regime.
In an interview to The Independent, published on Wednesday, Sheikh Hasina refused to apologise for the deaths, but said she “mourns each and every child, sibling, cousin and friend we lost as a nation” and would “continue to offer my condolences”.
She called the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) proceedings “sham trial” and part of the process of assassinations against her family, and a bid to get rid of her.
“The ICT is a sham court presided over by an unelected government consisting of my political opponents. Many of those opponents will stop at nothing to get rid of me,” Hasina told The Independent. “Because of my family’s history, nobody can be more aware than I am of the history of political assassinations in our country, and this move by the ICT is part of that ugly tradition.”
Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, one of the founders of Bangladesh, and several family members were assassinated by a group of army officers on August 15, 1975. Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rihanna Siddiq, who were vacationing abroad, survived. Then too, the sisters had sought refuge in Delhi.
The Election Commission of Bangladesh suspended the registration of Hasina’s party, the Awami League, in May. The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus banned Awami League’s activities soon after. The Awami League is one of the biggest parties and has family-based following.
The interviews came even as Dhaka-based Daily Star reported that the Election Commission was likely to announce the date for the general election by the first week of December.
