Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has resigned after 15 years in power after weeks of violent protests and clashes with security forces. On Monday, demonstrators marched to the capital, Dhaka, defying a military curfew. They stormed Hasina’s official residence and celebrated her ouster in the streets, with some seen looting the residence’s furnishings and electronics.
In a televised address, Army Chief General Waker-Us-Zaman confirmed that Hasina, 76, had departed the country. An interim government will be established. Reports indicated that Hasina, accompanied by her sister, had flown to the eastern Indian state of West Bengal in a military helicopter. There are also reports of her heading to London, England.
Hasina is accused of presiding over arbitrary arrests, torture, extortion, and intimidation. She would not be the first questionable foreign leader to be welcomed by Britain. The country already hosts at least five Rwandan genocide suspects and a Hamas leader who lives in London in a house provided by taxpayers, among others.
In London’s Whitechapel, home to a large Bangladeshi community, the news of her ouster spurred widespread celebration. Community members, who often seem more invested in Bangladesh than Britain, chanted and waved flags.
DEATH AND DISORDER.
The violence ahead of Hasina’s ouster resulted in nearly 300 deaths and numerous injuries as protesters clashed with security forces. Last Sunday alone, almost 100 people died in the clashes.
Authorities initially shut down the Internet and imposed a curfew on Sunday night, covering Dhaka and other major districts.
The unrest has been attributed to allegations of autocratic governance by Hasina. Many of her political opponents, including the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami (Society of Islam) party, were detained or marginalized in the lead-up to her re-election in 2023, an election marred by accusations of being neither free nor fair.
Hasina’s opposition is not without its own controversies, with Jamaat-e-Islami being an Islamic fundamentalist party banned for its role in the genocide of Hindus in East Pakistan, as Bangladesh then was, in 1971.
.jpg){kind=link}
