Bangladesh: Political violence grips country as election looms
Anbarasan Ethirajan - BBC News
Thu, November 2, 2023
Police have set up barricades in the capital to contain the unrest
Weeks of mounting political tension have erupted into protests and bloodshed in Bangladesh, leaving the country on edge ahead of general elections due in January.
Several senior opposition leaders were arrested last Sunday, a day after a massive rally against the government turned violent, resulting in the deaths of at least two opposition supporters.
The rejuvenated main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has intensified protests calling on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign.
The BNP and its allies want a neutral interim government ahead of the general elections, arguing that free and fair polls are not possible under Ms Hasina. The government led by her Awami League has rejected this demand.
The BNP rally in the capital Dhaka attracted tens of thousands of people - one of the biggest gatherings seen there in a decade.
But things soon turned violent.
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas while opposition supporters threw stones and bricks. Some roads in the capital were strewn with exploded sound grenades, tear gas shells and broken glass.
Both sides accuse each other of starting the violence.
Some structures were set on fire during the protests
"The opposition supporters attacked police, journalists, hospitals, ambulances and the houses of the chief justice and other judges, creating chaos," Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told the BBC.
The BNP said it was the other way round.
"It was a peaceful and non-violent rally, but the government was baffled by the massive turn out. So, they decided to disrupt the meeting," senior party leader Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury told the BBC.
"The rally was attacked from two sides. It resembled a war zone. So, we had to stop our public meeting midway."
The governing Awami League rejects accusations that their supporters provoked opposition activists taking part in the rally.
A three-day nationwide blockade called by the BNP to protest against the police action began on Tuesday.
Protesters have set fire to buses and clashed with security forces in several places. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them. Two opposition activists were killed in clashes with police on Tuesday. Most vehicles have stayed off the roads fearing violence.
Political unrest is not uncommon in Bangladesh. Over the years parties have taken to the streets to press their demands, resulting in shutdowns, violence and loss of life.
But in recent years the political divide has been widening and the bitterness growing, with the Awami League midway through a second decade in office and seeking a fourth straight five-year term. The two main parties are in no mood to compromise and the chances of dialogue ahead of the vote appear slim.
'Battling Begums'
The arrested BNP leaders include secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir who has led the party since its leader, former prime minister Khaleda Zia, was arrested and jailed in a corruption case five years ago.
She's now 78 and under effective house arrest.
Ms Hasina, 76, and Ms Zia, who have dominated Bangladesh politics for more than three decades, are heirs to political dynasties.
Both are bitter rivals - locally described as the "battling Begums". Begum refers to a Muslim woman of high rank.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir is among opposition leaders under arrest
Ms Hasina came to power for a second time in January 2009 and since then her party has won two more elections, although there have been accusations of widespread vote-rigging.
The political unrest ahead of the election is happening at a time when the country is facing economic hardship, with most voters struggling to cope with the escalating cost of living, especially rising food prices. Inflation was around 9.6% in September.
The country's foreign exchange reserves have also dropped from a record $48bn (£39.49bn) in August 2021 to around $20bn now - not enough for even three months of imports.
Bangladesh was forced to reach out to the International Monetary Fund earlier this year for assistance.
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Although big opposition rallies in Bangladesh are not unusual, analysts say they are attracting particularly large crowds due to widespread discontent over rising food costs.
"The economy is on the brink of a disaster and people are suffering. That's why hundreds of thousands of people are joining our rallies despite attempts by the Awami League to stop them by cancelling transport, carrying out arrests and intimidation," Mr Chowdhury told the BBC.
But Ms Hasina, the daughter of the country's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, points to the sustained economic growth of the country over the past 15 years under her rule.
Clampdown on dissent
The arrest of Mr Alamgir, along with hundreds of opposition supporters, after the rally has triggered criticism from rights groups.
"The intensified crackdown on opposition party leaders and protesters over the weekend signals an attempt at a complete clampdown of dissent in Bangladesh ahead of the general elections in January," Amnesty International said.
The Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner urged the government to show restraint and ensure that human rights were fully upheld for all Bangladeshis.
The government has already been accused of carrying out human rights violations on a large scale.
BNP supporters, seen here in Dhaka, want Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign
The BNP alleges that hundreds of its supporters have become victims of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings carried out by the security forces, some of whom have been sanctioned by the US for their actions.
The Bangladeshi government has flatly denied charges of abuses and killings - but it also severely restricts visits to foreign journalists who want to investigate these allegations.
"Definitely, there is a climate of fear, especially while expressing dissent on any kind of digital forum because the government uses the draconian Digital Security Act [DSA] to imprison people," Shireen Huq, a prominent women's rights activist, told the BBC.
Rights groups say the act has been used to silence critics and stifle free expression. They say more than a thousand court cases have been filed against journalists, politicians and activists since it was enacted in 2018.
Sheikh Hasina says she will not resign
Following widespread opposition, including from the UN, the government recently replaced the DSA with a new Cyber Security Act. But activists say the new law still retains repressive measures.
Ms Huq says she has no confidence the government will conduct a free and fair poll in January.
The opposition alleges the same, which is why it is demanding a return to installing a neutral caretaker administration ahead of the vote - a safeguard abolished by parliament in 2011.
Foreign Minister Momen rejects such calls.
"There is no history in any country that the sitting government will step down and allow some non-elected people to run the government. We believe in democracy, therefore that type of demand is not acceptable," he told the BBC.
The BNP has threatened to boycott the January poll if their demand is not met. This tactic hasn't worked in their favour in the past however.
The party's refusal to take part in the December 2014 election helped the Awami League win another landslide.
With hardening positions, Bangladeshis are staring at the possibility of protracted political unrest and possibly more street violence.
ASHOK SHARMA
Updated Wed, November 1, 2023
Activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party attack security officers during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023. Police in Bangladesh's capital fired tear gas to disperse supporters of the main opposition party who threw stones at security officials during a rally demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the transfer of power to a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee general elections next year.
(AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
NEW DELHI (AP) — India and Bangladesh launched two new railway links and a thermal power plant unit Wednesday to strengthen connections and energy security in the region amid strong opposition protests in Bangladesh.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina jointly inaugurated the three Indian-assisted development projects via video conferencing.
India provided $47.8 million for a cross-border train link and a $388.92 million concessional line of credit for the Khulna-Mongla port rail line in Bangladesh. India provided another $1.6 billion for Bangladesh’s 1,320-megawatt super thermal power project, according to India’s External Affairs Ministry.
Hasina is facing street protests from opposition supporters who demand that her government resign and hand power to a nonpartisan caretaker to oversee a general election next year.
At least six people have been killed and dozens injured during street protests since Saturday, officials said.
Hasina considers a partnership with India politically significant for regional peace and development. However, India has not commented directly on the recent unrest. The Dhaka-based embassies of Western countries, especially the United States, have regularly issued statements calling for both sides to show restraint and to find a way for a free, fair and participatory election.
China and Russia issued statements in recent months accusing Washington of interfering in Bangladesh’s internal political affairs.
China also is involved in many mega projects in Bangladesh, while Russia is building the country’s first nuclear power plant.
India and Bangladesh share historical and cultural ties; Bengali, which is spoken in both countries, is a strong bond. Bilateral relations have improved since Hasina and her Awami League party came to power in 2009.
During her September 2022 visit to India, the two countries signed a water-sharing agreement and six other pacts, including ones on space technology and scientific collaboration.
Since Hasina became prime minister, her government has addressed India’s concerns about anti-India militant groups taking shelter on Bangladeshi soil. However, India has failed to sign an agreement on sharing the waters of the River Teesta, a key Bangladesh demand.
Another serious concern for Bangladesh is the use of lethal weapons by the Indian border security force to kill Bangladeshis suspected of involvement in smuggling or illegally crossing the border. Unauthorized immigration to India from Bangladesh has dogged the countries' bilateral ties for years.
——-
Associated Press Writer Julhas Alam contributed to this report from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Bangladesh clashes: Two killed in anti-government protests
NEW DELHI (AP) — India and Bangladesh launched two new railway links and a thermal power plant unit Wednesday to strengthen connections and energy security in the region amid strong opposition protests in Bangladesh.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina jointly inaugurated the three Indian-assisted development projects via video conferencing.
India provided $47.8 million for a cross-border train link and a $388.92 million concessional line of credit for the Khulna-Mongla port rail line in Bangladesh. India provided another $1.6 billion for Bangladesh’s 1,320-megawatt super thermal power project, according to India’s External Affairs Ministry.
Hasina is facing street protests from opposition supporters who demand that her government resign and hand power to a nonpartisan caretaker to oversee a general election next year.
At least six people have been killed and dozens injured during street protests since Saturday, officials said.
Hasina considers a partnership with India politically significant for regional peace and development. However, India has not commented directly on the recent unrest. The Dhaka-based embassies of Western countries, especially the United States, have regularly issued statements calling for both sides to show restraint and to find a way for a free, fair and participatory election.
China and Russia issued statements in recent months accusing Washington of interfering in Bangladesh’s internal political affairs.
China also is involved in many mega projects in Bangladesh, while Russia is building the country’s first nuclear power plant.
India and Bangladesh share historical and cultural ties; Bengali, which is spoken in both countries, is a strong bond. Bilateral relations have improved since Hasina and her Awami League party came to power in 2009.
During her September 2022 visit to India, the two countries signed a water-sharing agreement and six other pacts, including ones on space technology and scientific collaboration.
Since Hasina became prime minister, her government has addressed India’s concerns about anti-India militant groups taking shelter on Bangladeshi soil. However, India has failed to sign an agreement on sharing the waters of the River Teesta, a key Bangladesh demand.
Another serious concern for Bangladesh is the use of lethal weapons by the Indian border security force to kill Bangladeshis suspected of involvement in smuggling or illegally crossing the border. Unauthorized immigration to India from Bangladesh has dogged the countries' bilateral ties for years.
——-
Associated Press Writer Julhas Alam contributed to this report from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Bangladesh clashes: Two killed in anti-government protests
BBC
Wed, November 1, 2023
The protesters want Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down ahead of elections
At least two people have been killed and dozens injured in clashes in Bangladesh between anti-government protesters and security forces.
The violence erupted in the capital, Dhaka, during protests calling Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign ahead of elections due in January.
Police said those killed belonged to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) but gave no details.
BNP official Shariful Alam said they were "shot dead by the police".
He told the Dhaka Times that the two activists were attending a rally in the central district of Kishoreganj on Tuesday - the first day of three days of planned protests called by the BNP.
He said one activist died on the spot, while the second died at a hospital.
The Dhaka Times reported that about 50 people were injured, including about 15 police officers.
Kishoreganj police chief Mohammad Russell Sheikh told BBC Bangla that BNP activists attacked the police, who opened fire "in self-defence".
The opposition says a free and fair poll is not possible under Ms Hasina.
On Saturday police broke up a rally in Dhaka calling on her step down. One police officer died and more than 100 people were injured.
On Sunday the authorities charged BNP secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and more than 150 other party members over the death.
Dhaka police say at least 1,480 opposition activists have been arrested and charged with violence since 21 October. The BNP have put the number of arrests at 3,000.
Saturday's violence in Dhaka led to charges against opposition leaders
The office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights said it was "deeply concerned" by the unrest and called "on all political actors to make clear that such violence is unacceptable".
Ms Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's first president, has been in power since 2009, and has been accused of targeting political opponents, which she denies.
Also on Tuesday, Bangladeshi police also clashed with thousands of garment workers demanding fair wages.
Officers used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the striking factory workers outside Dhaka. Police say crowds had blocked roads and smashed up factories that produce clothes for major Western brands.
Bangladesh’s political turmoil continues as main opposition party threatens to boycott elections
Maroosha Muzaffar
Wed, November 1, 2023
Smoke rises from flames near the stage set for a protest by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 28 October (Associated Press)
One of Bangladesh’s main opposition parties could boycott upcoming national elections if the current prime minister Sheikh Hasina does not resign.
A warning for the boycott has come from a leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as political protests in the country have turned violent.
The BNP leader said Ms Hasina should step down as Bangladesh’s prime minister and allow a neutral, caretaker government to take her place so it could conduct the upcoming polls in January next year in a fair manner.
The ruling Awami League party, under Ms Hasina’s leadership, has been in power in Bangladesh since 2009. She has been accused of human rights abuses and corruption.
“BNP and the opposition political parties will not go to a fake election,” Abdul Moyeen Khan, a former minister and member of the BNP’s highest policy-making body, told Reuters on Wednesday.
“We will not legitimise a fake election this government intends to conduct by participating in it.”
Earlier this year, BNP’s secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said there was no scope of “having any fair election under this government”.
“Every important institution of the country has been destroyed and people’s rights have been taken away. Price hikes of every essential have made people’s lives miserable,” Mr Alamgir said. On Sunday, he was taken into custody.
The BNP on the same day announced a three-day blockade of the country’s highways, railways and waterways, starting on Tuesday.
The widespread protests have led to instances of violence in which people have died.
On Wednesday, the second day of the blockade, a bus was set on fire by protesters in front of a school in national capital Dhaka. Police made an arrest in connection with the violence and local media said another suspect was still at large by the afternoon.
A day earlier, three people were reportedly killed during clashes between police and BNP supporters.
On 28 October, at least 11 people, including two police officers, were killed, and hundreds were injured.
Both the Awami League and the BNP have, however, denied their involvement in the violence.
Authorities blamed the violence on the BNP, while the party alleged the Awami League’s workers infiltrated one of its gatherings to incite violence and undermine what they assert was a peaceful movement.
The Daily Star newspaper in Bangladesh reported that the BNP also sent a seven-page letter to embassies and high commissions in Dhaka in an attempt to disentangle itself from the violence that occurred during a huge rally on Saturday.
The report said the BNP’s leaders are now collecting video footage to analyse who was behind the attacks on Saturday’s rally.
The BNP has opposed Ms Hasina’s plans for running in the January elections. As the country’s economic crisis worsens amid rising inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, Ms Hasina, observers said, needs to come up with a solution soon.
Human rights agencies have accused Bangladesh police of “unnecessary use of force” during recent demonstrations.
“Many Bangladeshis say they fear an escalation in violence as the government continues to crack down on the opposition’s right to participate and vote in the elections,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement on Wednesday.
“Bangladesh’s international partners should insist that elections cannot be considered fair when the opposition is targeted, harassed and behind bars.”
She insisted that “international partners should make clear that they will not continue business as usual with Bangladesh as authorities carry out election abuses”.
“They should condemn the mass arrests and targeting of the opposition and lay out consequences for trade and diplomatic ties if Bangladesh fails to backtrack on its abuses,” she said.
The UK’s high commissioner Sarah Cooke met Awami League member and former minister Faruk Khan and the party’s international affairs secretary Shammi Ahmed on Tuesday.
She urged all parties to work together and create an environment for “free, fair, participatory and peaceful elections”.
A spokesperson for the US State Department, Matthew Miller, said on Tuesday that Washington was in dialogue with several stakeholders in the country.
“We do believe that dialogue is important to achieving those goals. And what we want in Bangladesh is the same thing the Bangladeshi people want, which are free and fair elections conducted in a peaceful manner,” he told reporters.
In September, the US said it would “impose visa restrictions on Bangladeshi individuals responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh”.
The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called on “all political actors to make clear that such violence is unacceptable and to avoid any statements or actions that could constitute incitement to violence” as the country heads towards elections.
On 26 October, BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi claimed at a news conference that the country’s prisons were “overrun with our party leaders”.
The BNP alleges that, since July this year when similar protests demanding Ms Hasina’s resignation erupted, at least 5,000 party leaders and activists were arrested and thousands were accused in hundreds of additional cases.
Several BNP leaders alleged torture in prisons. Shahiduddin Chowdhury Annie, a BNP leader, claimed he was beaten while in detention.
Human Rights Watch said that “all allegations of torture and other abuse of detainees should be thoroughly and independently investigated, and those responsible should be held to account”.
Bangladesh's main opposition to boycott vote if Hasina stays put
Wed, November 1, 2023
A public bus burns after it was set on fire by unidentified people during a countrywide blockade in Dhaka
By Ruma Paul and Krishna N. Das
DHAKA (Reuters) -Bangladesh's main opposition party will boycott the next general election if Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina does not make way for a neutral government to conduct the poll, two party leaders said, amid a crackdown on opposition politicians and deadly protests.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose top leadership is either jailed or in exile, is betting that if Hasina does not resign and allow in a caretaker government, boycotting the January election will de-legitimise any win for her and possibly invite international sanctions, one of the leaders said. It boycotted the 2014 election too but participated in 2018.
The United States, the top buyer of Bangladeshi garments, said in May it was implementing a policy allowing for the restriction of visas to Bangladeshis who undermine the democratic election process in the country of nearly 170 million people.
"BNP and the opposition political parties will not go to a fake election," Abdul Moyeen Khan, a former minister and member of the BNP's highest policy-making body, told Reuters on Wednesday.
"We will not legitimise a fake election this government intends to conduct by participating in it."
Zahir Uddin Swapon, a former BNP lawmaker, said Hasina's government would be answerable to Western governments if she failed to resign and allow a free and fair election contested by all parties.
Hasina, seeking her fourth straight five-year term in office, has repeatedly ruled out handing power to a caretaker government and accused the BNP of "terrorism and hooliganism".
"Elections will happen like it happens in countries such as Canada and India ... like it happened in 2018 in Bangladesh," she told a press conference on Tuesday. "Routine government work will not stop."
Rights group Amnesty International has accused the government of widespread arrests of opposition members, especially after huge anti-government protests at the weekend, in a bid to intimidate them ahead of the elections.
"The intensified crackdown on opposition party leaders and protesters over the weekend signals an attempt at a complete clamp-down on dissent," said Yasasmin Kaviratne, Amnesty's regional campaigner for South Asia.
The BNP said police have arrested nearly 2,300 of its activists since the Oct. 28 protest demanding Hasina's resignation and more than half a dozen party activists have been killed. Two of them died on Tuesday as the BNP organised a three-day blockade.
Police say some of the arrests are linked to the death of a policeman in protests on Saturday.
"We are arresting those who were involved in the killing, arson and vandalism," said a senior police official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media.
Hasina's main rival and two-time premier, BNP leader Khaleda Zia, is effectively under house arrest for what her party calls trumped-up corruption charges. Her son and BNP's acting chairman, Tarique Rahman, is in exile after several charges against him that he denies.
Shakil Ahmed, an assistant professor at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, said street violence had become "regular in Bangladesh during the transfer of power".
"Nevertheless, peace is possible," he said. "Civil society organisations could play an important role in it."
(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in New Delhi and Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Sheikh Hasina and the Future of Democracy in Bangladesh
Charlie Campbell / Dhaka
Thu, November 2, 2023
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Ganabhaban, the official residence, in Dhaka on Sept. 6.
Credit - Sarker Protick for TIME
Sheikh Hasina floats into the reception room of her official residence swathed in a luxurious silk sari, the personification of iron fist in velvet glove. At 76 years old and silver-haired, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister is a political phenomenon who has guided the rise of this nation of 170 million from rustic jute producer into the Asia-Pacific’s fastest-expanding economy over the past decade.
In office since 2009, after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, she is the world’s longest-serving female head of government and credited with subduing both resurgent Islamists and a once meddlesome military. Having already won more elections than Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, Hasina is determined to extend that run at the ballot box in January. “I am confident that my people are with me,” she says in an interview with TIME in September. “They’re my main strength.”
Read More: 5 Takeaways from TIME’s Interview with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Few rebuttals are as stark as the 19 assassination attempts that Hasina has weathered over the years. In recent months, supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have clashed with security forces, leading to hundreds of arrests, police vehicles and public buses set ablaze, and several people killed. The BNP has vowed to boycott the election as they did in both 2014 and 2018 unless Hasina hands power to a caretaker government to shepherd elections. (Their request has historical precedent but is no longer required following a constitutional amendment.)
Bangladesh has taken an authoritarian turn under Hasina’s Awami League party. The last two elections were condemned by the U.S., E.U. and others for significant irregularities, including stuffed ballot boxes and thousands of phantom voters. (She won 84% and 82% of the vote, respectively.) Today, Khaleda Zia, two-time former Premier and BNP leader, sits gravely ill under house arrest on dubious corruption charges. Meanwhile, BNP workers have been hit by a staggering 4 million legal cases, while independent journalists and civil society also complain of vindictive harassment. Critics say January’s vote is tantamount to a coronation and Hasina to a dictator.
Photograph by Sarker Protick for TIME
“The ruling party is controlling all the state machinery, whether it’s the law enforcement agencies or the judiciary,” says BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who has been charged in 93 cases—including vandalism and murder—and imprisoned nine times. “Whenever we raise our voices, they oppress us.”
Bangladesh matters. It is the largest single contributor to U.N. peacekeepers and regularly joins exercises with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Its vibrant diaspora is intrinsic to business and artistic communities across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The U.S. is the biggest source of foreign direct investment and the top destination for Bangladeshi exports. And as one of the few developing world leaders to (albeit belatedly) condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Hasina has proven herself useful for the West, not least for taking in some 1 million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
But Washington is concerned about Bangladesh’s drift toward despotism. Hasina was not invited to the latest two U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy gatherings, and in May the country unveiled visa restrictions on any Bangladeshi undermining elections. In response, Hasina told parliament the U.S. was “trying to eliminate democracy” by engineering her ouster. Asked about her allegation, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter D. Haas insists Washington is “scrupulous about not picking sides.”
But at a time when the U.S. is desperate to counter China’s growing regional footprint at every turn, the stridency of American official policy is telling. “The U.S. seems to have made Bangladesh a test case for its democracy-promotion policy overseas,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center. “The big risk is that all this pressure will backfire and prompt the government to double down and do everything possible to stay in power.”
What a fourth straight term for Hasina would mean for Bangladesh is a polarizing question. Most Americans know the country only from labels sewn into their tees and pants, but it’s a crucible that mixes a Muslim population bigger than any Middle Eastern nation with a significant minority of some 10% Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others. Although constitutionally secular, a military dictator in 1988 made Islam the state religion, creating a paradox that has proved fertile ground for radical fundamentalists.
Hasina’s economic achievements are impressive. Bangladesh has gone from struggling to feed its people to a food exporter with a GDP rising from $71 billion in 2006 to $460 billion in 2022, making it South Asia’s second largest economy after India. Social indicators have also improved, with 98% of girls today receiving primary education. Bangladesh is moving into high-tech manufacturing, allowing international firms like Samsung to extricate supply chains from China. “We need to improve, of course, when it comes to democracy, human rights, free speech,” says Professor Mohammad Ali Arafat, an Awami League lawmaker from central Dhaka. “But we have come a long way.”
Sheikh Hasina floats into the reception room of her official residence swathed in a luxurious silk sari, the personification of iron fist in velvet glove. At 76 years old and silver-haired, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister is a political phenomenon who has guided the rise of this nation of 170 million from rustic jute producer into the Asia-Pacific’s fastest-expanding economy over the past decade.
In office since 2009, after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, she is the world’s longest-serving female head of government and credited with subduing both resurgent Islamists and a once meddlesome military. Having already won more elections than Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, Hasina is determined to extend that run at the ballot box in January. “I am confident that my people are with me,” she says in an interview with TIME in September. “They’re my main strength.”
Read More: 5 Takeaways from TIME’s Interview with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Few rebuttals are as stark as the 19 assassination attempts that Hasina has weathered over the years. In recent months, supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have clashed with security forces, leading to hundreds of arrests, police vehicles and public buses set ablaze, and several people killed. The BNP has vowed to boycott the election as they did in both 2014 and 2018 unless Hasina hands power to a caretaker government to shepherd elections. (Their request has historical precedent but is no longer required following a constitutional amendment.)
Bangladesh has taken an authoritarian turn under Hasina’s Awami League party. The last two elections were condemned by the U.S., E.U. and others for significant irregularities, including stuffed ballot boxes and thousands of phantom voters. (She won 84% and 82% of the vote, respectively.) Today, Khaleda Zia, two-time former Premier and BNP leader, sits gravely ill under house arrest on dubious corruption charges. Meanwhile, BNP workers have been hit by a staggering 4 million legal cases, while independent journalists and civil society also complain of vindictive harassment. Critics say January’s vote is tantamount to a coronation and Hasina to a dictator.
Photograph by Sarker Protick for TIME
“The ruling party is controlling all the state machinery, whether it’s the law enforcement agencies or the judiciary,” says BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who has been charged in 93 cases—including vandalism and murder—and imprisoned nine times. “Whenever we raise our voices, they oppress us.”
Bangladesh matters. It is the largest single contributor to U.N. peacekeepers and regularly joins exercises with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Its vibrant diaspora is intrinsic to business and artistic communities across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The U.S. is the biggest source of foreign direct investment and the top destination for Bangladeshi exports. And as one of the few developing world leaders to (albeit belatedly) condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Hasina has proven herself useful for the West, not least for taking in some 1 million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
But Washington is concerned about Bangladesh’s drift toward despotism. Hasina was not invited to the latest two U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy gatherings, and in May the country unveiled visa restrictions on any Bangladeshi undermining elections. In response, Hasina told parliament the U.S. was “trying to eliminate democracy” by engineering her ouster. Asked about her allegation, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter D. Haas insists Washington is “scrupulous about not picking sides.”
But at a time when the U.S. is desperate to counter China’s growing regional footprint at every turn, the stridency of American official policy is telling. “The U.S. seems to have made Bangladesh a test case for its democracy-promotion policy overseas,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center. “The big risk is that all this pressure will backfire and prompt the government to double down and do everything possible to stay in power.”
What a fourth straight term for Hasina would mean for Bangladesh is a polarizing question. Most Americans know the country only from labels sewn into their tees and pants, but it’s a crucible that mixes a Muslim population bigger than any Middle Eastern nation with a significant minority of some 10% Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others. Although constitutionally secular, a military dictator in 1988 made Islam the state religion, creating a paradox that has proved fertile ground for radical fundamentalists.
Hasina’s economic achievements are impressive. Bangladesh has gone from struggling to feed its people to a food exporter with a GDP rising from $71 billion in 2006 to $460 billion in 2022, making it South Asia’s second largest economy after India. Social indicators have also improved, with 98% of girls today receiving primary education. Bangladesh is moving into high-tech manufacturing, allowing international firms like Samsung to extricate supply chains from China. “We need to improve, of course, when it comes to democracy, human rights, free speech,” says Professor Mohammad Ali Arafat, an Awami League lawmaker from central Dhaka. “But we have come a long way.”
Hasina waves at followers as she begins the second phase of a train march to muster support to topple the government in September 1994.Rafiquar Rahman—Reuters
Bangladesh also sits at the front line of the climate crisis. The nation formerly known as East Pakistan may have been forged in the crackle and smoke of a 1971 civil war, but it is water that has dictated life here for millennia. From inland, snowmelt from the towering Himalayas funnels a mind-boggling 165 trillion gallons through Bangladesh’s rivers each year. From the skies, regular cyclones batter a low-lying delta that is 80% floodplain, causing some $1 billion of damage annually. And increasingly, rising seas levels threaten the lives and livelihoods of a population over four times the size of California, crammed into a territory smaller than Illinois. Hasina has championed demands for developed countries to provide their developing peers $100 billion annually until 2025 for climate resilience, a pledge so far unfulfilled. “We don’t want to only receive promises,” she says. “Developed countries should come forward.”
Yet if Bangladeshi life is ruled by water, its politics is awash in blood. For the last half-century, two families and the women who now lead them have been locked in a bitter feud. On one side is Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, otherwise known as simply Sheikh Mujib—Bangladesh’s first president, who was assassinated in an army coup in 1975 alongside 17 of his close relatives. (Hasina likely only survived as she was in Europe at the time.) On the other side is Khaleda Zia, widow of former army chief and BNP founder Ziaur Rahman, who led the country from Mujib’s assassination until his own in 1981.
Both these dynastic matriarchs draw legitimacy from their family’s role in Bangladesh’s liberation struggle while minimizing the other’s. Hasina derides the BNP as a “terrorist party,” which “never believed in democracy,” stressing its creation by a former junta. “Khalid Zia ruled like a military dictator,” she says with undisguised venom. Hasina highlights the violence BNP supporters have caused in arson attacks following the disputed 2018 election. The BNP, by contrast, points to the systemic repression of their party and trumped-up charges against its leadership. In truth, bloodletting is sadly common on all sides. “Bangladeshi politics has often included street violence,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch. “That is true for all major political parties.”
Hasina cites her government’s introduction of transparent ballot boxes and registration papers linked to ID cards and biometric data as evidence of her commitment to free elections. She also claims to have democracy in her DNA. After her father’s murder, Hasina and her sister took refuge in the home of Bangladesh’s ambassador to West Germany before eventually being granted political asylum in India. (In 1967, she married physicist M. A. Wazed Miah and the pair had two children before his death in 2009.) Hasina was only permitted to return to Bangladesh in 1981, when she was mobbed by thousands of Awami League supporters and spent the following years agitating for popular elections and the end of military rule. “It was our struggle,” she says. “The right to vote, the right to food. That was our slogan.”
Former Chief Justice Habibur Rahman, center, is flanked by outgoing Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, left, and then-opposition leader Sheikh Hasina, right, at the swearing in for Rahman at the presidential palace on March 30. Rahman was appointed as chief of the interim administration to oversee general elections.
But much can change over four decades and today Bangladesh’s opposition complains of being unable to campaign on the street or express themselves in the media without fear of arrest, assault, or legal challenge. “It’s not just the day of elections that matters for free and fair elections,” says Ambassador Haas. “It is the entire process and environment leading up to it.”
Between 1991 and 2008 power switched between the BNP and Awami league at every election, and anti-incumbency alone means there’s every chance that Hasina would be voted out in a fair ballot. “Today people are suffering,” one rickshaw driver in Dhaka complained to TIME, saying that his daily wage of 400 taka ($3.50) can barely cover the cost of cooking oil and lentils for his wife and two children. “[Hasina] comes from a great family but her father cannot help us today.”
The burning issue for Hasina is that were she removed from power she would likely encounter the same kind of repressive retribution that her government is currently inflicting. “The Awami League are all so scared,” says Zillur Rahman, the executive director of the Dhaka-based Centre for Governance Studies think tank and a talk show host. “They don’t have a safe exit.”
Bangladesh’s oppressive security landscape was largely shaped by the events of July 1, 2016. At 9:40 pm, five men armed with bombs, pistols, assault rifles, and machetes strode into Holy Bakery in Dhaka’s well-heeled Gulshan district, a popular spot for nearby embassy workers and the Bangladeshi elite. Bellowing “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great” in Arabic), they opened fire indiscriminately on the mainly foreign clientele and hurled grenades. Customers dove under tables while panicked staff members fled across rooftops or locked themselves in a restroom.
The attackers complained that Westerners’ skimpy clothes and taste for alcohol were “encouraging local people to do the same thing,” according to witnesses. They then tortured and killed any hostage that couldn’t recite the Koran. When the siege was finally ended by a police raid, a total of 22 civilians—mainly locals, Italians, and Japanese—alongside five terrorists and two police officers were confirmed killed. Fifty others, mainly police, were injured.
It was the nadir amid a spike in ISIS-inspired Islamic terrorism that besieged Bangladesh, with more than 30 violent attacks targeting Hindus, academics, and secularist writers and bloggers over the previous 12 months. The atmosphere of fear became so pervasive that many restaurants banned foreign customers lest they become another target. Today, the leafy street where that carnage unfolded hosts only plush condos and a medical clinic. Yet the memory of the violence still provides legitimacy for Hasina’s security crackdown that persists to this day.
Bangladesh began Islamification in earnest under Ziaur Rahman in 1977. His BNP today remains allied with more conservative groups, while Bangladesh’s religious minorities have traditionally favored the Awami League. “Dhaka has used counterterrorism imperatives as a pretext to crack down harder on the Islamist elements of the opposition,” says Kugelman, of the Wilson center. Counterterrorism today provides a fig leaf for broad state repression. Ganguly calls actions by police at recent BNP rallies “provocative … which has of course led to retaliation.”
Police stand guard as Bangladesh Nationalist Party activists gather in Dhaka ahead of a rally to demand Hasina’s resignation in December 2022.
Rehman Asad—AFP/Getty Images
But it’s not just rocks and sticks on the street; Bangladesh’s judicial institutions have increasingly targeted any slight criticism of Hasina’s perceived enemies. On Sept. 15, two prominent human rights activists who tracked extrajudicial killings and disappearances were sentenced to two years in prison on nebulous charges, prompting an outcry from foreign governments including the U.S. Journalists, cartoonists, and students have also been targeted.
In August, more than 170 global leaders and Nobel laureates including Barack Obama penned an open letter urging Hasina to end the “continuous judicial harassment” of Bangladesh’s 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered poverty-reducing microcredit. Hasina has pursued 174 charges including labor law violations, corruption, and money laundering against Yunus, whom she derides as a “bloodsucker.”
It’s a bizarre vendetta that stokes accusations of festering paranoia. Hasina may insist her record is exemplary—“food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare, job opportunities,” she reels off. “I’m doing it and I have done it”—but scratch the surface and things don’t look quite so rosy. Freedom House considers Bangladesh “partially free” and its economy is still reliant on agriculture, cheap garment exports, and the nearly $25 billion sent home from the 14 million-strong diaspora every year. Those remittances have played a key role in helping ease economic pressure, particularly as prices for fuel and other essential commodities have soared since the invasion of Ukraine.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Bangladesh 147 out of 180 countries worldwide—level with Iran and one place above Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Hasina boasts that now in Bangladesh “every person has a mobile phone” and that the nation is due in 2026 to graduate from the U.N. grouping of Least Developed Nations. But that is by any measure an extremely low bar; by then the only remaining Asian members would be Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
And while Hasina speaks dismissively of Dhaka’s “slum people,” saying the nation’s idyllic villages are a “different scenario,” that begs the question why 2,000 people every day abandon the countryside for the overcrowded capital. Near double-digit inflation is hurting ordinary Bangladeshis while depleted foreign reserves have impacted firms’ ability to trade. “It’s a tough place to do business,” says Ambassador Haas, citing endemic corruption, labor problems, and the currency crisis. “U.S. companies [are] also looking at a dozen other countries for their possible investments … so it’s really important that Bangladesh be competitive.”
Bangladesh’s critical role on the world stage is embodied by the Rohingya crisis. Drive an hour south of the seaside resort of Cox’s Bazar and a collection of bamboo huts covered with plastic sheeting emerges from the rolling countryside. Inside Kutupalong refugee camp, around one million stateless Rohingya refugees eke out a meager existence after fleeing government pogroms in western Myanmar, which claimed an estimated 24,000 lives. Children wallop threadbare soccer balls while women in niqab veils barter over samosas and sour plums. Those that fled brought little with them other than tales of slaughter, arson, and rape.
Bangladesh’s compassionate response to the Rohingya meant that the international community felt reluctant to raise other human rights concerns—a blind eye that “would have continued except abuses in the domestic scene became very, very acute,” says Ganguly. But today, the ramping up of Western pressure as the elections approach is correlating with deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions. “Now there’s even more pressure on our people to return,” says refugee Shorif Hussein, 54. “Bangladesh doesn’t care if we die or whatever. They just want to get our people off their land.”
Read More: ‘There Is No Hope’: Death and Desperation Take Over the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
When asked about the Rohingya, Hasina reminds the world that “for six years my sister and myself lived outside the country as refugees, so we can feel their sorrow and pain.” But her government has proved deaf to demands to allow the refugees formal education and legitimate ways to earn a livelihood. Instead, the Rohingya’s welcome has expired. “It’s a big burden for us,” she says. “The U.N. and other organizations that are supporting [the Rohingya] here can also do the same inside Myanmar.”
The Rohingya crisis was never for Bangladesh to solve alone, of course, and the international community bears collective responsibility. Still, their plight raises fresh doubts regarding American influence in Dhaka. Historical baggage also plays a part. Bangladesh’s liberation struggle was opposed by the U.S., which valued its close ties to the Pakistani junta (famously dubbed “our most allied ally” by Nixon).
Hostage to its size and geography, Bangladesh has artfully balanced U.S. ties with links to India, China, and Russia. The latter, in particular, has a significant history of people-to-people relations dating back to the Cold War, with Russian institutions hosting Bangladeshi students and civil society. The risk is that pressing too hard pushes Dhaka away from Washington and closer to Moscow and Beijing. To date, Hasina has both abstained from and supported U.N. resolutions calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. “On some issues, we didn’t vote against Russia; then on some other issues, we vote against Russia,” she says, adding without a hint of irony: “Our position is very clear.”
It’s an approach designed to make Dhaka appear not openly antagonistic to either side. While Hasina has blocked more than 69 sanctioned Russian ships from docking in Bangladesh, in September Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov became the first ever top Russian official to visit, and Russian state-owned firm Rosatom is building the nation’s first nuclear plant 90 miles west of Dhaka. On Oct. 6, Bangladesh received the first shipment of Russian uranium for the plant, which is due online next July. Asked where to assign blame for the Ukraine war, Hasina issues a bromide reply: “They should all stop. Putin should stop and the U.S. should stop instigating the war and supplying money. They should give the money to the children.”
Asked about Bangladesh’s draconian new Cyber Security Act, Hasina is again defensive, saying with a wave that “everything you do some people always oppose it.” It’s a habitual reflex to any criticism though no less comforting for it. During our conversation, concerns are immediately dismissed and opportunities for introspection instead diverted into that bottomless well of family trauma. Hasina brings up her murdered father unbidden a dozen times during our two hours together. Domestically, she has propagated a suffocating cult of personality around Mujib; an enormous portrait of the “Father of Nation” looms over our conversation, and his mustachioed visage adorns every public office and website. Inside the departure lounge of Dhaka’s international airport, a floor-to-ceiling plasma screen plays his speeches on loop to the captive audience. “I’m here just to fulfill my father’s dream,” says Hasina.
But that dream wasn’t necessarily a democratic Bangladesh. On Feb. 24, 1975, some six months before his assassination by renegade soldiers, Mujib dissolved all political parties and installed himself as head of a one-party state known as Baksal, ostensibly to see the nation through a state of emergency. Whether democracy would ever be restored is a divisive question, though critics have already dubbed Hasina’s regime “Baksal 2.0.” Even Hasina suggests Bangladesh exists in a gray zone: “Democracy has a different definition that varies country to country.”
It’s hardly a reassuring perspective for one heading toward the ballot box. Hasina knows that a bitter and bruised opposition means failure is not an option. “It is not that easy to overthrow me through a democratic system,” she says. “The only option is just to eliminate me. And I am ready to die for my people.”
—With reporting by Astha Rajvanshi/London
5 Takeaways from TIME’s Interview with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
But it’s not just rocks and sticks on the street; Bangladesh’s judicial institutions have increasingly targeted any slight criticism of Hasina’s perceived enemies. On Sept. 15, two prominent human rights activists who tracked extrajudicial killings and disappearances were sentenced to two years in prison on nebulous charges, prompting an outcry from foreign governments including the U.S. Journalists, cartoonists, and students have also been targeted.
In August, more than 170 global leaders and Nobel laureates including Barack Obama penned an open letter urging Hasina to end the “continuous judicial harassment” of Bangladesh’s 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered poverty-reducing microcredit. Hasina has pursued 174 charges including labor law violations, corruption, and money laundering against Yunus, whom she derides as a “bloodsucker.”
It’s a bizarre vendetta that stokes accusations of festering paranoia. Hasina may insist her record is exemplary—“food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare, job opportunities,” she reels off. “I’m doing it and I have done it”—but scratch the surface and things don’t look quite so rosy. Freedom House considers Bangladesh “partially free” and its economy is still reliant on agriculture, cheap garment exports, and the nearly $25 billion sent home from the 14 million-strong diaspora every year. Those remittances have played a key role in helping ease economic pressure, particularly as prices for fuel and other essential commodities have soared since the invasion of Ukraine.
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Bangladesh 147 out of 180 countries worldwide—level with Iran and one place above Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Hasina boasts that now in Bangladesh “every person has a mobile phone” and that the nation is due in 2026 to graduate from the U.N. grouping of Least Developed Nations. But that is by any measure an extremely low bar; by then the only remaining Asian members would be Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
And while Hasina speaks dismissively of Dhaka’s “slum people,” saying the nation’s idyllic villages are a “different scenario,” that begs the question why 2,000 people every day abandon the countryside for the overcrowded capital. Near double-digit inflation is hurting ordinary Bangladeshis while depleted foreign reserves have impacted firms’ ability to trade. “It’s a tough place to do business,” says Ambassador Haas, citing endemic corruption, labor problems, and the currency crisis. “U.S. companies [are] also looking at a dozen other countries for their possible investments … so it’s really important that Bangladesh be competitive.”
Bangladesh’s critical role on the world stage is embodied by the Rohingya crisis. Drive an hour south of the seaside resort of Cox’s Bazar and a collection of bamboo huts covered with plastic sheeting emerges from the rolling countryside. Inside Kutupalong refugee camp, around one million stateless Rohingya refugees eke out a meager existence after fleeing government pogroms in western Myanmar, which claimed an estimated 24,000 lives. Children wallop threadbare soccer balls while women in niqab veils barter over samosas and sour plums. Those that fled brought little with them other than tales of slaughter, arson, and rape.
Bangladesh’s compassionate response to the Rohingya meant that the international community felt reluctant to raise other human rights concerns—a blind eye that “would have continued except abuses in the domestic scene became very, very acute,” says Ganguly. But today, the ramping up of Western pressure as the elections approach is correlating with deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions. “Now there’s even more pressure on our people to return,” says refugee Shorif Hussein, 54. “Bangladesh doesn’t care if we die or whatever. They just want to get our people off their land.”
Read More: ‘There Is No Hope’: Death and Desperation Take Over the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
When asked about the Rohingya, Hasina reminds the world that “for six years my sister and myself lived outside the country as refugees, so we can feel their sorrow and pain.” But her government has proved deaf to demands to allow the refugees formal education and legitimate ways to earn a livelihood. Instead, the Rohingya’s welcome has expired. “It’s a big burden for us,” she says. “The U.N. and other organizations that are supporting [the Rohingya] here can also do the same inside Myanmar.”
The Rohingya crisis was never for Bangladesh to solve alone, of course, and the international community bears collective responsibility. Still, their plight raises fresh doubts regarding American influence in Dhaka. Historical baggage also plays a part. Bangladesh’s liberation struggle was opposed by the U.S., which valued its close ties to the Pakistani junta (famously dubbed “our most allied ally” by Nixon).
Hostage to its size and geography, Bangladesh has artfully balanced U.S. ties with links to India, China, and Russia. The latter, in particular, has a significant history of people-to-people relations dating back to the Cold War, with Russian institutions hosting Bangladeshi students and civil society. The risk is that pressing too hard pushes Dhaka away from Washington and closer to Moscow and Beijing. To date, Hasina has both abstained from and supported U.N. resolutions calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. “On some issues, we didn’t vote against Russia; then on some other issues, we vote against Russia,” she says, adding without a hint of irony: “Our position is very clear.”
It’s an approach designed to make Dhaka appear not openly antagonistic to either side. While Hasina has blocked more than 69 sanctioned Russian ships from docking in Bangladesh, in September Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov became the first ever top Russian official to visit, and Russian state-owned firm Rosatom is building the nation’s first nuclear plant 90 miles west of Dhaka. On Oct. 6, Bangladesh received the first shipment of Russian uranium for the plant, which is due online next July. Asked where to assign blame for the Ukraine war, Hasina issues a bromide reply: “They should all stop. Putin should stop and the U.S. should stop instigating the war and supplying money. They should give the money to the children.”
Asked about Bangladesh’s draconian new Cyber Security Act, Hasina is again defensive, saying with a wave that “everything you do some people always oppose it.” It’s a habitual reflex to any criticism though no less comforting for it. During our conversation, concerns are immediately dismissed and opportunities for introspection instead diverted into that bottomless well of family trauma. Hasina brings up her murdered father unbidden a dozen times during our two hours together. Domestically, she has propagated a suffocating cult of personality around Mujib; an enormous portrait of the “Father of Nation” looms over our conversation, and his mustachioed visage adorns every public office and website. Inside the departure lounge of Dhaka’s international airport, a floor-to-ceiling plasma screen plays his speeches on loop to the captive audience. “I’m here just to fulfill my father’s dream,” says Hasina.
But that dream wasn’t necessarily a democratic Bangladesh. On Feb. 24, 1975, some six months before his assassination by renegade soldiers, Mujib dissolved all political parties and installed himself as head of a one-party state known as Baksal, ostensibly to see the nation through a state of emergency. Whether democracy would ever be restored is a divisive question, though critics have already dubbed Hasina’s regime “Baksal 2.0.” Even Hasina suggests Bangladesh exists in a gray zone: “Democracy has a different definition that varies country to country.”
It’s hardly a reassuring perspective for one heading toward the ballot box. Hasina knows that a bitter and bruised opposition means failure is not an option. “It is not that easy to overthrow me through a democratic system,” she says. “The only option is just to eliminate me. And I am ready to die for my people.”
—With reporting by Astha Rajvanshi/London
5 Takeaways from TIME’s Interview with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Charlie Campbell
Thu, November 2, 2023
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Ganabhaban, the official residence, in Dhaka on Sept. 6.
Credit - Sarker Protick for TIME
At around 5 p.m. each evening in Dhaka, as the setting sun melds with low-hanging smog to bathe the Bangladeshi capital in a tawny glow, Sheikh Hasina emerges from her official residence wrapped in an immaculate sari and sets off for a stroll around the manicured garden.
After a quick turn past pomelo trees and swing sets for her grandchildren, Bangladesh’s 76-year-old Prime Minister perches on the redbrick steps of an ornamental pond with fishing rod in hand and casts in a line—snaring a few moments of peace away from her desk as well as, with a bit of luck, one of the tasty catfish or chitala that skulk within. “The biggest fish I caught was 8 kg,” Hasina told me proudly as we peered into the gloomy depths. “Although I needed help to land it.”
Hasina’s regular fishing hobby is just one of several surprising revelations from TIME’s interview in early September for a new cover story. Hasina, in office since 2009 after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, is the world’s longest-serving female head of government and has overseen a period of rapid growth in the nation of 170 million, which today is South Asia’s second-largest economy after India.
However, Bangladesh has also become more authoritarian under Hasina’s leadership, with voices critical of her Awami League party drowning in an estimated 4 million legal challenges. Khaleda Zia, two-time former premier and leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), sits gravely ill under house arrest on corruption charges that rights groups say are politically motivated.
In recent days, anti-government protests have once again erupted in the capital, leading to hundreds of arrests, police vehicles torched, and several deaths. The BNP—which boycotted votes in 2014 and 2018—is demanding Hasina hands power to a caretaker government to shepherd elections set for January, claiming there’s no chance of a fair ballot with her Awami League in charge.
Hasina and her critics each emphasize that, for better or worse, the fate of Bangladesh’s democracy is intertwined with her own.
Here are five takeaways from Hasina’s wide-ranging conversation with TIME.
At around 5 p.m. each evening in Dhaka, as the setting sun melds with low-hanging smog to bathe the Bangladeshi capital in a tawny glow, Sheikh Hasina emerges from her official residence wrapped in an immaculate sari and sets off for a stroll around the manicured garden.
After a quick turn past pomelo trees and swing sets for her grandchildren, Bangladesh’s 76-year-old Prime Minister perches on the redbrick steps of an ornamental pond with fishing rod in hand and casts in a line—snaring a few moments of peace away from her desk as well as, with a bit of luck, one of the tasty catfish or chitala that skulk within. “The biggest fish I caught was 8 kg,” Hasina told me proudly as we peered into the gloomy depths. “Although I needed help to land it.”
Hasina’s regular fishing hobby is just one of several surprising revelations from TIME’s interview in early September for a new cover story. Hasina, in office since 2009 after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, is the world’s longest-serving female head of government and has overseen a period of rapid growth in the nation of 170 million, which today is South Asia’s second-largest economy after India.
However, Bangladesh has also become more authoritarian under Hasina’s leadership, with voices critical of her Awami League party drowning in an estimated 4 million legal challenges. Khaleda Zia, two-time former premier and leader of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), sits gravely ill under house arrest on corruption charges that rights groups say are politically motivated.
In recent days, anti-government protests have once again erupted in the capital, leading to hundreds of arrests, police vehicles torched, and several deaths. The BNP—which boycotted votes in 2014 and 2018—is demanding Hasina hands power to a caretaker government to shepherd elections set for January, claiming there’s no chance of a fair ballot with her Awami League in charge.
Hasina and her critics each emphasize that, for better or worse, the fate of Bangladesh’s democracy is intertwined with her own.
Here are five takeaways from Hasina’s wide-ranging conversation with TIME.
1. Hasina doesn’t see the need to install a caretaker
Between 1996 and 2008, Bangladesh regularly used caretaker governments to steer elections and aid the transition from one government to another. However, a military-backed caretaker ended up clinging onto power for over a year from 2006 amid a political crisis, prompting the Awami League to abolish the convention through a constitutional amendment in 2011. Hasina sees no need to concede to BNP demands for a caretaker today.
“Under the BNP, elections were held in Bangladesh several times and every time was fraudulent and manipulated,” she says. “Now they are demanding a caretaker. And now they demand for democracy. But when there was a military ruler in this country, and every night there was a curfew, and the people had no right to speak, no right to vote, and suffered a lot, they didn’t want a caretaker government then.”
2. Hasina believes the BNP is a “terrorist party” that “doesn’t believe in democracy”
Hasina’s loathing of the BNP is bitter and visceral. She has memorized casualty figures stemming from alleged BNP-instigated violence and recites them unbidden. Asked about the BNP’s allegations of ongoing repression against their party, Hasina repeatedly brings up historical grievances.
“The BNP was formed by a military dictator who violated the Constitution and kept army-rule through guns,” she says. “They say there is no democracy. But when there was a military ruler ruling the country, was there democracy? Even Khaleda Zia ruled like a military dictator.”
3. Hasina still wants Bangladesh to join BRICS
Hasina has repeatedly talked up joining the BRICS grouping of emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—and attended August’s summit in Johannesburg as an observer. But while the bloc agreed to admit six new members, Bangladesh was conspicuously not among them. “If we get a chance, we will join,” she shrugs when asked about the snub.
In the end, existing members all championed their preferred neighbor except for India, which chose not to push for Bangladesh. Asked about her relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hasina says, “very good, they’re our next-door neighbor.” Still, Modi declined to have a bilateral meeting with Hasina in South Africa, and analysts believe that New Delhi feared having Bangladesh joining BRICS would boost the influence of de facto bloc leader China in Dhaka.
4. Hasina smarts from U.S. criticism of her human rights record
In May, the U.S. State Department unveiled “3C” visa restrictions on “any Bangladeshi individual believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process.” In response, Hasina told parliament that the U.S. was “trying to eliminate democracy” by engineering her ouster.
The U.S. has been concerned by Bangladesh’s authoritarian turn under Hasina for several years. In 2021, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Bangladesh’s feared Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, elite police unit, which has been implicated in hundreds of extrajudicial disappearances, as well as torture and assault. It’s meddling that still grates Hasina. “They don’t need to put sanctions,” she says bitterly. “If anybody from our law enforcement agencies commits any crime, we don’t let it go, we punish them.”
Still, recorded extrajudicial killings have plummeted every year since the sanctions were introduced.
5. Hasina believes developed nations should provide more help for climate crisis mitigation
Despite producing only 0.56% of global emissions, low-lying Bangladesh was ranked the seventh extreme disaster risk-prone country in the world per the Global Climate Risk Index 2021. Hasina has set about instilling climate resilience by building multipurpose cyclone and flood shelters, creating artificial mangroves in coastal areas, and training some 85,000 volunteers in natural disaster mitigation.
However, she says that developed countries that disproportionately caused the climate crisis need to do more to help their developing peers that disproportionately suffer from it. “Now they have developed, they can say many things and advise us,” she says. “But we also need to develop our country.”
Hasina has championed demands for developed countries to meet an existing pledge to provide the Global South $100 billion annually until 2025 for climate resilience. “All those countries who are really responsible for emissions, they contribute very little, they only give us advice,” she adds. “We receive big promises but not effective things.”
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