Bangladeshi opposition leader urges probe into PM Sheikh Hasina’s protest crackdown, ‘seeks asylum in UK
Sources state that the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has been holding on since this morning for confirmation from the UK that it would be in a position to offer her political asylum moments after being forced to flee the country in a military helicopter amidst widespread violence. On Monday, she entered neighboring India, moments after angry protesters reportedly barged into her residence demanding her resignation after more than two decades in affairs related to Bangladesh.
Following protests against a controversial quota system in government jobs, the Hasina government has faced mounting anger for killing over 400 people in harsh government repression. However, Ms Hasina has yet to get such confirmation from Britain and has been forced to stay. The sources told the broadcaster that Ms Hasina was traveling with her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana, who holds British citizenship.
Ms Rehana’s daughter, Tulip Siddiq, is a British parliamentarian of the Labor Party.
In a statement, he said: “The UK and Bangladesh have deep people-to-people links and shared Commonwealth values.”Everybody has to come together, cease the violence that continues upon others, and stop further losses. He termed the violence in Bangladesh as “unprecedented” as he set out the UK’s aspiration for Bangladesh to get a “peaceful and democratic future.”
The UK and the Indian government have not commented on the developments. The protest over the quota system had reserved a third of civil service jobs for descendants of veterans of the country’s 1971 independence war with Pakistan, making it her sternest challenge in 15 years of power.
Protests erupted and turned deadly after her government issued a nationwide shoot-on-sight policy, imposed communications blackouts, and established weekly curfews across the nation as students took to the streets last month.
After the Supreme Court ruling last month, the government has since reduced most of the quota in favor of the students. Still, people continued staging protests demanding accountability for the deaths of those killed. As the Dhaka Tribune informed, 135 more people were killed across Bangladesh on Monday in incidents of police firing, clashes, and arson as hundreds of thousands responded to the call for a march on Dhaka by protest leaders.
The US government has praised the “restraint” of the Bangladesh Army and said that it wants an interim government that is democratic. The United States has consistently called for respect to be accorded to democratic rights in Bangladesh; we urge that the interim government formation should be democratic and all-inclusive.
The White House also came in to commend the Army for the restraint they showed today. From the other side of the Atlantic, the EU called for an “orderly and peaceful transition” toward a new democratically elected government in the country. Ms Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and her allies have said she would be quitting politics.
‘She’s in her late 70s. She is so disappointed that after all her hard work, for a minority to rise against her, I think she’s done,’ her son told BBC. Ms Hasina is the ‘iron lady’ of Bangladesh who has spent 20 years in office after first coming to power in 1996.”It’s been her second exile: after her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated, along with her mother and three brothers, in 1975, she first went into exile.
