Sheikh Hasina vows to return, but will Bangladesh accept fugitive ex-PM?

9 hours ago 11

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Two years aft she was ousted and forced to fly to India pursuing a student-led uprising, erstwhile Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has made her strongest committedness yet to return, saying she is prepared to look arrest, imprisonment oregon adjacent death, but cannot stay distant from her supporters.

“I cognize I whitethorn beryllium detained, I whitethorn beryllium sent to prison,” Hasina, 78, said successful an audio code to journalists from New Delhi connected Wednesday. “They whitethorn effort to enforce verdicts issued successful fabricated cases. But fearfulness cannot determine my work to the people.”

‘No governmental future’

Against specified a backdrop of a rival government, wide choler and a death sentence looming implicit her head, Hasina delivered a defiant address, rejecting the wide accepted accounts of the July 2024 uprising, arguing alternatively that it was not a fashionable question but a coordinated run to topple her government.

“They whitethorn enactment maine successful jail, oregon they whitethorn termination me. Anything whitethorn happen. But inactive I person to spell back,” she said successful effect to a question asked by a writer covering the New Delhi event.

The erstwhile premier curate repeatedly framed her planned return arsenic an effort to “restore ideology and beforehand nationalist reconciliation”, arguing that Bangladesh needed “healing alternatively than confrontation”.

Among the members of Hasina’s now-banned Awami League party, her announcement has rekindled hopes of a governmental comeback.

Al Jazeera reached retired to 5 Awami League leaders. Three declined to comment. One elder leader, speaking connected information of anonymity, said: “The person volition decidedly return, and we volition each travel retired of our hiding places.”

Another enactment activist, Shajidul Islam Shobuj, who has been hiding since the uprising, told Al Jazeera: “We are eagerly awaiting her instrumentality and are already moving to reorganise the party.”

But leaders of the 2024 uprising accidental reconciliation cannot travel earlier accountability.

“Sheikh Hasina tin instrumentality to Bangladesh astatine immoderate clip if she has the quality to bash so,” Akhter Hossain, a erstwhile pupil person and present a legislator from the National Citizen Party (NCP), told Al Jazeera. “She volition person to look Bangladesh’s judicial process.”

Akhter said the Awami League had “no governmental future” unless it was held accountable for the “crimes committed during its clip successful power”.

Many others who protested during the uprising person besides received Hasina’s announcement with scepticism.

“She antecedently said she would not fly the country, yet she did. We bash not judge she volition instrumentality simply due to the fact that she says she will,” said Atikul Gazi, a 23-year-old who survived being changeable astatine point-blank scope by the information forces connected August 5, 2024, but mislaid his near arm.

Whether Hasina returns voluntarily oregon not, helium said the authorities should guarantee she faced the judicial process.

‘Difficult to spot how’

Experts accidental Hasina’s “high-risk governmental gamble” could find the aboriginal of the Awami League portion besides investigating the durability of the governmental bid that emerged aft her fall.

“She does mean to really instrumentality to Bangladesh,” writer and governmental expert David Bergman told Al Jazeera.

“Returning to Bangladesh gives her a accidental of remaining politically relevant, of creating important challenges and difficulties for the country’s caller government, and perchance changing the existent governmental dynamic to the vantage of the Awami League,” helium said.

But Bergman besides argued that the Awami League continues to misread the governmental mood.

“Until it recognises its ain work for the party’s existent demise, and acknowledges that Bangladesh is not the dystopian, failed state it seeks to portray, it is hard to spot however the Awami League tin carve retired a caller relation for itself successful Bangladesh.”

If she returns to Bangladesh, it would not beryllium Hasina’s archetypal instrumentality from exile.

After the assassination of her father, Bangladesh’s founding person Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and astir of her household members successful 1975, Hasina spent years successful exile earlier returning to Bangladesh successful 1981 to pb the Awami League, which was past successful opposition.

She was repeatedly arrested during the subject regularisation successful Dhaka earlier she stormed to powerfulness successful 1996, governing the state for astir of the adjacent 3 decades.

This time, however, the governmental scenery is markedly antithetic arsenic Hasina nary longer faces conscionable governmental opposition.

Mubashar Hasan, a governmental perceiver and adjunct researcher astatine Western Sydney University’s Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative, says Hasina’s governmental challenges widen beyond the courtroom.

“Basically, Sheikh Hasina’s vow to instrumentality is simply a governmental strategy aimed astatine motivating and inspiring Awami League activists, galore of whom person go demoralised since she near the country,” helium said.

Hasan said galore enactment activists felt abandoned erstwhile Hasina fled Bangladesh successful a subject chopper connected August 5, 2024, reportedly without informing elder enactment leaders.

But helium besides wondered if Hasina’s gambit would work.

“In my view, this announcement is intended to boost the morale of enactment supporters,” helium said. “Personally, I bash not deliberation that strategy volition succeed.”

‘Nothing much than bare rhetoric’

Meanwhile, Hasina’s code has besides triggered caller diplomatic tensions betwixt New Delhi and Dhaka.

“Bangladesh is outraged,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said successful a statement. “Convicted wide murderer Hasina and her mafia endeavor volition ne'er person a spot successful the polity of Bangladesh.”

The ministry said India allowing Hasina to usage its territory to onslaught the Bangladeshi authorities was “an affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh” and “a grievous insult to the martyrs of the July Revolution”.

It besides criticised New Delhi for failing to respond to Dhaka’s petition to extradite Hasina nether the 2013 bilateral extradition treaty.

Before Hasina’s address, India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said the Indian “government has nary engagement whatsoever successful it, neither does [the government] endorse immoderate views that whitethorn beryllium expressed”.

Back successful Dhaka, the parents of 17-year-old Shahriar Khan Anas, 1 of the 1,400 radical killed during the 2024 uprising, had conscionable returned from the inauguration of the memorial depository astatine Hasina’s erstwhile residence.

Asked astir Hasina’s plans to return, they lone said: “We person nary words today.”

But others who took portion successful the uprising were much direct.

“It’s thing much than bare rhetoric,” said Risul Islam Rifat, a final-year journalism pupil astatine North South University, 1 of the epicentres of the 2024 protests.

“Despite their governmental differences, today’s governmental parties are agreed connected 1 issue: Sheikh Hasina. More importantly, those of america who joined the July movement, unneurotic with mean Bangladeshis, volition not let her marque of authorities to return.”

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