Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina As part of a rare and wide-ranging interview with Reuters, he has refused to apologize for the deadly crackdown on street protests that ultimately led to his downfall last year. Independent,
Prosecutors in Bangladesh are seeking the death penalty for Hasina, accusing her of committing crimes against humanity by ordering the use of lethal force against student protesters, resulting in up to 1,400 deaths.
Hasina, who ruled for more than 15 years, now lives in exile in India. She says she “expresses condolence” over the deaths of protesters as well as members of the security forces last year and “will continue to express her condolences” to the families of the victims.
But he rejected allegations that he ordered police to shoot protesters, and said his Awami League party was being unfairly denied the opportunity to contest new elections in Bangladesh by the unelected interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Speaking in her first interview after her eviction, Hasina told Independent She would be “neither surprised nor horrified” if the International Criminal Tribunal for Bangladesh sentenced her to death, calling the proceedings “a sham trial” motivated by political vendetta.
He said, “The ICT is a sham court, presided over by an unelected government, which includes my political opponents. Many of those opponents will stop at nothing to get rid of me.” “Because of my family history, no one knows more than me about the history of political assassinations in our country, and this move by ICT is part of that ugly tradition.”
Hasina defended her actions during protests last year and denied any personal blame for the killings during what she termed a “violent insurgency”.
She blames “a lack of discipline among the security forces on the ground” for the large number of casualties, and adds: “As a leader, I ultimately take responsibility for leadership, but the claim that I ordered or wanted the security forces to open fire on the crowd is absolutely false.”
Hasina also claimed that her government had launched an independent investigation into the first killings, which she claimed was later closed down by the interim government that succeeded her.
Last year, Bangladesh’s crackdown on protesters shocked the world. Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, Babu Ram Pant, said at the time: “The rising death toll is a shocking indictment of the complete intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities towards protest and dissent.”
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said at the time that “the attacks on student protesters are particularly shocking and unacceptable”.
Hasina disputed the often-reported deaths during student-led protests, saying that “the figure of 1,400 is useful to ICTs for propaganda purposes but is probably exaggerated”.
The protests began last July with university students demanding the removal of quotas in government jobs for relatives of Bangladesh’s independence war veterans. This transformed into an anti-government movement in which hundreds of thousands of people from all sections of society took to the streets.
Security forces responded with brutal, lethal force, and after an initial wave of deaths protest leaders said they would accept nothing less than the immediate removal of Hasina from power.
Hasina said the government’s response at the time to the spread of the protests was “done in good faith… to minimize loss of life and property”.
Yunus returned to Bangladesh from his de facto exile and assumed leadership of the interim government three days after Hasina’s ouster, promising to hold her accountable and immediately banning all activities of her Awami League party.
Chief prosecutor Tajul Islam has described Hasina as the “mastermind and principal architect” of crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the student-led rebellion.
Yet Hasina claims that the violence stems from decisions taken by officials on the ground rather than from instructions from her government. He said: “The allegations are based on compromised testimony and evidence that has been manipulated and taken out of context to serve the political objectives of an unelected government.”
“Key street-level decisions were made by security personnel on the ground, who were expected to follow well-established operational guidelines. Those guidelines support the use of firearms in certain circumstances. It may well be that some decisions were made in the feverish atmosphere that were wrong.”
Defending his decision to flee the country on August 5 last year, he said he took the step “out of necessity”. She says: “Staying would have put not only my life in danger, but also the lives of those around me.”
Despite fleeing the country and the ban on the Awami League in Bangladesh, she insists that she is committed to “restoring democracy” in Bangladesh. “Only free, fair and inclusive elections can heal the country,” he said. Yunus has said that elections will be held in February 2026, although the Awami League will not be allowed to contest the elections.
Speaking about the legacy she hopes to leave behind, Hasina said she wants to be remembered as the leader who restored parliamentary democracy to our country after years of brutal military rule in the 1990s and lifted millions of people out of poverty. He said these achievements were now “in danger” of being reversed.
As she awaits her sentencing by the ICT in absentia, Hasina probably knows that history will not do her justice. But she keeps saying defiantly Independent: “No democratically elected leader should be prosecuted for discharging his constitutional duty to defend his country in the face of violent insurrection.”