Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said she will return to her country in December this year, almost two and a half years after fleeing to India following violent student protests that culminated in the ouster of her government.
In a message delivered online to Indian and foreign journalists in New Delhi on August 5, Hasina said her decision to return home was based on her desire to serve her country and its people. Acknowledging the possibility of imprisonment or even execution if she returned to Bangladesh, Hasina said that such apprehensions would not deter her.
“My return, and the return of the Awami League to the democratic process, is not about power. It is about putting Bangladesh back on the right track,” Hasina said. She also defended her government’s action against protesters who she said had destroyed public infrastructure and vandalized monuments associated with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who led Bangladesh’s liberation war in 1971 and became independent Bangladesh’s first president.
Hasina’s media interaction drew an angry response from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government, which expressed “outrage” over India allowing the press conference to be organized in Delhi. “Dhaka deeply regrets that in spite of concerns conveyed a priori to the Government of India about the likely ramifications of this event on the reset of our bilateral relations, this public event was permitted to be held,” it said. That it took place on the very day that Bangladesh was observing the second anniversary of Hasina’s ouster was “an affront to the sovereignty of Bangladesh and a grievous insult to the martyrs of the July Revolution,” it added.
