Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule of the nation ended yesterday as she fled weeks of deadly protests and the military announced it would form an interim government.
Hasina since early last month had sought to quell nationwide protests against her government, but she fled after a brutal day of unrest on Sunday in which nearly 100 people died.
In a broadcast to the nation on state television, Bangladesh army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman said that Hasina had resigned and the military would form an interim government.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The country has suffered a lot, the economy has been hit, many people have been killed — it is time to stop the violence,” Waker said. “I hope after my speech, the situation will improve.”
Hasina, 76, fled the nation by helicopter, a source close to the leader said shortly after protesters had stormed her palace in Dhaka.
The source said she left first by motorcade, but then was flown out, without saying her destination.
Jubilant crowds had waved flags, some dancing on top of a tank in the streets on Monday morning before hundreds broke through the gates of Hasina’s official residence.
Bangladesh’s Channel 24 broadcast images of crowds running into the compound, waving to the camera as they celebrated.
Others smashed a statue of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahma, the nation’s independence hero.
Before the protesters had stormed the compound, Hasina’s son urged the nation’s security forces to block any takeover.
“Your duty is to keep our people safe and our country safe, and to uphold the constitution,” her son, US-based Sajeeb Wazed Joy, said on social media. “It means don’t allow any unelected government to come in power for one minute, it is your duty.”
Security forces had supported Hasina’s government throughout the unrest, which began last month against civil service job quotas, then escalated into wider calls for her to stand down.
At least 94 people were killed on Sunday, including 14 police officers, in the deadliest day of the unrest.
Protesters and government supporters nationwide battled each other with sticks and knives, and security forces opened fire.
The day’s violence took the total number of people killed since protests began to at least 300, according to a tally based on police, government officials and doctors at hospitals.
The military declared an emergency in January 2007 after widespread political unrest and installed a military-backed caretaker government for two years.
Hasina then ruled Bangladesh from 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Her government was accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including through the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began over the reintroduction of a quota scheme that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.
The protests escalated despite the scheme having been scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court.
Soldiers and police with armored vehicles in Dhaka had barricaded routes to Hasina’s office with barbed wire yesterday morning, but vast crowds flooded the streets, tearing down barriers.
The Business Standard newspaper estimated that as many as 400,000 protesters were on the streets, but it was impossible to verify the figure.
“The time has come for the final protest,” said Asif Mahmud, one of the key leaders in the nationwide civil disobedience campaign.
In several cases, troops and police did not intervene to stem Sunday’s protests, unlike during the past month of rallies that repeatedly ended in deadly crackdowns.
In a hugely symbolic rebuke of Hasina, a respected former army chief demanded that the government “immediately” withdraw troops and allow protests.
“Those who are responsible for pushing people of this country to a state of such an extreme misery will have to be brought to justice,” former army chief general Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan told reporters.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS