POBNEWS24, Dhaka Aug 12, 2024 : Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced from power last week by large-scale, violent, student-led protests. On Sunday, the politician offered her most direct explanation to date about the foreign forces responsible for her removal from office. Sputnik asked veteran international affairs commentator Jeff Brown to elaborate.
“I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of St. Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal,” former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wrote in a bombshell letter published by Indian media on Sunday.
“Don’t lose hope. I will return soon. I have lost but the people of Bangladesh have won, the people for whom my father, my family died,” the veteran politician wrote, referring to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Bangladeshi statesman who became the nation’s first president in 1971 and served as prime minister from 1972 until his assassination in 1975 in the wake of Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.
“I resigned so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it. I resigned the premiership, Hasina added, asking Bangladeshis not to allow themselves to “be manipulated by radicals.”
Hasina’s remarks the significance of St. Martin Island to her ouster were at least the second time the island has been brought up in relation to her position in office. In May, she alleged that the representative of an unnamed Western country had offered her an easy victory ahead of elections held earlier this year in exchange for permission to build an airbase on St. Martin. Her government rejected the proposal, sticking to its “malice to none” foreign and defense policy, which rules out membership in security alliances. Much of the opposition boycotted the January vote, with the move praised by Western media.
Serving as Bangladesh’s prime minister from 1996-2001 and again from 2009 until last week, Hasina estranged the US and other Western countries with her remarks slamming US-led aggression against Muslim-majority countries under the guise of “democratization,” and her allegations earlier this year accusing the US of seeking to partition Bangladesh and Myanmar and carve out a Christian-majority state.
Hasina resigned from her post and fled Dhaka for India on August 5 while protesters stormed her residence. Large-scale demonstrations in Bangladesh began in June, triggered by the reinstatement of a quota system for government jobs, and quickly exploited by political and social forces looking to oust the government. Hundreds of protesters and police were killed or injured in clashes, with the army stepping in after Hasina’s ouster and tapping US-supported banker and academic Muhammad Yunus to serve as head of an interim government. Hasina and Yunus have a well-documented record of bad blood, with the former PM accusing Yunus of “sucking blood from the poor” with his Nobel Prize-winning microcredit schemes.
