Escapes from the country / Who is Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister who flourished the economy of Bangladesh

2024-08-07 08:57:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Escapes from the country / Who is Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister who

Sheikh Hasina Wazed

Protests in Bangadesh have forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed to resign two days ago.

As world media reports, she left the country in a military helicopter and fled to India. According to the latest information, during the protests that started on July 19, 300 people have been killed so far.

The protests in Bangladesh began after student groups demanded the removal of the quota system for government jobs, and the protests turned into anti-government protests.

Sheikh Hasina Wazed, 76, is the country's longest-serving prime minister, having been in power since 2009. As the BBC writes, she is responsible for overseeing the South Asian country's economic progress.

However, in recent years she has been accused of turning the country into an autocracy and suppressing all opposition. Politically motivated arrests, kidnappings, politically motivated killings and other abuses have increased under her rule, writes the BBC.

In January, she won a fourth term as prime minister in elections that critics characterized as fraudulent and that the main opposition boycotted.

How did Hasina Wazed come to power?

She was born into a Muslim family in East Bengal in 1947. Her father was the nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Bangladeshi "father of the nation", who led the country's independence from Pakistan in 1971 and became its first president.

By this time, Hasina had already established a reputation as a student leader at Dhaka University.
Her father was killed with most of his family in a military coup in 1975. Only Hasina and her younger sister survived, as they were traveling abroad at the time.

After living in exile in India, Hasina returned to Bangladesh in 1981 and became the leader of her father's political party, the Awami League. It joined other political parties in holding pro-democracy street protests during the military rule of General Hussain Muhammad Ershad. Fueled by a popular uprising, Hasina quickly became a national icon.

She first came to power in 1996. She is responsible for signing a water-sharing agreement with India and a peace deal with tribal rebels in the country's southeast. But at the same time, her government has been criticized for a series of alleged corrupt deals and for being too beholden to India.

She later lost to her former ally, Khaled Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), in 2001. As heirs to political dynasties, both women have dominated Bangladeshi politics for more than three decades and were once known as " Begums of Battle". Begum refers to a high-ranking Muslim woman.

Hasina managed to return to power again in 2009.

Escapes from the country / Who is Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister who

What did she achieve?

A Muslim-majority nation, once one of the poorest in the world, Bangladesh has achieved credible economic success under Hasinin's leadership.

Bangladesh is now one of the fastest growing economies in the region, even surpassing its giant neighbor India. Its per capita income has tripled in the past decade, and the World Bank estimates that more than 25 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 20 years.

Much of this growth has been driven by the garment industry, which accounts for the vast majority of Bangladesh's total exports and has expanded rapidly in recent decades, supplying markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Using the country's own resources, loans and development aid, the Hasine-led government has also undertaken massive infrastructure projects, including the major $2.9 billion Padma Bridge over the Ganges. /CNA