College students protest close to a vandalized mural of Bangladesh’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, demanding accountability for Hasina, close to Dhaka College on Monday.
Luis Tato/AFP through Getty Photos
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Luis Tato/AFP through Getty Photos
DHAKA, Bangladesh — In her first assertion since fleeing Bangladesh final week, the nation’s former prime minister denied accountability for the deaths of greater than 300 folks throughout protests that led to her ouster.
Sheikh Hasina issued her assertion in Bengali on Tuesday via her son, Sajeeb Wazed. He has has continuously taken to social media since his mom and aunt left Bangladesh in a navy helicopter as tens of hundreds of protesters marched onto her residence on Aug. 5.
Her assertion got here hours after a Bangladeshi courtroom ordered police to open a homicide investigation into her and 6 prime figures from her authorities. The case includes the dying of a grocery store proprietor as police cracked down on protesters on July 19.
It marks the primary authorized case in opposition to Hasina. Extra are anticipated.
Rizwana Hasan, a member of Bangladesh’s new interim authorities, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus and fashioned days after Hasina fled the nation, stated, “For the sake of the victims, we can try to ensure that no delay takes place in the investigation of these allegations.”
“The government feels the pressures of ensuring proper justice,” stated Hasan, referring to the households of protesters and others who had been killed. “So we can step in and ensure that proper evidence is collected, that the family does not feel intimidated for filing,” she instructed journalists.
The scholar-led motion to take away Hasina from energy started as peaceable protests in opposition to job quotas for the descendants of struggle veterans. College students stated the quotas had been getting used at hand over profitable authorities positions to cronies. Loyalists of the previous prime minister attacked protesters, after which police and a few paramilitary forces joined the fray, killing dozens. This helped rework the protests right into a mass motion to oust the previous prime minister.
In her assertion on Tuesday, Hasina blamed the protest deaths on “vandalism, arson and violence” instigated by “the movement,” referring to the student-led protests. She additionally claimed folks died “as a result of terrorist attacks.”
“I demand that those involved in this killing and vandalism be properly investigated and the culprits be identified and punished accordingly,” she stated.
Hasina stated she was additionally demanding justice after rioters burned down the home of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence in 1971. That home was transformed right into a museum.
In her assertion, the previous prime minister referred to the assassination of her father and far of her household in that very same home throughout a coup on Aug. 15, 1975. Hasina and her sister had been overseas on the time. “And the memory that was the basis of our survival has been burnt to ashes,” the previous prime minister wrote, referring to the torched house. “I would like justice from the countrymen.”
Hasina called on Bangladeshis to observe this Aug. 15, once a national day of mourning, “with due dignity and solemnity.”
Her call came after the interim government announced that there would be no public vacation on Thursday, successfully denying an opportunity to supporters of the previous prime minister to assemble round her former household house.
