Bangladesh’s ex-PM Hasina makes first public speech after ouster

Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India following violent protests in 2024, has demanded that the ban on her party be lifted Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, gave a public media address on Wednesday – her first since she fled Dhaka following a violent uprising.“I was forced away from my country, but I was never separated from my people,” she declared defiantly in a virtual address to the gathered media in Delhi. She said fear has entered people’s lives. “This is not the Bangladesh that 3 million people sacrificed their lives for.”The daughter of the country’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, broke down briefly as she remembered the members of her family at the start of the address. Rahman was assassinated in a 1975 military coup along with her mother, brothers, and several other relatives in their Dhaka residence.Hasina demanded that the ban on her party, the Awami League, be lifted, that political prisoners be released, false cases dropped, freedom of speech restored, and judicial independence guaranteed. The former PM said the uprising that led to her ouster “was not a peaceful student movement. My government tried to resolve the issue peacefully through dialogu...