By Spy Uganda Correspondent
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country on Monday after hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on demonstrations that began as protests against job quotas and escalated into a movement demanding her resignation.
Jubilant crowds stormed unopposed into the opulent grounds of the presidential residence, carrying out looted furniture and TVs. One man balanced a red velvet, gilt-edged chair on his head. Another held an armful of vases.
Elsewhere in Dhaka, protesters climbed atop a statue of Hasina’s father, state founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as they celebrated her exit.
The flight into exile ended a 15-year second stint in power for Hasina, who has ruled for 20 of the last 30 years as leader of the political movement inherited from her father, assassinated with most of his family in a 1975 coup.
Hasina had left the country for her own safety at the insistence of her family, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy told the media.
Hasina was “so disappointed that after all her hard work, for a minority to rise up against her”, Joy said. She would not attempt to mount a political comeback, he said.
Earlier, army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address to the nation and said an interim government would be formed.
He said he had held talks with leaders of major political parties – excluding Hasina’s long-ruling Awami League – and would soon meet President Mohammed Shahabuddin to discuss the way ahead.
“The country is going through a revolutionary period,” said Zaman, 58, who had taken over as army chief only on June 23.
“I promise you all, we will bring justice to all the murders and injustice. We request you to have faith in the army of the country,” he said. “Please don’t go back to the path of violence and please return to non-violent and peaceful ways.”
The military spokesperson’s office said that a curfew would be in force from midnight on Monday until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, after which all schools, factories, colleges and universities would be open.
Hasina’s government had imposed an indefinite curfew from Sunday evening and a three-day general holiday from Monday.
Hasina, 76, landed at a military airfield Hindon near Delhi, two Indian government officials confirmed adding that India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met her there.
According to Indian broadcaster Times Now, Hasina is set to leave India for London.
Bangladesh has been engulfed by violence since student protests last month against the quotas, which reserve some government jobs for families of veterans of the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, seen as favouring allies of Hasina’s party.
The protests escalated into a campaign demanding the overthrow of Hasina, and were met by a violent crackdown in which about 250 people have been killed and thousands injured.
The country, once one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, has been plagued lately by slow economic growth, inflation and unemployment.
Hasina’s son Joy defended her record: “She has turned Bangladesh around. When she took over power it was considered a failing state. It was a poor country. Until today it was considered one of the rising tigers of Asia.”
She had won a fourth straight term only in January this year in an election boycotted by the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of her nemesis Begum Khaleda Zia.
Zia, 78, who has twice been prime minister, has been in jail since she was convicted in a graft case in February 2018. Her health has been deteriorating and she was moved to a hospital in 2019.
President Shahabuddin had ordered the release of Zia but a BNP spokesman said she was in the hospital for treatment and “will clear all charges legally and come out soon”.
Hasina had ruled since winning a decades-long power struggle with Zia in 2009. The two women each inherited political movements from slain rulers – in Hasina’s case, from her father Mujib; in Zia’s case, from her husband Ziaur Rahman, who took power after Mujib’s death and was himself assassinated in 1981.
Student activists had called for a march to the capital Dhaka on Monday in defiance of a nationwide curfew to press Hasina to resign after clashes across the country on Sunday killed nearly 100 people.
On Monday, at least 56 people were killed in violence across the country, according to reports.
Sunday’s death toll, which included at least 13 policemen, was the highest for a single day from any protests in Bangladesh’s recent history, surpassing the 67 deaths reported on July 19 when students took to the streets against the quotas.
Last month, at least 150 people were killed and thousands injured in violence touched off by student groups protesting against the job quotas.
Over the weekend, there were attacks, vandalism and arson targeting government buildings, offices of Hasina’s Awami League party, police stations and houses of public representatives.
Garment factories in the country, which supply apparel to some of world’s top brands, were closed indefinitely.
Critics of Hasina, along with human rights groups, have accused her government of using excessive force against protesters, a charge she and her ministers deny.
Hasina had said that “those who are carrying out violence are not students but terrorists who are out to destabilise the nation”.
