The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the President of the Bangladesh Awami League, has survived at least 19 attempts on her life.The most deadly was on August 21, 2004, when explosive grenades thrown by unidentified assailants tore through an Awami League rally.
She has escaped death 19 times, according to the AL and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself on numerous occasions.
Six years after her father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was killed on August 15, 1975, by an armed group of frustrated army officers, Sheikh Hasina returned to Bangladesh on May 17, 1981, according to AL leaders and officials. Since then, she has reportedly survived 12 gun and bomb attempts.
The majority of Bangabandhu’s family members killed as well, however his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, managed to flee the bloodbath while they were overseas.
Sheikh Hasina inherited leadership of the Awami League after returning home and was elected prime minister in 1996. She is currently serving her third term as prime minister.
Birth of the Female heir
Hasina was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, who played a key role in orchestrating Bangladesh’s 1971 breakaway from Pakistan. She wed M.A. Wazed Miah, a renowned Bengali physicist, in 1968. She participated in politics while attending the University of Dhaka in the late 1960s and acted as her father’s political representative when he was imprisoned by the Pakistani government. Hasina and other family members were also briefly imprisoned in 1971 for taking part in a rebellion during the liberation struggle that finally resulted in Bangladesh’s independence.
Hasina’s mother, father, and three brothers were murdered at their home on August 15, 1975, by a number of military officials. Hasina’s father had just recently been elected president of Bangladesh. Hasina spent six years in exile as a result of being abroad when the killings took place. During that period, she was chosen to serve in the leadership of the Awami League, the country’s biggest political party and a group her father established.
Political Rise
After she returned to her nation during 1981, Hasina rose to prominence as an enthusiastic supporter of democracy. As a result, she was frequently put under house arrest. She eventually won a position as the opposition leader in the parliament, where she criticized the brutality of military power and started taking action to protect everyone’s fundamental human rights. Lieut. Gen. Hussain Mohammad Ershad, the final military ruler of Bangladesh, resigned in December 1990 in response to an ultimatum given by Hasina and generally accepted by the Bangladeshi citizens.
Change In Leadership
Hasina failed to win a majority in parliament in the first free general election to be conducted in Bangladesh in 16 years in 1991, and Khaleda Zia, the leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), took over as prime minister. The Awami League and other opposition parties boycotted the parliament because Hasina and her supporters accused the BNP of dishonesty in the election. This act of stubborn non-participation prompted violent protests and threw the nation into political unrest. Khaleda gave in to pressure to hand up power to a caretaker government that would oversee a new election despite the BNP government’s denial of all claims of vote fraud. In June 1996, Hasina won the election for prime minister.
Despite Bangladesh’s economy expanding quickly during Hasina’s first term as prime minister, the nation’s political situation remained chaotic. The BNP organised protests and violent strikes, and the government’s ability to function was seriously hampered by boycotts of parliamentary sessions. Despite these challenges, Hasina remained in her position, becoming the first prime minister since independence to serve a full five-year term in 2001. Khaleda headed an opposition alliance that soundly defeated Hasina in the afterwards election, which was marked by additional chaos. Hasina and the Awami League contested the election results once more, claiming that they had been rigged. But this time, their objections were ineffective.
After Khaleda reclaimed power, Hasina continued her work with the Awami League under the still-hectic political climate. She suffered minor injuries in a grenade attack at a political protest in 2004. After a military-backed interim administration in 2007 called for the cancellation of parliamentary elections and the imposition of a state of emergency.Hasina was detained on allegations of extortion, which is said to have occurred when she was prime minister. Khaleda was also detained on suspicion of corruption. They were both detained. In June 2008, Hasina was let out of prison; Khaleda did so in September. General elections were held on December 29 after the state of emergency was ended later in the year. Hasina and the Awami League won a clear majority after running against Khaleda and the BNP.
Father’s Daughter saves the Sheikh-Wazed Dynasty
In January 2009, Hasina took the oath of power as prime minister. Her husband passed away four months later after a protracted illness. Approximately 13 years after their trials began during Hasina’s first period as prime minister, five former military officers who had been found guilty of killing Hasina’s father in 1975 were hanged to death in Dhaka in January 2010. Later that year, the government established the first tribunal to start investigating charges of war crimes related to the 1971 fight of independence. However, friends and allies condemned the tribunal as being politically motivated because many of the tribunal’s convicts were significant opponents of the Awami League.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled the genocide in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 and landed in Bangladesh during Hasina’s leadership. The government assisted and offered shelter to the Rohingya on a voluntary basis, but it did not grant them refugee status. For assisting the Rohingya, the government received praise on both the domestic and international levels, but worries about a long-term solution to the problem grew.
Throughout their time in charge, Hasina and her party were accused of oppressing the opposition. The administration at times appeared to suppress criticism and free expression, and numerous opposition members were either found guilty or imprisoned. A court ruled in 2013 that the Jamaat-e-Islami party’s religious charter was incompatible with Bangladesh’s secular constitution, prohibiting it from running in elections. Jamaat-e-Islami was a minor Islamist party that was important to the opposition alliance. The BNP and other opposition parties boycotted from voting, which allowed the Awami League to win a majority of seats in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Despite the BNP’s decision to run in the elections that year, those worries continued prior to the 2018 elections.In the earlier part of that year, Khaleda, the BNP’s leader at the time, was imprisoned on graft and embezzlement-related charges and prohibited from the event. The BNP only gained a few seats, while the Awami League won by a wide margin. Hasina rejected claims of election manipulation and blamed the BNP’s defeat on a lack of leadership within the party.