Bangladesh’s fugitive ex-leader warns of mass voter boycott in 2026 polls

Sheikh Hasina puts up defiant beforehand from exile successful India, saying prohibition connected her Awami League volition disenfranchise millions.

Bangladesh’s fugitive erstwhile person Sheikh Hasina has warned that excluding her Awami League enactment from adjacent year’s elections would deepen divisions successful the state arsenic millions of her supporters are acceptable to boycott the vote.

Now exiled successful India, the 78-year-old is presently being tried for crimes against humanity aft being toppled successful August 2024 by a student-led uprising that, according to the United Nations, saw up to 1,400 radical killed successful crackdowns arsenic she clung to power.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 3Bangladesh expats triumph means to ballot – could they sway the adjacent election?
• list 2 of 3Bangladesh garment exporters fearfulness $1bn losses aft immense airdrome fire
• list 3 of 3Clashes erupt successful Bangladesh’s Dhaka successful protests implicit govt’s caller charter

The interim authorities of Nobel Peace Prize victor Muhammad Yunus has pledged to clasp elections successful February but has banned the Awami League nether amendments to the antiterrorism act, citing nationalist information threats and warfare crimes investigations into the party’s elder leaders.

“The prohibition connected the Awami League is not lone unjust, it is self-defeating,” Hasina said successful emailed comments to the Reuters quality bureau published connected Wednesday.

“Millions of radical enactment the Awami League, truthful arsenic things stand, they volition not vote. You cannot disenfranchise millions of radical if you privation a governmental strategy that works.”

The Awami League and the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) person agelong dominated the authorities of Bangladesh, which has much than 126 cardinal registered voters. The elections successful January 2024 were boycotted by the BNP arsenic its apical leaders were either jailed oregon successful exile.

Human Rights Watch has condemned the prohibition connected the Awami League arsenic “draconian”. In the party’s absence, the BNP is predicted to pb successful adjacent year’s predetermination portion Jamaat-e-Islami, the Muslim-majority country’s largest Islamist party, is rising successful popularity.

“We are not asking Awami League voters to enactment different parties,” Hasina told Reuters of the upcoming elections. “We inactive anticipation communal consciousness volition prevail and we volition beryllium allowed to contention the predetermination ourselves.”

‘The nucleus’ of each crimes

The International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh’s home warfare crimes court, has concluded proceedings against Hasina, and a verdict is expected connected November 13.

Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam accused Hasina of being “the nucleus astir whom each the crimes were committed” during the uprising and called for the decease punishment if she is recovered guilty.

Prosecutors besides alleged she oversaw disappearances and torture of absorption activists astatine clandestine detention centres tally by information agencies.

Hasina has defied tribunal orders to instrumentality to be the trial. She told Reuters the proceedings were “a politically motivated charade”.

“They’ve been brought by kangaroo courts with blameworthy verdicts a foregone conclusion.”

In an emailed interrogation with the AFP quality bureau besides published connected Wednesday, Hasina called charges that she had ordered information forces to occurrence connected protesters arsenic “bogus” and said she “mourned each the lives mislaid during the unspeakable days” of her crackdown.

The prosecution, which insisted her proceedings was fair, has played audiotapes verified by constabulary that suggested Hasina straight ordered her information forces to “use lethal weapons” against protesters.

This month, lawyers for the Awami League requested that the International Criminal Court successful The Hague analyse reported “retaliatory violence”, including allegations of “beatings and lynchings”.