Portal:Bangladesh/Selected biography/14

Sheikh Hasina (born 28 September 1947) is a Bangladeshi politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001 and again from January 2009 to August 2024. She is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh. She served in the position of prime minister for over 20 years, making her the longest-serving prime minister in history of Bangladesh. Thus, she became the world's longest-serving female head of government. Her authoritarian regime ended in self-imposed exile following an uprising in 2024.

As the autocratic regime of Hussain Muhammad Ershad came to an end, Hasina, then leader of the Bangladesh Awami League, lost the 1991 election to Khaleda Zia, with whom she had collaborated against Ershad. As leader of the opposition, Hasina accused Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of electoral dishonesty and boycotted Parliament, which was followed by violent demonstrations and political turmoil. Zia resigned in favour of a caretaker government, followed by Hasina becoming prime minister after the June 1996 election. While the country began to experience economic growth and a reduction in poverty, it remained in political turmoil during her first term, which ended in July 2001, with Hasina being succeeded by Zia following her victory. Hasina was the first Bangladeshi prime minister to serve a full five-year term since independence in 1971.

During the 2006–2008 political crisis, Hasina was detained on extortion charges. After her release from jail, she won the 2008 election. In 2014, she was re-elected for a third term in an election that was boycotted by the BNP and criticised by international observers. In 2017, after nearly a million Rohingya entered the country, fleeing genocide in Myanmar, Hasina received credit and praise for giving them refuge and assistance. She won a fourth and fifth term after the 2018 and 2024 elections, which was marred by violence and widely criticised as being fraudulent.

Her second premiership (2009–2024) was marked by economic mismanagement and rampant corruption, leading to rising foreign debt, increasing inflation, youth unemployment and banking irregularities. An estimated US$150 billion or Tk 17.6 lakh crore was syphoned out of Bangladesh by illegal means during this period. In 2022, anti-government protests broke out demanding the resignation of Hasina. In June 2024, fresh student protests erupted throughout the country, demanding the reform of quotas in government jobs. The protests were met with brutal crackdown by law-enforcement agencies and paramilitary forces, resulting in the massacre of students. By August, the protests intensified into a mass uprising against the government, which eventually culminated in Hasina resigning and fleeing to India.

It is widely considered that Bangladesh experienced democratic backsliding under her premiership. Human Rights Watch documented widespread enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings under her government. Numerous politicians and journalists were systematically and judicially punished for challenging her views. In 2021, Reporters Without Borders gave a negative assessment of Hasina's media policy for curbing press freedom in Bangladesh since 2014. Hasina has been criticised as being too close to India, often at the cost of Bangladesh's sovereignty. She is seen as a manifestation of India's interference in Bangladeshi politics, which the critics described as the main source of Hasina's power.

Hasina was among Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and was listed as being one of the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes in 2015, 2018, and 2022. (Full article...)