Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina has resigned and fled the country after the recent protests by her citizens turned deadly.
She became Bangladesh’s prime minister for the first time after her Awami League party won the 1996 elections. Then she tried again in 2009 and won the elections, spearheading Bangladesh’s fastest economic growth.
However, her rule has its flaws. She was accused of being a hard-line leader and was known to overlook many human rights violations.
The United States placed sanctions on the elite Rapid Action Battalion, linked to disappearances and extrajudicial killings, and very prominent during her rule.
Recently, the country has been plagued by protests that have turned deadly with many people killed during the crackdown on protesters.
After news of her resignation, jubilant crowds stormed her residence without opposition, looting and farting away whatever their hands could find.
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 and began to chip it off.
Hasina 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 BBC World Service.
Before the protesters took to her residence, Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address to the nation and said an interim military 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 forward.
