Sheikh Hasina floats into the reception room of her official residence swathed in an opulent silk sari, the personification of iron fist in velvet glove. At 76 years outdated and silver-haired, Bangladeshs Prime Minister is a political phenomenon who has guided the rise of this nation of 170 million from rustic jute producer into the Asia-Pacifics fastest-expanding financial system over the previous decade.
In workplace since 2009, after an earlier time period from 1996 to 2001, she is the worlds longest-serving feminine head of presidency and credited with subduing each resurgent Islamists and a as soon as meddlesome navy. Having already gained extra elections than Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, Hasina is set to increase that run on the poll field in January. I’m assured that my persons are with me, she says in an interview with TIME in September. Theyre my major energy.
Learn Extra: 5 Takeaways from TIMEs Interview with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
Few rebuttals are as stark because the 19 assassination makes an attempt that Hasina has weathered over time. In current months, supporters of the principle opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion (BNP) have clashed with safety forces, resulting in a whole lot of arrests, police automobiles and public buses set ablaze, and several other individuals killed. The BNP has vowed to boycott the election as they did in each 2014 and 2018 until Hasina arms energy to a caretaker authorities to shepherd elections. (Their request has historic precedent however is not required following a constitutional modification.)
Bangladesh has taken an authoritarian flip below Hasinas Awami League occasion. The final two elections had been condemned by the U.S., E.U. and others for vital irregularities, together with stuffed poll packing containers and hundreds of phantom voters. (She gained 84% and 82% of the vote, respectively.) In the present day, Khaleda Zia, two-time former Premier and BNP chief, sits gravely sick below home arrest on doubtful corruption expenses. In the meantime, BNP staff have been hit by a staggering 4 million authorized instances, whereas impartial journalists and civil society additionally complain of vindictive harassment. Critics say Januarys vote is tantamount to a coronation and Hasina to a dictator.
The ruling occasion is controlling all of the state equipment, whether or not its the regulation enforcement companies or the judiciary, says BNP Secretary-Basic Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who has been charged in 93 casesincluding vandalism and murderand imprisoned 9 instances. At any time when we elevate our voices, they oppress us.
Bangladesh issues. It’s the largest single contributor to U.N. peacekeepers and commonly joins workout routines with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Its vibrant diaspora is intrinsic to enterprise and inventive communities throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The U.S. is the largest supply of international direct funding and the highest vacation spot for Bangladeshi exports. And as one of many few growing world leaders to (albeit belatedly) condemn Vladimir Putins invasion of Ukraine, Hasina has confirmed herself helpful for the West, not least for taking in some 1 million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
However Washington is worried about Bangladeshs drift towards despotism. Hasina was not invited to the most recent two U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy gatherings, and in Might the nation unveiled visa restrictions on any Bangladeshi undermining elections. In response, Hasina advised parliament the U.S. was attempting to get rid of democracy by engineering her ouster. Requested about her allegation, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter D. Haas insists Washington is scrupulous about not selecting sides.
However at a time when the U.S. is determined to counter Chinas rising regional footprint at each flip, the stridency of American official coverage is telling. The U.S. appears to have made Bangladesh a check case for its democracy-promotion coverage abroad, says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute on the Wilson Heart. The large threat is that every one this stress will backfire and immediate the federal government to double down and do all the things doable to remain in energy.
What a fourth straight time period for Hasina would imply for Bangladesh is a polarizing query. Most Individuals know the nation solely from labels sewn into their tees and pants, however its a crucible that mixes a Muslim inhabitants larger than any Center Japanese nation with a big minority of some 10% Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others. Though constitutionally secular, a navy dictator in 1988 made Islam the state faith, making a paradox that has proved fertile floor for radical fundamentalists.
Hasinas financial achievements are spectacular. Bangladesh has gone from struggling to feed its individuals to a meals exporter with a GDP rising from $71 billion in 2006 to $460 billion in 2022, making it South Asias second largest financial system after India. Social indicators have additionally improved, with 98% of women at the moment receiving major training. Bangladesh is transferring into high-tech manufacturing, permitting worldwide corporations like Samsung to extricate provide chains from China. We have to enhance, in fact, in terms of democracy, human rights, free speech, says Professor Mohammad Ali Arafat, an Awami League lawmaker from central Dhaka. However we’ve got come a good distance.
Bangladesh additionally sits on the entrance line of the local weather disaster. The nation previously often known as East Pakistan might have been solid within the crackle and smoke of a 1971 civil conflict, however it’s water that has dictated life right here for millennia. From inland, snowmelt from the towering Himalayas funnels a mind-boggling 165 trillion gallons via Bangladeshs rivers every year. From the skies, common cyclones batter a low-lying delta that’s 80% floodplain, inflicting some $1 billion of harm yearly. And more and more, rising seas ranges threaten the lives and livelihoods of a inhabitants over 4 instances the dimensions of California, crammed right into a territory smaller than Illinois. Hasina has championed calls for for developed nations to supply their growing friends $100 billion yearly till 2025 for local weather resilience, a pledge up to now unfulfilled. We dont wish to solely obtain guarantees, she says. Developed nations ought to come ahead.
But if Bangladeshi life is dominated by water, its politics is awash in blood. For the final half-century, two households and the ladies who now lead them have been locked in a bitter feud. On one facet is Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in any other case often known as merely Sheikh MujibBangladeshs first president, who was assassinated in a military coup in 1975 alongside 17 of his shut kinfolk. (Hasina doubtless solely survived as she was in Europe on the time.) On the opposite facet is Khaleda Zia, widow of former military chief and BNP founder Ziaur Rahman, who led the nation from Mujibs assassination till his personal in 1981.
Each these dynastic matriarchs draw legitimacy from their familys position in Bangladeshs liberation battle whereas minimizing the others. Hasina derides the BNP as a terrorist occasion, which by no means believed in democracy, stressing its creation by a former junta. Khalid Zia dominated like a navy dictator, she says with undisguised venom. Hasina highlights the violence BNP supporters have triggered in arson assaults following the disputed 2018 election. The BNP, in contrast, factors to the systemic repression of their occasion and trumped-up expenses in opposition to its management. In fact, bloodletting is unfortunately frequent on all sides. Bangladeshi politics has usually included avenue violence, says Meenakshi Ganguly, Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch. That’s true for all main political events.
Hasina cites her governments introduction of clear poll packing containers and registration papers linked to ID playing cards and biometric knowledge as proof of her dedication to free elections. She additionally claims to have democracy in her DNA. After her fathers homicide, Hasina and her sister took refuge within the residence of Bangladeshs ambassador to West Germany earlier than finally being granted political asylum in India. (In 1967, she married physicist M. A. Wazed Miah and the pair had two youngsters earlier than his loss of life in 2009.) Hasina was solely permitted to return to Bangladesh in 1981, when she was mobbed by hundreds of Awami League supporters and spent the next years agitating for well-liked elections and the tip of navy rule. It was our battle, she says. The suitable to vote, the correct to meals. That was our slogan.
However a lot can change over 4 a long time and at the moment Bangladeshs opposition complains of being unable to marketing campaign on the road or specific themselves within the media with out worry of arrest, assault, or authorized problem. Its not simply the day of elections that issues without spending a dime and honest elections, says Ambassador Haas. It’s the whole course of and atmosphere main as much as it.
Between 1991 and 2008 energy switched between the BNP and Awami league at each election, and anti-incumbency alone means theres each probability that Hasina can be voted out in a good poll. In the present day persons are struggling, one rickshaw driver in Dhaka complained to TIME, saying that his every day wage of 400 taka ($3.50) can barely cowl the price of cooking oil and lentils for his spouse and two youngsters. [Hasina] comes from an ideal household however her father can not assist us at the moment.
The burning problem for Hasina is that had been she faraway from energy she would doubtless encounter the identical type of repressive retribution that her authorities is at the moment inflicting. The Awami League are all so scared, says Zillur Rahman, the manager director of the Dhaka-based Centre for Governance Research suppose tank and a chat present host. They dont have a protected exit.
Bangladeshs oppressive safety panorama was largely formed by the occasions of July 1, 2016. At 9:40 pm, 5 males armed with bombs, pistols, assault rifles, and machetes strode into Holy Bakery in Dhakas well-heeled Gulshan district, a preferred spot for close by embassy staff and the Bangladeshi elite. Bellowing Allahu Akbar (God is nice in Arabic), they opened fireplace indiscriminately on the primarily international clientele and hurled grenades. Prospects dove below tables whereas panicked workers members fled throughout rooftops or locked themselves in a restroom.
The attackers complained that Westerners skimpy garments and style for alcohol had been encouraging native individuals to do the identical factor, based on witnesses. They then tortured and killed any hostage that couldnt recite the Koran. When the siege was lastly ended by a police raid, a complete of twenty-two civiliansmainly locals, Italians, and Japanesealongside 5 terrorists and two cops had been confirmed killed. Fifty others, primarily police, had been injured.
It was the nadir amid a spike in ISIS-inspired Islamic terrorism that besieged Bangladesh, with greater than 30 violent assaults focusing on Hindus, teachers, and secularist writers and bloggers over the earlier 12 months. The environment of worry grew to become so pervasive that many eating places banned international prospects lest they grow to be one other goal. In the present day, the leafy avenue the place that carnage unfolded hosts solely plush condos and a medical clinic. But the reminiscence of the violence nonetheless gives legitimacy for Hasinas safety crackdown that persists to today.
Bangladesh started Islamification in earnest below Ziaur Rahman in 1977. His BNP at the moment stays allied with extra conservative teams, whereas Bangladeshs non secular minorities have historically favored the Awami League. Dhaka has used counterterrorism imperatives as a pretext to crack down tougher on the Islamist parts of the opposition, says Kugelman, of the Wilson middle. Counterterrorism at the moment gives a fig leaf for broad state repression. Ganguly calls actions by police at current BNP rallies provocative which has in fact led to retaliation.
However its not simply rocks and sticks on the road; Bangladeshs judicial establishments have more and more focused any slight criticism of Hasinas perceived enemies. On Sept. 15, two distinguished human rights activists who tracked extrajudicial killings and disappearances had been sentenced to 2 years in jail on nebulous expenses, prompting an outcry from international governments together with the U.S. Journalists, cartoonists, and college students have additionally been focused.
In August, greater than 170 international leaders and Nobel laureates together with Barack Obama penned an open letter urging Hasina to finish the continual judicial harassment of Bangladeshs 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered poverty-reducing microcredit. Hasina has pursued 174 expenses together with labor regulation violations, corruption, and cash laundering in opposition to Yunus, whom she derides as a bloodsucker.
Its a weird vendetta that stokes accusations of festering paranoia. Hasina might insist her report is exemplaryfood, clothes, housing, training, healthcare, job alternatives, she reels off. Im doing it and I’ve completed itbut scratch the floor and issues dont look fairly so rosy. Freedom Home considers Bangladesh partially free and its financial system continues to be reliant on agriculture, low-cost garment exports, and the almost $25 billion despatched residence from the 14 million-strong diaspora yearly. These remittances have performed a key position in serving to ease financial stress, significantly as costs for gas and different important commodities have soared because the invasion of Ukraine.
Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index ranks Bangladesh 147 out of 180 nations worldwidelevel with Iran and one place above Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Hasina boasts that now in Bangladesh each individual has a cell phone and that the nation is due in 2026 to graduate from the U.N. grouping of Least Developed Nations. However that’s by any measure a particularly low bar; by then the one remaining Asian members can be Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
And whereas Hasina speaks dismissively of Dhakas slum individuals, saying the nations idyllic villages are a special state of affairs, that begs the query why 2,000 individuals daily abandon the countryside for the overcrowded capital. Close to double-digit inflation is hurting abnormal Bangladeshis whereas depleted international reserves have impacted corporations capacity to commerce. Its a troublesome place to do enterprise, says Ambassador Haas, citing endemic corruption, labor issues, and the foreign money disaster. U.S. firms [are] additionally taking a look at a dozen different nations for his or her doable investments so its actually necessary that Bangladesh be aggressive.
Bangladeshs crucial position on the world stage is embodied by the Rohingya disaster. Drive an hour south of the seaside resort of Coxs Bazar and a set of bamboo huts lined with plastic sheeting emerges from the rolling countryside. Inside Kutupalong refugee camp, round a million stateless Rohingya refugees eke out a meager existence after fleeing authorities pogroms in western Myanmar, which claimed an estimated 24,000 lives. Youngsters wallop threadbare soccer balls whereas girls in niqab veils barter over samosas and bitter plums. Those who fled introduced little with them aside from tales of slaughter, arson, and rape.
Bangladeshs compassionate response to the Rohingya meant that the worldwide neighborhood felt reluctant to lift different human rights concernsa blind eye that might have continued besides abuses within the home scene grew to become very, very acute, says Ganguly. However at the moment, the ramping up of Western stress because the elections strategy is correlating with deteriorating safety and humanitarian situations. Now theres much more stress on our individuals to return, says refugee Shorif Hussein, 54. Bangladesh doesnt care if we die or no matter. They only wish to get our individuals off their land.
Learn Extra: There Is No Hope: Demise and Desperation Take Over the Worlds Largest Refugee Camp
When requested concerning the Rohingya, Hasina reminds the world that for six years my sister and myself lived outdoors the nation as refugees, so we will really feel their sorrow and ache. However her authorities has proved deaf to calls for to permit the refugees formal training and legit methods to earn a livelihood. As a substitute, the Rohingyas welcome has expired. Its an enormous burden for us, she says. The U.N. and different organizations which might be supporting [the Rohingya] right here may also do the identical inside Myanmar.
The Rohingya disaster was by no means for Bangladesh to resolve alone, in fact, and the worldwide neighborhood bears collective duty. Nonetheless, their plight raises contemporary doubts concerning American affect in Dhaka. Historic baggage additionally performs a component. Bangladeshs liberation battle was opposed by the U.S., which valued its shut ties to the Pakistani junta (famously dubbed our most allied ally by Nixon).
Democracy has a special definition that varies nation to nation.
Hostage to its measurement and geography, Bangladesh has artfully balanced U.S. ties with hyperlinks to India, China, and Russia. The latter, particularly, has a big historical past of people-to-people relations courting again to the Chilly Conflict, with Russian establishments internet hosting Bangladeshi college students and civil society. The danger is that urgent too exhausting pushes Dhaka away from Washington and nearer to Moscow and Beijing. Thus far, Hasina has each abstained from and supported U.N. resolutions calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. On some points, we didnt vote in opposition to Russia; then on another points, we vote in opposition to Russia, she says, including and not using a trace of irony: Our place could be very clear.
Its an strategy designed to make Dhaka seem not brazenly antagonistic to both facet. Whereas Hasina has blocked greater than 69 sanctioned Russian ships from docking in Bangladesh, in September Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov grew to become the primary ever high Russian official to go to, and Russian state-owned agency Rosatom is constructing the nations first nuclear plant 90 miles west of Dhaka. On Oct. 6, Bangladesh obtained the primary cargo of Russian uranium for the plant, which is due on-line subsequent July. Requested the place to assign blame for the Ukraine conflict, Hasina points a bromide reply: They need to all cease. Putin ought to cease and the U.S. ought to cease instigating the conflict and supplying cash. They need to give the cash to the youngsters.
Requested about Bangladeshs draconian new Cyber Safety Act, Hasina is once more defensive, saying with a wave that all the things you do some individuals all the time oppose it. Its a ordinary reflex to any criticism although no much less comforting for it. Throughout our dialog, considerations are instantly dismissed and alternatives for introspection as a substitute diverted into that bottomless properly of household trauma. Hasina brings up her murdered father unbidden a dozen instances throughout our two hours collectively. Domestically, she has propagated a suffocating cult of persona round Mujib; an infinite portrait of the Father of Nation looms over our dialog, and his mustachioed visage adorns each public workplace and web site. Contained in the departure lounge of Dhakas worldwide airport, a floor-to-ceiling plasma display performs his speeches on loop to the captive viewers. Im right here simply to satisfy my fathers dream, says Hasina.
However that dream wasnt essentially a democratic Bangladesh. On Feb. 24, 1975, some six months earlier than his assassination by renegade troopers, Mujib dissolved all political events and put in himself as head of a one-party state often known as Baksal, ostensibly to see the nation via a state of emergency. Whether or not democracy would ever be restored is a divisive query, although critics have already dubbed Hasinas regime Baksal 2.0. Even Hasina suggests Bangladesh exists in a grey zone: Democracy has a special definition that varies nation to nation.
Its hardly a reassuring perspective for one heading towards the poll field. Hasina is aware of {that a} bitter and bruised opposition means failure will not be an choice. It’s not that simple to overthrow me via a democratic system, she says. The one choice is simply to get rid of me. And I’m able to die for my individuals.
With reporting by Astha Rajvanshi/London
