By Sudipto Ganguly
(Reuters) -Sheikh Hasina, who resigned as Bangladesh’s prime minister and fled the country on Monday following weeks of protests, has been one of the dominant figures in its politics since the assassination of her father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, nearly a half-century ago.
Her flight came less than seven months after she celebrated a fourth straight term in power – and fifth overall – by sweeping a national election in January that was boycotted by the main opposition.
The 76-year-old was flown in a military helicopter on Monday with her sister to take refuge in India, media reports said.
Her last 15 years in power were marked by arrests of opposition leaders, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent, and she resigned in the face of deadly student-led protests that have killed hundreds.
Protests began in June after student groups’ demands for the scrapping of a controversial quota system in government jobs escalated into a movement seeking the end of her rule.
Her political career was rooted in bloodshed.
Her father, who led Bangladesh’s fight for independence from Pakistan in 1971, was assassinated with most her family in a military coup in 1975. She was fortunate to have been visiting Europe at the time.
Born in 1947, in southwestern Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, Hasina was the eldest of five children. She graduated in Bengali Literature from Dhaka University in 1973 and gained political experience as a go-between for her father and his student followers.
She returned to Bangladesh from India, where she lived in exile, in 1981 and was elected head of the Awami League.
Hasina later joined hands with political foe Khaleda Zia, chief of the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), to lead a popular uprising for democracy that toppled military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad from power in 1990.
But the alliance with Zia did not last long and the bitter rivalry between the two women – often called the “battling begums” – went on to dominate Bangladeshi politics for decades.
INCREASINGLY AUTOCRATIC RULE
Hasina first led the Awami League party to victory in 1996, serving one five-year term before regaining power in 2009, never to lose it again.
As time went on, she became increasingly autocratic and her rule has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Rights groups warned of a virtual one-party rule by the Awami League.
Zia, herself a former prime minister and the widow of Ziaur Rahman, a former president of Bangladesh who was assassinated in 1981, was jailed in 2018 on graft charges that the opposition says have been trumped up. She was barred from political activity.
BNP and rights groups say Hasina’s government arrested 10,000 opposition party workers on trumped up charges in the lead-up to the January election, which the opposition boycotted.
Hasina refused BNP demands to resign and allow a neutral authority to run the election.
Both she and her rivals accused each other of trying to create chaos and violence to jeopardize the democracy that has yet to take firm root in the country of 170 million people.
Despite criticism of her years in power, Hasina was credited with turning around the economy and the massive garments industry, while winning international praise for sheltering Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.
But the economy has also slowed sharply since the Russia-Ukraine war pushed up prices of fuel and food imports, forcing Bangladesh to turn last year to the International Monetary Fund for a $4.7 billion bailout.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Angus MacSwan and Alex Richardson)
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