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Published : 29 Oct 2025, 07:30 PM
Millions of supporters of Bangladesh’s Awami League will boycott next year’s national election, after the party was barred from contesting the polls, ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina told Reuters on Wednesday from her exile in New Delhi.
The 78-year old politician said she would not return to Bangladesh under any government formed after elections that exclude her party, and plans to remain in India, where she fled in August 2024 following a deadly student-led uprising.
An interim government headed by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has governed Bangladesh since Hasina’s ouster and has pledged to hold elections next February.
“The ban on the Awami League is not only unjust, it is self-defeating,” Hasina said in emailed responses to Reuters — her first media engagement since her dramatic fall from power after 15 straight years at the helm of Bangladeshi politics.
“The next government must have electoral legitimacy. Millions of people support the Awami League, so as things stand, they will not vote. You cannot disenfranchise millions of people if you want a political system that works.”
EX-LEADER HOPES AWAMI LEAGUE WILL BE ALLOWED TO CONTEST
Bangladesh has over 126 million registered voters. The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party have long dominated the country’s politics, and the BNP is widely expected to win the upcoming vote.
The Election Commission suspended the Awami League’s registration in May. Earlier, the Yunus-led government banned all party activities, citing national security threats and war crimes investigations into senior Awami League leaders.
“We are not asking Awami League voters to support other parties,” Hasina said. “We still hope common sense will prevail and we will be allowed to contest the election ourselves.”
She did not say if she or anyone else on her behalf was holding any back-channel talks with Bangladeshi authorities to let the Awami League participate in the polls.
Spokespeople for Yunus did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hasina, credited with transforming Bangladesh’s economy but accused of human rights abuses and suppressing dissent, won a fourth consecutive term in 2024. That election was boycotted by the main opposition, whose top leaders were either jailed or in exile.
The International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh's domestic war crimes court, has concluded proceedings against Hasina, who faces charges of crimes against humanity over the violent crackdown on student protests in mid-2024.
According to a United Nations report, opens new tab, up to 1,400 people may have been killed during the protests between Jul 15 and Aug 5, 2024, with thousands more injured — most from gunfire by security forces — in what was the worst violence in Bangladesh since its 1971 war of independence.
Prosecutors also allege she oversaw enforced disappearances and torture of opposition activists through clandestine detention centres run by security agencies.
A verdict is expected on Nov 13.
Hasina denied the charges, saying she was not personally involved in the use of lethal force or other alleged crimes.
“These proceedings are a politically motivated charade,” she said. “They’ve been brought by kangaroo courts, with guilty verdicts a foregone conclusion. I was mostly denied prior notice or any meaningful opportunity to defend myself.”
NO PLANS TO RETURN HOME YET
Despite the political turmoil, Hasina said the Awami League would eventually return to play a role in Bangladesh’s future — whether in government or opposition — and that her family need not lead it.
Her son and advisor Sajeeb Wazed, who lives in Washington, told Reuters last year he might consider leading the party if asked.
“It’s really not about me or my family,” Hasina said. “For Bangladesh to achieve the future we all want, there must be a return to constitutional rule and political stability. No single person or family defines our country’s future."
Hasina, whose father and three brothers were killed in a 1975 military coup while she and her sister were abroad, said she lives freely in Delhi but remains cautious given her family’s violent history.
A few months ago, a Reuters reporter saw Hasina taking a quiet stroll through Delhi’s historic Lodhi Garden, accompanied by two individuals who appeared to be her personal security detail. She acknowledged passersby with a nod as some recognised her.
“I would of course love to go home, so long as the government there was legitimate, the constitution was being upheld, and law and order genuinely prevailed,” she said.
HASINA ‘REFUSES TO APOLOGISE’
The Independent reported on Wednesday, Hasina “refused to apologise” for the deaths during last year’s Uprising, saying she is not to blame for the bloodshed and calling the trial against her “a sham”.
Her case at the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) is currently awaiting verdict.
Prosecutors have sought the death penalty on five charges, including incitement, provocation, and command responsibility for ordering lethal action during the July-August 2024 movement, which allegedly left around 1,400 people dead.
Speaking to The Independent, Hasina said she would “neither be surprised nor intimidated” if she were sentenced to death, describing the ICT proceedings as “a sham trial driven by political vengeance”.
“The ICT is a sham court presided over by an unelected government consisting of my political opponents,” she said. “Many of those opponents will stop at nothing to get rid of me.”
The Independent reported that when asked whether she would apologise to the families of protesters killed during the July Uprising, Hasina said: “I mourn each and every child, sibling, cousin and friend we lost as a nation. I will continue to offer my condolences.”
Hasina, who ruled Bangladesh for more than 15 years, rejected allegations that she had ordered police to fire on demonstrators.
She described the protests as a “violent insurrection” and claimed she bore no personal responsibility for the killings.
“As a leader, I ultimately take leadership responsibility, but the claim that I ordered or wished for the security forces to open fire on the crowds is simply wrong,” she said, adding that the high number of deaths was due to “breakdowns in discipline among security forces on the ground”.
She insisted her government had acted “in good faith... to minimise the loss of life” and maintained that decisions during the unrest were made by “security personnel on the ground who were expected to follow well-established operational guidelines”.
Chief Prosecutor of ICT Tajul Islam has described Hasina as the “mastermind and principal architect” of the crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the student-led uprising.
Prosecutors told the court that Hasina had personally “approved the use of lethal weapons to suppress protesters” and “ordered aerial attacks using helicopters”.
Audio recordings presented in court purportedly captured Hasina’s conversations with Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JaSaD) President Hasanul Haq Inu, former Dhaka South mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, and former Dhaka University vice-chancellor SM Maksud Kamal.
In the recordings, she allegedly confirmed plans to deploy troops and use aerial force in Narayanganj.
A BBC investigation in July 2024 reported verifying audio evidence suggesting that Hasina had authorised “lethal crackdowns” by security forces during the protests.
International human rights organisations condemned the government’s response at the time.
Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director Babu Ram Pant said the rising death toll was “a shocking indictment of the absolute intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities to protest and dissent”.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk called the attacks on protesters “particularly shocking and unacceptable”.
Hasina disputed the 1,400-death toll, calling it “inflated” and “useful to the ICT for propaganda purposes”.
She said: “It may well be that in a febrile atmosphere some decisions were made that were mistaken.”
Defending her decision to leave the country on Aug 5 last year, she told The Independent: “Staying would not only have put my life in danger, but also the lives of those around me.”
