Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed was forced to resign and flee the country following local civil unrest. Hasina, 76, was the longest-serving female head of government and was elected for a fourth consecutive term in a January vote that her main opponents boycotted.
Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, the chief of Bangladesh’s Army Staff and the country’s top military official, announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised news conference. The military announced the formation of an interim government. The mass uprisings were preceded by a crackdown on the local population that allegedly included the murder of protesters by military police.
Thousands of opposition members were jailed in the lead-up to the polls, and the U.S. government denounced the result as not credible, although the Bangladesh government defended it. Hasina’s apparent resignation and departure from the country follows weeks of deadly clashes between Bangladeshi military forces and demonstrators who have protested her government’s quota system reserving a percentage of government jobs for relatives of war veterans.
