Toppled Bangladesh leader Sheikh Hasina to speak today: What we can expect

Two years after the events of the summer of 2024, which saw an uprising by young people protesting against a reservation system for government jobs turn violent, the 78-year-old is due to appear via videolink at an event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) of South Asia, alongside her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, and other Awami League leaders, including former Education Minister Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel. Dhaka continues to seek Hasina’s extradition from India following last year’s death sentence passed against her in absentia for ordering forces to fire on protesters. New Delhi, which has allowed her to remain and resisted attempts to extradite her to Bangladesh, has denied any role in planning the virtual speech, saying the event has been organised by a private media organisation. On Tuesday, Bangladeshi authorities banned local media from airing her speech. Hasina’s aide, Abu Obaidha Arin, slammed the move, saying Dhaka’s “efforts to silence dissent cannot extinguish voices” beyond the country’s borders.

Why is Sheikh Hasina in exile? Hasina has been living in self-imposed exile in New Delhi since student-led protests toppled her Awami League government in August 2024. A caretaker government took over after she fled, before elections were held earlier this year. She was accused of ordering security forces to crack down brutally on protesters, including telling officers to “shoot them“, and was sentenced to death in absentia in 2025 for crimes against humanity, a verdict she has dismissed as “legally void”. An estimated 1,400 people were killed during the crackdown, and more than 20,000 were injured. Bangladesh’s interim government had called for the death penalty in relation to that, as well as for 1,500 cases of enforced disappearances during her 17-year rule, according to an official inquiry. Many of those detained were political rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami.