66 Facts About Sheikh Hasina

1.

Sheikh Hasina Wazed is a Bangladeshi politician and stateswoman who has served as the prime minister of Bangladesh since January 2009.

2.

Zia resigned to a caretaker government, followed by Sheikh Hasina becoming prime minister after the June 1996 election.

3.

In 2017, after nearly a million Rohingya entered the country, fleeing genocide in Myanmar, Sheikh Hasina received credit and praise for giving them refuge and assistance.

4.

Sheikh Hasina won her fourth term after the 2018 election, which was marred with violence and criticised by the opposition as being rigged.

5.

Sheikh Hasina's father was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first President of Bangladesh, regarded as the "Father of the Nation".

6.

Sheikh Hasina has Iraqi Arab ancestry through her paternal grandfather Sheikh Lutfar Rahman, who was a direct descendant of 15th-century Muslim preacher Sheikh Awwal of Baghdad.

7.

Sheikh Hasina has said in many interviews that she had grown up in fear due to threats to her politically prominent father, who was assassinated in 1975.

8.

Sheikh Hasina married physicist M A Wazed Miah, who was chosen for her by her father, in 1968.

9.

Sheikh Hasina was active in the student politics of the University of Dhaka.

10.

Sheikh Hasina was not in Bangladesh when her father, and most of her family, were assassinated on 15 August 1975 during a military coup d'etat by renegade officers of the Bangladesh Army.

11.

Sheikh Hasina was barred from returning to Bangladesh until after she was elected to lead the Awami League on 16 February 1981, and arrived home on 17 May 1981.

12.

Under martial law, Sheikh Hasina was in and out of detention throughout the 1980s.

13.

Sheikh Hasina led an eight-party alliance as opposition against Ershad.

14.

Sheikh Hasina worked with Khaleda Zia in organising opposition to Ershad.

15.

Sheikh Hasina led the Bangladesh Awami League in boycotting the parliament from 1994.

16.

Sheikh Hasina served her first term as Prime Minister of Bangladesh from June 1996 to July 2001.

17.

Sheikh Hasina signed the 30-year water-sharing treaty with India governing the Ganges.

18.

Sheikh Hasina's administration repealed the Indemnity Act, which granted immunity from prosecution to the killers of Sheikh Mujib.

19.

In December 1997, Sheikh Hasina's administration signed the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, ending the insurgency in the Chittagong Division for which Sheikh Hasina won the UNESCO Peace Prize.

20.

Sheikh Hasina's government established the Ashrayan-1 Project while bilateral relations with neighbouring states improved.

21.

Sheikh Hasina's government completed the Bangabandhu Bridge mega project in 1998.

22.

The Sheikh Hasina government adopted the New Industrial Policy in 1999 which aimed to bolster the private sector and attract foreign direct investment, thus expediating the globalisation process.

23.

The Sheikh Hasina administration introduced an allowance scheme which resulted in 400,000 elderly people receiving monthly allowances.

24.

Sheikh Hasina was the first prime minister to engage in a "Prime Minister's Question-Answer Time" in the Jatiya Sangsad.

25.

The Sheikh Hasina government liberalised the telecommunications industry, initially granting four licenses to private companies to provide cellular mobile telephone services.

26.

Sheikh Hasina's cabinet approved the National Plan of Action for Children in 1999 to ensure rights and improved upbringing.

27.

Sheikh Hasina attended the World Micro Credit summit in Washington DC; the World Food Summit in Rome; the Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference in India; the OIC summit in Pakistan; the 9th SAARC summit in the Maldives; the first D-8 summit in Turkey; the 5th World Conference for the Aged in Germany; the Commonwealth summit in the UK and the OIC summit in Iran.

28.

Sheikh Hasina visited the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

29.

Sheikh Hasina became the first Bangladeshi prime minister since independence to complete an entire five-year term.

30.

Sheikh Hasina herself ran in three constituencies, and was defeated in a constituency in Rangpur, which included her husband's home town, but won in two other seats.

31.

Sheikh Hasina went to the United States embassy on 14 March 2007 along with Kazi Zafarullah and Tareq Ahmed Siddique.

32.

Sheikh Hasina would fly the next day to the United States accompanied by Tareq Ahmed Siddique and Abdus Sobhan Golap.

33.

Sheikh Hasina visited her son and daughter who live in the United States.

34.

Sheikh Hasina was accused of having forced businessman Tajul Islam Farooq to pay bribes in 1998 before his company could build a power plant.

35.

Farooq said that he paid Sheikh Hasina for approving his project.

36.

On 18 April 2007, the Government barred Sheikh Hasina from returning, stating that she had made provocative statements and that her return could cause disorder.

37.

Sheikh Hasina vowed to return home, and on 22 April 2007, a warrant was issued for her arrest for murder.

38.

On 23 April 2007, the arrest warrant was suspended, and on 25 April 2007, the ban on Sheikh Hasina's entry was dropped.

39.

Sheikh Hasina told reporters that the government should not have delayed her return.

40.

On 16 July 2007, Sheikh Hasina was arrested by police at her home and taken before a local court in Dhaka.

41.

Sheikh Hasina was accused of extortion and denied bail, and was held in a building converted into jail on the premises of the National Parliament.

42.

On 11 April 2007, the police filed murder charges against Sheikh Hasina, alleging that she masterminded the killing in October 2006 of four supporters of a rival political party.

43.

On 11 June 2008, Sheikh Hasina was released on parole for medical reasons.

44.

On 6 November 2008, Sheikh Hasina returned to Bangladesh to contest the 2008 general election scheduled for 29 December.

45.

Sheikh Hasina decided to participate in the parliamentary election under the banner of the "Grand Alliance" with the Jatiya Party, led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, as its main partner.

46.

On 11 December 2008, Sheikh Hasina formally announced her party's election manifesto during a news conference, and vowed to build a "Digital Bangladesh" by 2021.

47.

Sheikh Hasina was sworn into office as prime minister for a second term on 6 January 2009.

48.

Sheikh Hasina removed Awami League central committee members who supported reforms forced by the previous caretaker government.

49.

Sheikh Hasina had to confront a major national crisis in the form of the 2009 Bangladesh Rifles revolt over a pay dispute, which resulted in 56 deaths, including Bangladesh Army officers.

50.

Sheikh Hasina was blamed by the army officers due to her refusal to intervene against the revolt.

51.

However, In 2009, a recording emerged of Sheikh Hasina's private meeting with army officers, who expressed their anger with how she had not reacted more decisively in the revolt's early stages, by ordering an armed raid of the BDR Rifles compound; they believed that her efforts to appease the revolt's leaders delayed needed action which led to more deaths.

52.

Sheikh Hasina has been "credited internationally" for the achievement of some of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

53.

Sheikh Hasina responded by saying she did not understand why Yunus blamed her when it was a court verdict that removed him from Grameen Bank.

54.

Sheikh Hasina secured a second-consecutive term in office with her ruling Awami League and its Grand Alliance allies, winning the 2014 general election by a landslide.

55.

In September 2017, Sheikh Hasina's government granted refuge and aid to around a million Rohingya refugees and urged Myanmar to end violence against the Rohingya community.

56.

Sheikh Hasina supported calls to remove the Statue of Justice in front of the Supreme Court.

57.

Sheikh Hasina is a patron of the Asian University for Women, led by Chancellor Cherie Blair, and including the First Lady of Japan, Akie Abe, as well as Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO.

58.

Sheikh Hasina won her third consecutive term, her fourth overall, when her Awami League won 288 of the 300 parliamentary seats.

59.

The New York Times editorial board described the election as farcical, the editorial stated that it was likely Sheikh Hasina would have won without vote-rigging and questioned why she did so.

60.

In May 2021, Sheikh Hasina provided the inaugural address for the opening of a new headquarters for the Bangladesh Post Office, named the Dak Bhaban.

61.

On 17 January 2016, Sheikh Hasina stated that a managing director of a bank in the United States provoked the World Bank to cancel the loan.

62.

On 24 January 2017, in a speech in parliament, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed Muhammad Yunus for the World Bank's pulling out of the project.

63.

In 1968, Hasina married M A Wazed Miah, a Bangladeshi physicist, writer, and chairman of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission.

64.

Sheikh Hasina has a son, Sajeeb Wazed, and a daughter, Saima Wazed.

65.

Hasina's only living sibling, Sheikh Rehana, served as the adviser of Tungipara upazila unit Awami League in Gopalganj in 2017.

66.

Sheikh Hasina suffers from a hearing impairment as a result of injuries sustained during the 2004 grenade attack.