‘No free elections until shadow of Yunus clique lifted,’ says former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina

Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that the country cannot hold free and fair elections while the interim administration led by Muhammad Yunus remains in power, in a major public address, just weeks before the country goes to polls. Speaking via an audio message played to an audience at Delhi’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia on Friday, Hasina sharply criticised the Yunus-led government, describing it as an “illegal” regime that has plunged Bangladesh into ‘chaos and suppressed democracy’.

“Bangladesh will never experience free and fair elections until the shadow of the Yunus clique is lifted from the people of Bangladesh,” she said. Hasina, who was ousted in August 2024 following protests that ended her 15-year rule, called for “restoring democracy by removing the illegal Yunus administration”.

The interim Yunus government has put a ban on the Awami League party ahead of the February elections.

Hasina painted a dire picture of the nation’s current state, warning that the country is teetering on the brink. “Bangladesh stands today at the edge of an abyss, a nation battered and bleeding, navigating one of the most perilous chapters in its history,” she said.

“The homeland won through the supreme Liberation War under the leadership of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is now ravaged by the monstrous onslaught of extremist communal forces and foreign perpetrators.”

Hasina targeted Yunus personally, accusing him of corruption and betrayal, labelling him a “corrupt, power-hungry traitor, who has bled our nation dry with his all-consuming paradigms, staining the soul of our motherland”.

She also highlighted widespread human rights abuses and societal breakdown under the interim rule. “Human rights have been trampled into the dust. Freedom of the press has been extinguished. Violence, torture, and sexual assault against women and girls remain unchecked,” she said.

Hasina urged Bangladeshis to act to reclaim their democratic rights. “The brave sons and daughters of Bangladesh must defend and restore the Constitution written in the blood of martyrs, reclaim our independence, safeguard our sovereignty, and revive our democracy,” she concluded.

The speech, delivered remotely, marks a significant escalation in Hasina’s criticism of the Yunus government from exile in India.