Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina resigns as widening unrest intensifies

Bangladesh’s prime minister resigned and fled the country Monday, after weeks of protests against a quota system for government jobs descended into violence and grew into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule.

Thousands of demonstrators stormed her official residence and other buildings associated with her party and family.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s departure threatens to create even more instability in the densely populated nation on India’s border that is already dealing with a series of crises, from high unemployment and corruption to climate change.

After the embattled leader was seen on TV boarding a military helicopter with her sister, the country’s military chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, sought to reassure a jittery nation that order would be restored.

He said he met with opposition politicians and civil society leaders and would seek the president’s guidance on forming an interim government.

He promised that the military would launch an investigation into the deadly crackdown on student-led protests that led to some of the country’s worst bloodshed since the 1971 war of independence and fueled outrage against the government.

He added that he ordered security forces not to fire on crowds.

“Keep faith in the military, we will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible,” he said.

Even after Waker-uz-Zaman spoke, people continued to pour into and out of Hasina’s official residence, taking furniture and pulling raw fish from the refrigerators.

Crowds also ransacked Hasina’s family’s ancestral home-turned-museum where her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — the country’s first president and independence leader — was assassinated.

They torched major offices of the ruling party and the country’s two leading, pro-government TV stations — both of which were forced to go off air.

Elsewhere, protests were peaceful, and thousands gathered Monday evening outside the presidential palace, where the military chief, opposition politicians and the country’s figurehead president met.

Hasina, meanwhile, landed in a city in India on the border with Bangladesh, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to the media. It was not clear where she would go next.

The protests began peacefully last month as frustrated students demanded an end to a quota system for government jobs that they said favored those with connections to the prime minister’s Awami League party, but the demonstrations then morphed into an unprecedented challenge to Hasina and the party.

The 76-year-old was elected for a fourth consecutive term in a January vote that was boycotted by her main opponents.

Thousands of opposition members were jailed in the lead-up to the polls, and the U.S. and the U.K. denounced the result as not credible, though the government defended it.

Hasina had cultivated ties with powerful countries, including both India and China. But under her, relations with United States and other Western nations have come under strain, as they have expressed concerns over human rights violations and press freedoms in the predominantly Muslim nation of 170 million people.

Her political opponents have previously accused her of growing increasingly autocratic and have blamed the unrest on that authoritarian streak.

In total, she served more than 20 years, longer than any other female head of government.

At least 95 people, including at least 14 police officers, died in clashes in the capital on Sunday, according to the country’s leading Bengali-language daily newspaper, Prothom Alo. Hundreds more were injured.

At least 11,000 people have been arrested in recent weeks. The unrest has also resulted in the closure of schools and universities across the country, and authorities at one point imposed a shoot-on-sight curfew

Additional sources • AP