‘She has to keep quiet…’: Chief advisor Yunus on Sheikh Hasina’s remarks on Bangladesh from India

Chief advisor to interim Bangladesh government Muhammad Yunus said Thursday, September 5, that Sheikh Hasina, who he said was making comments on the country while sitting in India, has to “keep quiet”. “No one likes that she's speaking while sitting in India,” Muhammad Yunus said. 

Sheikh Hasina resigned as the prime minister after violent students'-led protests over reservation peaked in the country. She fled to India after thousands of protesters stormed into her residence in a dramatic turn of events.

Speaking with news agency PTI, Muhammad Yunus said, “If India wants to keep her until the time Bangladesh [the government] wants her back, the condition would be that she has to keep quiet."

"She is there in India, and at times, she is talking, which is problematic. Had she been quiet, we would have forgotten it; people would have also forgotten it as she would have been in her own world. But sitting in India, she is speaking and giving instructions. No one likes it,” Yunus said.

Sheikh Hasina has remained in India, her former government's biggest patron and benefactor, since her August 5 overthrow, inflaming tensions between the two South Asian neighbours.

She gave a public statement the week after her arrival calling for Bangladeshis to gather in Dhaka to mark the 1975 assassination of her father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Sheikh Hasina's comments were seen as a provocative effort to galvanise members of her Awami League party and undermine law and order in the fragile first days after Yunus took office.

Muhammad Yunus did not say whether a formal extradition request had been made to India. His government has avoided committing itself to demanding her return.

Sheikh Hasina's government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of her political opponents. Numerous criminal cases have been lodged against Hasina and senior Awami League figures over the deaths of protesters in a police crackdown on the student-led uprising that ultimately ousted her.