Sheikh Hasina
Sheikh Hasina governed Bangladesh for over twenty years and fled the country in a helicopter in August 2024. Born in 1947, she is the eldest daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh. In August 1975 army officers murdered her father, her mother, her three brothers and most of the household; she and her sister survived because they were in West Germany. She spent six years in exile in India, returned in 1981 to lead the Awami League, and spent the 1980s campaigning against military rule, under repeated house arrest. She was prime minister from 1996 to 2001, and again continuously from January 2009. The economic record is substantial. Bangladesh's growth averaged six to seven per cent, the garment industry became the second largest exporter in the world, extreme poverty fell sharply, and indicators for female literacy, child mortality and life expectancy overtook those of its neighbours. She built the Padma Bridge with domestic funds after the World Bank withdrew over corruption allegations, and she admitted around a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in 2017. The politics closed steadily. Opposition leaders were prosecuted, war crimes tribunals convicted and executed her opponents, enforced disappearances were documented in the hundreds, and the elections of 2014, 2018 and 2024 were boycotted or judged not credible. Protests began in July 2024 over public-sector job quotas and became a general rising after security forces killed hundreds of demonstrators, many of them students. She left for India on 5 August 2024 and was sentenced to death in absentia in November 2025.
- Lived: 1947 CE – ?
- Nationality: Bangladeshi
- Roles: Prime Minister of Bangladesh (2009-2024)
