John AdoyiFormer Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has accused the United States of orchestrating the protests that led to her resignation and eventual flight from the country.
Hasina, currently taking refuge in India, made the allegations in a message to the Economic Times of India on Sunday.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelHasina fled Bangladesh on Monday as protests against the government’s job quota system spiralled out of her control. She claimed that the protests were part of a broader US plan to remove her from power because she refused to relinquish Saint Martin’s Island to the Americans, which would have given them strategic control over the Bay of Bengal.
“I resigned so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies,” Hasina said in her message. “They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it. I resigned from the premiership. I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin’s Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal.”
For some years, dating back to the early 2000s, rumours have it that the United States is having interest in Saint Martin’s Island which is part of the Bay of Bengal, the largest Bay in the world.
Saint Martin’s Island, the only coral reef island in Bangladesh and known locally as “Narikel Zinzira” or Coconut Island, is a popular tourist destination and a vital resource for its approximately 5,500 residents. It lies between Bangladesh and Myanmar and it is about nine kilometers south of the tip of the Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf peninsula and forms the southernmost part of Bangladesh. The island has been at the center of a maritime dispute between Bangladesh and Myanmar, which was partially resolved in 2012 when the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled that the island falls within Bangladesh’s territorial sea, continental shelf, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The Bay of Bengal where Saint Martin is located, lies atop vital sea lanes of communication that connect China, Japan, and Korea with the Middle East and Africa, through which half of the world’s trade passes. According to Eurasian Times, the region is crucial for the US policy of a ‘Free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific,’ which might form the reasons US would have interest in the island.
Before the protests that began in July, Hasina, who was controversially re-elected as Prime Minister for the fourth time after 15 years in power, had warned the Bangladeshi parliament in April that the United States was pursuing a strategy of regime change in her country.
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“They are trying to eliminate democracy and introduce a government that will not have a democratic existence,” she had stated, accusing the US and other Western nations of branding her re-election as fraudulent.
Hasina also explained her decision to flee Bangladesh. “If I had remained in the country, more lives would have been lost, more resources would have been destroyed. I made the extremely difficult decision to exit. I became your leader because you chose me; you were my strength,” she said.
The US has yet to respond to her allegations.
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