DHAKA: Hundreds of Bangladeshi protesters smashed down buildings connected to ousted former leader Sheikh Hasina on Thursday, hours after students with excavators began demolishing a museum to her father.

The museum and former home of Hasina’s late father, Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had been set on fire last year during the student-led revolution that ended her 15 years of autocratic rule.

Late on Wednesday, six months to the day since Hasina fled by helicopter to old ally India on August 5, crowds carrying hammers and metal rods began beating down the walls of the building in the capital Dhaka.

At least two people, accused of being members of Hasina’s Awami League, were beaten by the crowd, according to witnesses. Protests were triggered in response to reports that 77-year-old Hasina — who has defied an arrest warrant to face trial in Dhaka for massacres — would appear in a Facebook broadcast from exile. The interim government blamed Hasina for the violence.

“The recurrence of such incidents can be avoided only if Sheikh Hasina, against whom the government has issued warrants and who is accused of crimes against humanity, refrains from making speeches,” a government statement read.

“Hasina... insulted the people who sacrificed their lives by making irrelevant, absurd, and hateful comments”. Dhaka’s foreign ministry said it had written to New Delhi demanding Hasina be barred from making “false, fabricated, and incendiary statements” while she is their guest.

On Thursday morning, diggers were being used to knock down the remaining fire-blackened walls. Pro­tes­ters also vandalised and torched other houses across the country linked to Hasina, including an arson attack on the Dhaka house of Hasina’s late husband.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2025