DHAKA, 21 April 2007 — Bangladesh’s recent former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has asked the military-backed government to immediately free her son and allow her one last party meeting before she leaves for exile as another former Prime Minister Hasina Wajed vowed to defy government ban on her return home.
Hasina is scheduled to arrive in Bangladesh on Monday. Abdus Sobhan Golap, a Hasina aide, told Dhaka’s Channel-i television from London, where Hasina has stopped en route from the United States, “Our leader is determined to return on schedule.”
Hasina has been charged with abetting the murder of four protesters during a riot in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, in October.
Khaleda “has been trying to delay the departure as the government is yet to settle some issues including her demand that her eldest son Tareque Rahman be allowed to go with her,” a family source told the leading New Age newspaper. Tareque is still behind bars.
“The government is yet to fulfill another of her demands to allow her to meet some senior BNP leaders to settle how the party would be run in her absence,” the source told the paper.
The interim military-backed government is forcing Khaleda, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), out of the country as part of a campaign to clean up the country’s dysfunctional and notoriously corrupt political system.
Many blame Khaleda and Hasina for the political turmoil that led to the imposition of emergency rule in January and the cancellation of elections later that month.
Khaleda’s government stepped down last October at the end of a five-year term. A caretaker government then took over, tasked with holding polls within three months.
The new authorities have pledged to push through far-reaching reforms aimed at rescuing the country’s embattled democracy before holding rescheduled elections by the end of 2008.
It has also detained scores of top-ranking political and business figures from both parties on corruption charges.
Trying to bar Hasina from entering the country, the government ordered authorities at all entry points to prevent her return.
All airlines, both domestic and international carriers, have also been asked not to allow Hasina to board should she try to return, the Ittefaq and New Age newspapers said, quoting an Interior Ministry order.
Local media said they have been told by the government not to publish or broadcast any reaction from Hasina to the decision to block her return. It wasn’t clear if this also related to aides of Hasina.
The former leader was on a private visit to the United States to see her son and daughter.
An official of the British Airways has reportedly conveyed the Bangladesh government’s decision to Hasina that she should not be allowed to proceed to Dhaka from London.
While flying from America to London, the official on board conveyed the message to her, a source close to Hasina told newsmen late Thursday evening.
“She was smiling,” he quoted the British Airways official as saying.
The source said that the British Airways might not issue her the boarding pass to fly from Heathrow to Dhaka on April 23.
