"Protest of 2024 was not a peaceful student movement" :::::: Sheikh Hasina address Delhi media conference: says - "Fear has entered homes, offices and campuses. This is not Bangladesh as was envisioned in 1971"

In a virtual interaction with the media in Delhi, former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina says, 

"Political prisoners must be released" 

"India always has been a great friend and I know they will remain that"

"Govt to Govt relation is different"

"People's support is important for me"

"I will return to my people ... 

"I am not worried about my own future". 

"...I speak as someone who has spent her life with the people of Bangladesh and was forced away from my country, but I was never separated from my people...".  

"Minority community members, judges, cultural figures and even rickshaw pullers are being targeted in Bangladesh," she said.

"Everyone who stands for the Liberation War are attacked," says Hasina. "Convicted militants have been released," she says.

"For the last two years, I watched my beloved Bangladesh suffer...This is not the Bangladesh we built, this is not the Bangladesh for which 3 million people sacrificed their lives in 1971. 

Let me begin with the truth about July and August 2024. It was not a peaceful student movement. From the beginning, my government tried to resolve the issue peacefully through dialogue, legal process, and patience. 

But behind the language of reform, organised groups were working to turn students demand into violent political instrument."  

The one decision of Muhammad Yunus regime to give indemnity to killers of policemen revealed their true motive, says former PM Sheikh Hasina. 

Hasina claims she had begun a probe but that was prevented by the "illegal interim government" of Muhammad Yunus. 

"If they weren't afraid, why did they not allow the truth to come out," she asks.  

Sheikh Hasina alleged that thousands of Awami League leaders, workers and supporters, along with police personnel, journalists, lawyers, judges and members of minority communities, had faced arrests, torture and violence since her ouster. 

She also claimed the 2024 movement evolved into "a coordinated assault on the Constitution" and accused the current dispensation of suppressing dissent and targeting those associated with the Liberation War.  

Sheikh Hasina also alleged that Bangladesh's economy had deteriorated sharply since her ouster, claiming GDP growth had slowed, industrial production had contracted for the first time in decades, bank defaults had surged, poverty had increased and investment had weakened.