pWotD Episode 3121: Sheikh Hasina Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today. With 199,741 views on Monday, 17 November 2025 our article of the day is Sheikh Hasina. Sheikh Hasina Wazed (born 28 September 1947) is a Bangladeshi politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001 and from 2009 to 2024. She was the longest-serving prime minister of Bangladesh since the country's independence and the longest-serving female head of government in the world. Her premiership was characterized by dictatorship, oligarchy, and crimes against humanity. She resigned and fled to India following the July Revolution in 2024, and in November 2025, she was found guilty of crimes against humanity by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death in absentia. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding president, and is a member of the Tungipara Sheikh political family. She had little presence in politics before her father's assassination in August 1975. Afterwards, she took asylum in India, became involved with the Awami League, and was elected as its president – a position which she continues to hold. After returning to Bangladesh in 1981, she and the Awami League became involved with the pro-democracy movement against the military rule of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, culminating in the 1990 Bangladesh mass uprising and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the 1991 Bangladeshi general election. Following a narrow loss to Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in the 1991 election, Hasina, as leader of the opposition, accused Zia's BNP of electoral dishonesty and boycotted the Parliament. This was followed by violent demonstrations and political turmoil, causing Zia to resign in favour of a caretaker government. Hasina was elected prime minister in the June 1996 election, and she was succeeded by Zia in July 2001. During the 2006–2008 political crisis, Hasina was detained on extortion charges. After her release from jail, her party won the 2008 election, and she became the prime minister for a second term. During Hasina's second premiership, Bangladesh witnessed democratic backsliding and widespread human rights abuses. Her re-elections in 2014, 2018, and 2024 were criticised by international observers as being fraudulent, with the earlier and latter being boycotted by the BNP. Human Rights Watch documented widespread enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings under her government. Numerous politicians and journalists were systematically and judicially punished for challenging her views. Reporters Without Borders gave a negative assessment of Hasina's media policy for curbing press freedom in Bangladesh since 2014. A 2024 government report estimated that more than US$16 billion was annually laundered from the country during Hasina's tenure from 2009 to 2024, adding up to more than $240 billion over 15 years. Her government provided assistance to nearly a million Rohingya who had entered the country fleeing the genocide in Myanmar. In 2022, anti-government protests broke out demanding Hasina's resignation. These were followed in July 2024 by fresh student protests which demanded the reform of quotas in government jobs. The protests were met with brutal crackdown by law-enforcement agencies and paramilitary forces, resulting in massacre of students. By August, the protests intensified into a mass uprising against the government, culminating in Hasina resigning and fleeing to India. In February 2025, a UN OHCHR report found that she personally directed and coordinated the crackdown and that it may amount to crimes against humanity. In November 2025, she was convicted of crimes against humanity by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death in absentia. Hasina stated the trial was a "farce trial" driven by a "political vendetta." Hasina was among Time's 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and was listed as being one of the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes in 2015, 2018, and 2022. This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:49 UTC on Tuesday, 18 November 2025. For the full current version of the article, see Sheikh Hasina on Wikipedia . This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes. Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com . Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner , a current events podcast. Until next time, I'm standard Salli.
