Yunus’s govt scraps commemoration, but Sheikh Hasina calls for observing Bangabandhu’s death anniversary

New Delhi: Bangladesh's deposed prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Tuesday called upon the people of her country to observe August 15 as the National Day of Mourning although the interim government that succeeded her regime had decided against it.

Sheikh Hasina issued the appeal from an undisclosed location in India even as Bangladesh’s interim government led by Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus cancelled the public holiday on the occasion of the National Day of Mourning. She demanded punishment for the people responsible for the violence, arson, and killings in the name of the recent agitation by the students against reservation in government jobs.

She also called upon the people of her nation to bring to justice the people, who recently vandalised the Bangabandhu Museum at Dhanmondi in Dhaka.

Bangladesh has so far been observing August 15 as a National Day of Mourning to commemorate the assassination of the country’s founder and father of Sheikh Hasina, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, by some rogue military officials at his official residence in Dhaka in 1975. Rahman had led the 1971 liberation war that ended with Bangladesh being carved out of Pakistan as an independent nation.

Not only Sheikh Mujibur Rahman but almost all members of his family had been killed by the military officials. Only Sheikh Hasina and her sister Sheikh Rehana had survived as they had gone on a tour to Germany.

The house where Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman had been assassinated had been turned into Bangabandhu Museum.

But it was vandalised by protesters on August 5.

The student organisations, which spearheaded the protests leading to the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government, decided on Tuesday to discontinue observing August 15 as the National Day of Mourning. They stated that the August 15 had been appropriated by the Awami League “as a symbol of political and cultural fascism”.

The interim government also decided against observing August 15 as the National Day of Mourning. Brigadier General (retd) M Sakhawat Hossain, the advisor on home affairs of the interim government, said that a significant number of security personnel would be deployed on the streets to maintain law and order on August 15.

“I appeal to you to observe the National Day of Mourning on August 15 solemnly and with due respect,” Hasina said in a statement posted by her son Sajeeb Wazed on X - hours after a court allowed the launch of an investigation against her, two top Awami League leaders and four senior police officers for the murder of a grocer on July 19 during the unrest that ultimately led to her ouster from power.

This was her first statement after stepping down as the prime minister of Bangladesh on August 5 before flying from Dhaka to the Indian Air Force station at Hindon on the outskirts of New Delhi. She left Dhaka just a few hours before her official residence – ‘Gana Bhavan’ – had been stormed by irate mobs, protesting against her Awami League government’s crackdown on the students, who had been protesting against reservation in public sector jobs.

Yunus, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, was sworn in as the chief advisor of an interim government in Dhaka on August 8.