Bangladesh’s interim government revoked the diplomatic passport of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina on Thursday, after she fled a student-led uprising by helicopter to India earlier this month.
The move to cancel Hasina’s documents leaves the former autocratic leader in potential limbo, and comes on the same day that a United Nations team arrived in Dhaka to assess whether to investigate alleged human rights violations.
More than 450 people were killed — many by police fire — during the weeks leading up to Hasina’s ouster, as crowds stormed her official residence in Dhaka and ended her iron-fisted 15-year rule.
The interior ministry said in a statement that Hasina’s passport and those belonging to former government ministers and ex-lawmakers no longer in their posts “have to be revoked”.
It also poses a diplomatic dilemma for Hasina’s current host, regional powerhouse India.
‘Disproportionate force’
Hasina, who fled to an airbase near India’s capital New Delhi, was a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu-nationalist government preferred her over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.
While India is hosting Hasina, Modi has also offered his support to the new Bangladeshi leader, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading the caretaker administration.
“The former prime minister, her advisers, the former cabinet and all members of the dissolved national assembly were eligible for diplomatic passports by virtue of the positions they held,” Dhaka’s home ministry said in a statement.
“If they have been removed or retired from their posts, their and their spouses’ diplomatic passports have to be revoked.”
Dhaka’s new authorities said that Hasina, and other former top officials during her tenure, could apply for a standard passport, but that those documents were contingent on approval.
“When the aforementioned people apply afresh for ordinary passports, two security agencies have to clear their application for their passports to be issued,” the ministry added.
Hasina’s government was accused of widespread abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killing of political opponents.
The UN rights office asessing the protest response had said in a preliminary report last week that there were “strong indications, warranting further independent investigation, that the security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force”.
Yunus has said his administration would “provide whatever support” UN investigators need.
Separately, a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal set up by Hasina has launched three “mass murder” probes into its founder over the recent unrest.
