The building in the capital of Dhaka was gutted while the country’s recently-deposed prime minister gave a fiery social media speech from exile in India.
Thousands of protesters in Bangladesh set fire to the former family home of the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday night as she gave a speech on social media urging her supporters to resist the country’s interim government.
Hasina, who ruled the country for 15 years, fled to India in August after being toppled by a popular student-led uprising. Her critics accuse her of widespread human rights abuses, suppressing dissent and corruption during her authoritarian regime.
Demonstrators had threatened to destroy the house in Dhaka — which had been home to Hasina’s late father and Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and later turned into a museum — unless the deposed prime minister cancelled a speech she planned to make to her supporters from exile.
As Hasina began speaking on Wednesday, protesters started to attack the house. They later brought a crane and an excavator to help with the building’s demolition.
Hasina’s father was assassinated in the house in 1975, four years after he used the spot to formally declare Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.
Some of her supporters have gathered at the site since she was deposed last year.
Hasnat Abdullah, a student leader, said on Facebook on Wednesday that “tonight Bangladesh will be freed from the pilgrimage site of fascism”.
Protesters at the site chanted slogans criticising India, which has not responded to Bangladesh’s requests for Hasina’s extradition.
While the building was being destroyed, Hasina called on the country to resist the interim government led by the Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, alleging that it had assumed power by “unconstitutional” means.
“They do not have the power to destroy the country’s independence with bulldozers. They may destroy a building, but they won’t be able to erase the history,” Hasina said of the protesters.
Her speech marked the start of a month-long campaign to gain support by her Awami League political party.
Houses and businesses belonging to Hasina’s supporters were targeted overnight, according to the country’s leading English-language Daily Star.
Before she resigned and fled the country, Hasina’s security forces killed hundreds of people amid a crackdown on protests.
