United States Says It Had No Role in Ousting of Bangladesh's Sheikh Hasina
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13 August 2024 13:33 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The United States had no role in ousting Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who recently quit her position and fled the South Asian nation, the White House said on Monday. Washington called the allegations of U.S. interference "simply false."
"We have had no involvement at all. Any reports or rumors that the United States government was involved in these events is simply false," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing on Monday.
A report in the Economic Times newspaper in India on Sunday cited Hasina as accusing the U.S. of playing a role in ousting her because it wanted control over Bangladesh's Saint Martin island in the Bay of Bengal. The newspaper said Hasina had conveyed that message to it through her close associates.
Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed, in a post on X on Sunday, said she never made any such statement.
“The recent resignation statement attributed to my mother published in a newspaper is completely false and fabricated. I have just confirmed with her that she did not make any statement either before or since leaving Dhaka,” Wazed wrote on social media platform X.
An interim government in Bangladesh, led by Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday with the aim of holding elections in the Asian nation.
Bangladesh was engulfed by demonstrations and violence after student protests last month against quotas that reserved a high portion of government jobs for certain groups escalated into a campaign to oust Hasina.
Hasina went to New Delhi after leaving Bangladesh, ending her uninterrupted rule of 15 years.
She had won a fourth straight term in January in an election that the opposition boycotted and which the U.S. State Department said was not free and fair.
"We believe that the Bangladeshi people should determine the future of the Bangladeshi government and that's where we stand," the White House added.
REUTERS
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