State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir, when answering journalists’ questions on various serious subjects, often tries to create a little humor with some sarcasm and mockery.
Recently, Kabir was asked whether former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had applied for a passport to return to the country. The question can’t be called entirely reasonable, since there has been nothing to suggest that Hasina has applied for a passport at all.
In other words, the person about whom the passport question is being asked has herself said nothing about a passport. Anyway, if a journalist is curious, they will naturally ask, and a responsible official could be expected to give a proper answer.
The state minister said he knows nothing about a passport. Of course, he wouldn’t, because Sheikh Hasina has said nothing about a passport or a travel pass. Kabir, however, did not stop there.
“Is she going to come here to visit her in-laws’ home in Rangpur, that I should give her a passport, and she’ll come with the passport?” He described the matter as “laughable.” Then he laid out the government’s position in his own words.
“Sheikh Hasina is a fugitive terrorist. A dictator, a runaway terrorist,” he said.
Kabir’s choice of words here is quite interesting. Humayun Kabir is a Britain-based expatriate, so he knows well what “terrorist” means in the Western world. There, “terrorist” mainly means Islamist militants (although in the United States some armed white supremacist groups are designated as “domestic terrorist” organizations). Here a suspicion remains that, by labeling Hasina a “terrorist,” the minister wants to create an image of her in the minds of Westerners.
On bringing Hasina back from India, Kabir stood firm on his earlier position. “We have an active extradition treaty for catching terrorists, for catching criminals,” he said. “To catch terrorists and criminals, you don’t need a passport; they are handed over.”
He is right about this. The very purpose of the extradition treaty between Bangladesh and India is to arrest each other’s “terrorists” and “criminals” and send them back.
The problem lies elsewhere. Does India see Sheikh Hasina as a “terrorist” or “criminal” at all?
From the answer that Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi recently gave to a university student’s question at an event, no one should have any doubt that the Indian government, far from considering Sheikh Hasina a terrorist or criminal, treats her with considerable respect. Throughout his entire statement, Trivedi addressed the former PM as “Hasinaji.” Those with even the slightest idea of Indian social customs know that in that country, no responsible person adds “ji” to the name of a criminal or terrorist.
Is a passport a citizen’s right?
Trivedi had said that Hasina came to India on August 5, 2024 as the prime minister of Bangladesh. He also said the Indian Air Force did not “rescue” her from Ganabhaban. It was Bangladesh’s own military that took her to Delhi for her safety.
If India does not see Hasina as a “terrorist” or “criminal,” there is considerable room for doubt about whether the extradition treaty, however active, would apply in her case.
There is a second problem with Humayun Kabir’s statement. The government’s spokesperson and the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Policy and Strategy, Zahed Ur Rahman, said something slightly different a day earlier.
When he was asked multiple questions on the same subject at his regular press briefing, he did not directly rule out the possibility of giving Hasina a passport. He said he knows Hasina has made no such application, and that the government has no plan sitting ready.
“If it were the case that she (Hasina) had asked for it (a passport), then what the government would do, I think it is better to keep that to answer at that time.”
Rahman’s reply lightly touches on another aspect, whose importance is immense. He brought up the issue of citizenship, and he spoke of “this state,” that is, the state that was founded under the leadership of Hasina’s father.
Leaving the country and coming back is the constitutional right of all citizens of “this state” -- getting the document needed for travel, that is, a passport, is also their right. But under Bangladeshi law, in certain cases a citizen’s passport can be canceled, and they can be barred from leaving the country, and likewise an application for a passport can be rejected.
But canceling or rejecting a passport is all done to stop someone from leaving the country. The matter of returning to the country from abroad remains somewhat murky.
Extradition versus return
Hundreds of cases have been filed against Sheikh Hasina; one or two have been “tried” in her absence, and she has even been given the death sentence. The government considers Hasina a “fugitive,” so surely the government would want her to return and come under the country’s law?
Since Hasina has expressed a wish to return voluntarily in December, that apparently seems the easiest and quickest path. On the other hand, the extradition that Humayun Kabir speaks of, which Zahed Ur Rahman dramatically explains as “we will bring her by catching her,” is a long legal process; nobody can say how many months, or even years, the extradition process might take.
And even after the process ends, there is no guarantee that the Indian government will actually hand Sheikh Hasina over to face the death sentence.
Against this background, if the government chooses the long extradition process as the only road, and dismisses the possibility of a quick return with some absurd remark, then only one conclusion can be drawn: The government in fact does not want Sheikh Hasina to return to the country. That is, the government does not want the verdict in Hasina’s concluded trial to be carried out.
Listening to the state minister, it does not seem that Hasina’s presence in the country is desirable to the government. There could be two reasons.
First, in the current situation, the government has neither the political courage nor the strength to carry out the verdict against Sheikh Hasina.
Second, Hasina’s return would, on the one hand, revive the Awami League, and on the other, push the anger of Jamaat-e-Islami and the NCP to its peak. Perhaps the BNP lacks the confidence to face this two-sided political challenge.
Sabir Mustafa is the former head of BBC Bangla and is currently working as a freelance journalist and podcaster. Views expressed are the author’s own.
