Another Take: How Sheikh Hasina transformed Bangladesh
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every Saturday, we revisit a story from the archives. This originally aired on September 1, 2024. None of the dates, titles, or other references from that time have been changed.
Sheikh Hasina has won a fourth straight term as Bangladesh’s prime minister. The daughter of the country’s founding father earned her own reputation as a pro-democracy leader. But in recent years she has been accused of cracking down on critics, with the opposition boycotting the 2024 elections and calling them a sham.
In this episode:
- Tanvir Chowdhury (@tanvirbengal), Al Jazeera Bangladesh Correspondent
Episode credits:
This episode was updated by Marthe van der Wolf. The original production team was Ashish Malhotra, Miranda Lin, David Enders, Fahrinisa Campana, Amy Walters, and Khaled Soltan, with our host Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Andrew Greiner. Vienna Maglio and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, I'm Marta VanderWolf, back with another take, where we bring you episodes from the past. |
| 0:18.0 | This week, a Bangladeshi tribunal has sentenced former Prime Minister |
| 0:24.5 | Sheikh Hasina to death for crimes against humanity. Judges found her guilty of ordering a deadly |
| 0:33.7 | crackdown on the student-led uprising in 2024. |
| 0:38.3 | Once upon a time, Hasina was seen as a pro-democracy leader. |
| 0:43.3 | But after 15 years in power, that reputation had long faded, replaced by an iron-fisted rule. |
| 0:52.3 | We're sharing that episode on Hasina's transformation again. |
| 0:58.6 | It originally aired on September 1st, 2024. |
| 1:03.6 | All dates and references are from that time. |
| 1:16.8 | The The year was 1975. |
| 1:24.1 | 15th August in the morning, we heard this news, but we couldn't believe it. |
| 1:31.6 | 27-year-old Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's founding father, was on the other side of the world when she heard about a coup back home. |
| 1:35.9 | Everything just one night, everything just changed. |
| 1:42.0 | Soldiers burst into her family home at night and killed her father, mother, and three brothers. |
| 1:48.2 | They overthrew and killed Mujib, the man had been called the father of Bangladesh. |
| 1:53.9 | Sheikh Hasina was forced to stay in exile for years. |
| 1:57.6 | It was the start of a career fighting for democracy. |
| 2:02.0 | On Sunday, Sheikh Hasina won her fifth term as Bangladesh's prime minister. |
| 2:07.9 | Election results are out in Bangladesh, no surprises there. |
| 2:11.2 | Sheikh Hasina has won again. |
| 2:12.8 | The prime minister is 76 years old. |
... |
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