AL to observe Sheikh Hasina's home-coming today
Tuesday, 17 May 2022
The Awami League will mark the 42nd anniversary of the homecoming of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today (Tuesday) with discussion meetings and prayers and distribution of charities, reports UNB.
On this day in 1981 Hasina returned home from six-year exile in New Delhi, India to take over as the president of Awami League and launch a 21-year pro-democracy movement against military regimes to bring the party back to power by winning the national election in 1996.
Hasina and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana were abroad on August 15, 1975 when their father Bangladesh President Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated with most of his family members at his Dhanmandi-32 residence in Dhaka.
The two daughters had since then been forced to live in exile until Hasina was elected president of Awami League in her absence and returned home on this historic day amid welcome by lakhs of cheering supporters.
After landing at Dhaka's Kurmitola airport on the rain-swept afternoon on May 17 Hasina addressed a huge rally at Manik Miah Avenue where she vowed to dedicate her life to the restoration of democracy and fulfil Bangabndhu's unfinished task of building Bangladesh into a 'Sonar Bangla', a land of prosperity.
To mark the day Awami League, its front and associate bodies will organise discussions and other programmes highlighting the significance of her return and how she changed the political and development landscape of Bangladesh as the prime minister of Bangladesh.