Begum Khaleda Zia born Khaleda Khanam Putul in 1945) is a Bangladeshi politician who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006. She was the first female prime minister of Bangladesh and second female prime minister in the Muslim world, after Benazir Bhutto. She is the widow of former president of Bangladesh Ziaur Rahman. She is the chairperson and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) since 1984, which was founded by her late husband in 1978.
After a military coup in 1982, led by Army Chief General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, Zia helped lead the movement for democracy until the fall of Ershad in 1990. She became the prime minister following the BNP party win in the 1991 general election. She also served briefly in the short-lived government in 1996, when other parties had boycotted the first election. In the next round of general elections of 1996, the Awami League came to power. Her party came to power again in 2001. She has been elected to five separate parliamentary constituencies in the general elections of 1991, 1996 and 2001.
She developed a reputation as the "Uncompromising leader" due to her staunch opposition against military dictatorship of Ershad in the 1980s and her commitment to restore democracy in Bangladesh. She was put under house arrest several times by Ershad government, and later by Sheikh Hasina led government. She was honored as “Fighter for Democracy” by the New Jersey’s State Senate in 2011.
In its list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World, Forbes magazine ranked Zia at number 14 in 2004,number 29 in 2005, and number 33 in 2006.
Following her government's term end in 2006, the scheduled January 2007 elections were delayed due to political violence and in-fighting, resulting in a bloodless military takeover of the caretaker government. During its interim rule, it charged Zia and her two sons with corruption.
Since the 1980s, Zia's chief rival has been Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina. Since 1991, they have been the only two serving as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
Zia was sentenced to a total of 17 years in prison for the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case and Zia Charitable Trust corruption case in 2018. A local court handed her the verdict for abusing power as the prime minister while disbursing a fund in favor of newly formed Zia Orphanage Trust. Referring to the international and domestic legal experts, the U.S. State Department in its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices opined that “lack of evidence to support the conviction” suggests the case was a political ploy to remove her from the electoral process. Amnesty International raised concerns that her “fair trial rights are not respected.”
Zia was transferred to a hospital for medical treatment in April 2019. In March 2020, she was released for six months on humanitarian grounds with the conditions that she would stay at her home in Gulshan, Dhaka and not travel abroad. She is also informally prohibited from making political moves, as doing so would result in re-imprisonment. In September 2022, the 6-month period suspension of her sentence was granted for the sixth consecutive time.
Personal life and family
Early life and education
Khaleda Khanam "Putul" was born in 1945 in Jalpaiguri in the then undivided Dinajpur District[note 2] in Bengal Presidency, British India (now in Jalpaiguri District, India) but her ancestral home is in Fulgazi, Feni She was the third of five children of tea-businessman father Iskandar Ali Majumder, who was from Fulgazi, Feni District and mother Taiyaba Majumder, who was from Chandbari (now in Uttar Dinajpur District). According to her father, after the partition of India in 1947, they migrated to Dinajpur town (now in Bangladesh). Khaleda describes herself as "self-educated" and there are no records of her graduating from high school; initially she attended Dinajpur Missionary School and later Dinajpur Girls' School. In 1960, she married Ziaur Rahman, then a captain in the Pakistan Army.[25] After marriage, she changed her name to Khaleda Zia, by taking her husband's first name as her surname. She reportedly enrolled in Surendranath College in Dinajpur, but moved to West Pakistan to stay with her husband in 1965. Her husband was deployed as an army officer during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. In March 1969, the couple shifted back to East Pakistan. Due to Rahman's posting in the army, the family then moved to Chittagong.
Family
Zia's first son, Tarique Rahman (b. 1967), got involved into politics and went on to become the acting chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Her second son, Arafat Rahman "Koko" (b. 1969), died of a cardiac arrest in 2015. Zia's sister, Khurshid Jahan (1939–2006) served as the Minister of Women and Children Affairs during 2001–2006. Her younger brother, Sayeed Iskander (1953–2012), was also a politician who served as a Jatiya Sangsad member from the Feni-1 constituency during 2001–2006. Her second brother, Shamim Iskandar, is a retired flight engineer of Bangladesh Biman. Her second sister is Selina Islam.
Involvement in politics
On 30 May 1981, Khaleda Zia's husband, the-then President of Bangladesh Ziaur Rahman, was assassinated. After his death, on 2 January 1982, she got involved into politics by first becoming a member of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - the party which was founded by Rahman. She took charge of the vice-chairman position in March 1983.
Anti-Ershad Movement
In March 1982, the then chief of Bangladesh Army, Hussain Muhammad Ershad forced Bangladesh's President Justice Abdus Sattar to resign and become the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) of the country. This marked the beginning of a nine-year-long military dictatorship in Bangladesh.
BNP and 7 party alliance
Begum Khaleda Zia, from the first day of Ershad's rule, protested the military dictatorship and had a very uncompromising stance. She became the Senior Vice-President of BNP by May 1983. Under her active leadership, BNP started discussing the possibilities of a unified movement with six other parties on 12 August 1983 and formed a '7 party alliance' by the first week of September 1983. BNP, led by Khaleda Zia also reached an action-based agreement with other political parties to launch a movement against Ershad.
On 30 September 1983, Begum Khaleda Zia led the first major public rally in front of the party office and was hailed by the party workers. On 28 November 1983, she took part in the "gherao movement" (encircling) of the Secretariat building at Dhaka along with the alliance leaders, which was quelled by Ershad's ruthless police force and she was put under house arrest on the same day.
Due to the deteriorating health conditions, Justice Abdus Sattar resigned from the position of BNP chief on 13 January 1984 and was replaced by Begum Khaleda Zia who was then the Senior Vice President of the party. In May 1984, she was elected as the Chairperson of the party in a council by the councilors.
After assuming the position of party chief, Khaleda Zia spearheaded the movement against Ershad. In 1984, along with other parties, she declared 6 February as the 'Demand Day' and 14 February as 'Protest Day'. Country-wide rallies were organized on those days and activists of the movement died on the streets fighting the ruthless police force loyal to President Ershad.
The 7-party alliance held a countrywide 'Mass Resistance Day' on 9 July 1984, In support of their demand for the immediate withdrawal of Martial Law, the opposition forces called the countrywide gherao and demonstrations from 16–20 September and a full day hartal on 27 September of 1984.
The protests continued in 1985 as well and as a result, in March of the same year Ershad-led government tightened the grip of martial law and put Begum Khaleda Zia under house arrest.
Boycotting 1986 election
To divert the political pressure, Lt. General Ershad declared a date for a fresh election in 1986. Initially, the two major opposition alliances, '7 party alliance' led by BNP and '15 party alliance' led by Awami League discussed the possibilities of participating in the election forming a greater election alliance to catch Ershad off the guard. But Awami League refused to form any election alliance and Sheikh Hasina in a public rally declared anyone who would join the election under Ershad would be a 'national traitors', on 19 March 1986.
However, Sheikh Hasina's Awami League, along with Communist Party of Bangladesh and six other parties, joined the election under Ershad, resulting in the split between the 15 party alliance, On the other hand, Begum Khaleda Zia uncompromisingly declared the election illegal and urged people to resist the election.
The government of Ershad put her under house arrest on the eve of the election while Awami League, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Communist Party of Bangladesh and other smaller parties took part in the election only to lose to the Jatiya Party of Ershad.
Begum Khaleda Zia's uncompromising attitude and her defiance to the military dictatorship made an image of an "Uncompromising leader" in the eyes of people. Dr Gowher Rizvi in his analysis wrote:
Later in that year, on the eve of 1986 Bangladeshi presidential election, Khaleda Zia was put under house arrest once again.