Link to article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/9/bangladesh-taking-steps-to-extradite-former-pm-hasina-from-india
Sheikh Hasina has been the prime minister of Bangladesh for the past 15 years. For the past month, she has been in hiding in India after being driven out by student-led protests that turned into a full scale uprising. Hasina has been known to abuse human rights, kill off her political opponents and in recent weeks during the protests, use authorities to create a massacre of over 600 people. India has an extradition treaty with Bangladesh meaning that a Bangladeshi must be returned to their country in order to be tried for their crimes committed there. There has been controversy over this because of a clause in the extradition that states that if the person in question has a “political character”, the extradition may be refused. The keeping of Hasina in India has weakened Indian-Bangladeshi relations especially in their major cities because the masses of citizens in Bangladesh want Hasina to be returned in order to see her in trial and be charged with her crimes.
I believe that if Hasina continues to be kept in India and the Indian authorities don’t return her in a timely fashion, India and Bangladesh will have greater resentment towards one another. I think trade could be weakened along with civilians not liking the bordering country. I also think that Bangladesh would take matters into their own hands and possibly invade India. This is a very important decision for both countries to make because it will have a part in determining how they interact in the future and the trust that can be shared. I think Hasina has fled to India in particular because she may be thinking she can find allies and protection there which would allow for disagreements between the new government officials in Bangladesh and the current Indian government.
India and Bangladesh both have multiple choices on how to respond to this situation. I believe, however, that the force and determination of the Bangladeshis will make India hand Hasina back over and this will come to a peaceful resolvement at the end. I do think that this process will take longer than the Bangladeshis hope and thus, weaken some ties with India. This connects to how individuals affect international relations. Yes, the governments are involved and play a big role, but so does Hasina herself even though she is no longer in a leadership position. It also shows how nations spread across multiple states are important because Hasina would not have fled to a country that did not have similar ethnicities or culture so the spread of culture over borders played an important role in where Hasina decided to flee.