Slain leader’s widow who became Bangladesh’s first female PM

Khaleda Zia, who has died on the age of 80, was Bangladesh’s first feminine prime minister.

She was as soon as described as a “shy housewife” to her husband Ziaur Rahman, a number one determine within the nation’s battle for independence who grew to become the president in 1977.

However following her husband’s assassination in 1981, Zia rose to guide his Bangladesh Nationalist Celebration (BNP) and served two phrases as prime minister – first within the Nineteen Nineties after which within the early 2000s.

Her tumultuous public life didn’t finish after her premiership – she was later accused of corruption aand spent years in jail – however the fees had been dropped after a 2024 rebellion that noticed her long-time rival, Sheikh Hasina, swept from energy.

Begum Khaleda Zia was born in West Bengal in 1945.

The daughter of a tea dealer, she moved to what’s now Bangladesh together with her household after the partition of India.

On the age of 15, she married Ziaur Rahman, then a younger military officer.

In 1971, he joined a mutiny towards West Pakistani forces and declared independence for Bangladesh.

After the army ceased energy in 1977, Rahman – who then grew to become the military chief of workers – declared himself president. He reintroduced political events and a free media, and was later endorsed by fashionable vote.

He confronted as many as 20 additional army coups, and handled them brutally. There have been reviews of mass executions of troopers.

In 1981, he was assassinated by a gaggle of military officers in Chittagong.

On the age of 36, Khaleda Zia grew to become a widow.

Till then, she had stored a low profile and appeared to take little curiosity in public life.

However in 1982 she grew to become a member of the BNP, the social gathering based by her husband, and later rose to turn into its vice chairman.

1982 was additionally the 12 months Bangladesh started 9 years of army dictatorship, after its military chief seized energy in a coup.

Throughout this era, Zia launched into a fervent marketing campaign towards army rule, staging a boycott of the military’s heavily-managed elections.

Zia was put beneath home arrest a number of occasions for her activism, however gained a fame among the many folks as an “uncompromising chief”.

After the autumn of the army authorities in 1990, Khaleda Zia and the BNP grew to become the most important social gathering in post-military elections, and she or he was sworn in as prime minister in 1991.

Having absorbed a lot of the powers of the outdated presidency, she was now the primary feminine chief of Bangladesh, and solely the second lady to guide a Muslim nation.

Together with her ascension to the premiership, Bangladesh’s authorities returned to a parliamentary system.

Among the many most notable reforms she carried out throughout her first time period was making major faculty schooling free and necessary for all.

However in 1996 she would lose her bid for re-election to Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

In 2001, Zia had her revenge, having fashioned a alliance with a gaggle of Islamist events. Collectively, they received almost two thirds of the seats in parliament, however the BNP’s closeness to the Islamist events would draw criticism through the years.

In her second time period, Zia championed girls’s points, equivalent to introducing a quota for feminine MPs and offering schooling for younger girls – in a rustic the place 70% of them had been illiterate.

Quickly after Zia ended her time period in workplace in 2006, Bangladesh was gripped by riots within the political vacuum. Amid the unrest, the nation’s interim authorities, backed by the army, banned most political exercise and started a crackdown on high-level corruption, which reduce throughout political strains.

Zia was arrested on fees of extortion and corruption. So was her nice rival Sheikh Hasina, the Awami chief and daughter of Bangladesh’s first president.

Each girls, who had alternated from authorities to opposition for the very best a part of twenty years, had been all of a sudden mired in court docket instances.

Restrictions had been lifted on Zia within the years after, and after dropping a military-sponsored election in 2008 she grew to become the opposition chief.

The BNP misplaced its illustration in parliament after boycotting the 2014 election.

In 2018, Zia was convicted and jailed for 5 years after being discovered responsible of embezzling about $252,000 (£188,000) supposed for an orphanage belief arrange when she was prime minister.

She grew to become the one prisoner locked up in Dhaka’s outdated – and now disused – central jail. The size of her sentence disqualified her from searching for public workplace.

She denied wrongdoing, and stated the costs had been politically motivated.

A 12 months later, 73-year-old Zia was transferred to hospital for therapy for circumstances together with extreme arthritis and uncontrolled diabetes.

She was ultimately launched from jail on well being grounds and informed to stay at dwelling.

Tides turned but once more in 2024, when Sheik Hasina’s authorities was swept from energy on a wave of fashionable discontent.

Hasina fled to India, and the interim authorities that changed her ordered Khaleda Zia’s launch and the unfreezing of her financial institution accounts.

By this time, she was affected by a collection of life-threatening circumstances together with cirrhosis of the liver and kidney injury.

In January 2025, her journey restrictions had been lifted and she or he was allowed to journey to London for therapy.

However within the early morning of 30 December, she died in Dhaka after affected by months of poor well being.

She is survived by her elder son Tarique Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh in late December after spending years in exile in London, and who’s extensively seen because the frontrunner to turn into Bangladesh’s subsequent chief. “Koko”, her youthful son, died in 2015.