DHAKA, Bangladesh — Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 80, whose archrivalry with another former premier defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died, her Bangladesh Nationalist Party said in a statement Tuesday.
Ms. Zia was the first woman elected prime minister of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s interim government announced a three-day mourning period. A general holiday also was announced for Wednesday, when Ms. Zia’s funeral prayers are scheduled be held in front of the country’s national Parliament building in Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, issued a statement Tuesday citing Ms. Zia’s contributions to the country.
“Her role in the struggle to establish democracy, a multi-party political culture, and the rights of the people in Bangladesh will be remembered forever,” Yunus said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences in a statement Tuesday, noting that “as the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh, her important contributions toward the development of Bangladesh, as well as India-Bangladesh relations, will always be remembered.”
Sajeeb Wazed, son of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said in a statement Tuesday that Ms. Zia’s demise “will leave a deep impact on the country’s [democratic] transition.”
“She will be remembered for her contributions in nation building but her death is a blow to stabilize Bangladesh,” said Wazed, whose mother was Ms. Zia’s greatest political rival.
Hasina issued a statement from exile in India saying Ms. Zia’s death was “an irreparable loss” for politics in Bangladesh and recalling her contributions in establishing the nation’s democracy.
Ms. Zia had faced corruption cases she said were politically motivated, but in January 2025 the Supreme Court acquitted Ms. Zia in the last corruption case against her, which would have let her run in February’s general election.
The BNP said that after she was released from prison due to illness in 2020, her family sought permission for treatment abroad at least 18 times from Hasina’s administration, but the requests were rejected.
Following Hasina’s ouster in 2024, the Yunus-led interim government finally allowed her to go. She went to London in January and returned to Bangladesh in May.
Fighting military dictatorship
Bangladesh’s early years of independence, gained in a bloody 1971 war against Pakistan, were marked by assassinations, coups, and countercoups as military figures and secular and Islamic leaders jockeyed for power.
Ms. Zia’s husband, President Ziaur Rahman, had grabbed power as a military chief in 1977 and a year later formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He was credited with opening democracy in the country but was killed in a 1981 military coup. Ms. Zia’s uncompromising stance against the military dictatorship helped build a mass movement against it, culminating with the ousting of dictator and former army chief H.M. Ershad in 1990.
Ms. Zia’s opponent when she won her first term in 1991 and in several elections after that was Hasina, the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 coup.
Ms. Zia was criticized over an early 1996 election in which her party won 278 of the 300 parliamentary seats during a wide boycott by other leading parties, including Hasina’s Awami League, which demanded an election-time caretaker government. Ms. Zia’s government lasted only 12 days before a nonpartisan caretaker government was installed, and the new election was held that June.
Ms. Zia returned to power in 2001 in a government shared with the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had a dark past involving Bangladesh’s independence war.
Ms. Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party was previously closely allied with the party and her government maintained the confidence of the business community by following pro-investment, open-market policies. Ms. Zia was known to have a soft spot for Pakistan and used to deliver anti-Indian political speeches. India alleged insurgents were allowed to use Bangladesh’s soil to destabilize India’s northeastern states under Ms. Zia, especially during her term from 2001 to 2006.
During that term, Ms. Zia also was tainted by allegations that her elder son, Tarique Rahman, was running a parallel government and was involved in widespread corruption.
A rivalry with Hasina
In 2004, Hasina blamed Ms. Zia’s government and Rahman for grenade attacks in Dhaka that killed 24 members of her Awami League party and wounded hundreds of people. Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, which she characterized as an assassination attempt, and subsequently won the 2008 general election.
Ms. Zia’s party and its partners boycotted the 2014 election in a dispute over a caretaker government, giving a one-sided victory to the increasingly authoritarian regime of Hasina. Her party joined the national elections in 2018 but boycotted again in 2024, allowing Hasina to return to power for a fourth consecutive time through controversial elections.
Ms. Zia was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate corruption cases for misuse of power in embezzling funds meant for a charity named after her late husband. Her party said the charges were politically motivated to weaken the opposition, but the Hasina government said it did not interfere and the case was a matter for the courts.
Hasina was bitterly criticized by both her opponents and independent critics for sending Ms. Zia to jail.
Health concerns placed over politics
Ms. Zia was released from jail by Hasina’s government in 2020 and was moved to a rented home, from which she regularly visited a private hospital. Her family repeatedly requested that Hasina’s administration allow Ms. Zia to travel abroad for medical treatment, but was refused.
After 15 years in power, Hasina was ousted in a mass uprising in August 2024 and fled the country. Ms. Zia was given permission to travel abroad by an interim government led by Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Ms. Zia was silent about politics for years and did not attend political rallies, but she remained the BNP chairperson until her death. Rahman has been the party’s acting chair since 2018.
She was last seen at an annual function of the Bangladesh military in Dhaka Cantonment on Nov. 21, when Yunus and other political leaders met her. She was in a wheelchair and appeared pale and tired.
She is survived by Rahman, her elder son and heir apparent in the political dynasty. Her younger son, Arafat, died in 2015.
