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Journalism of Courage
Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, on Sunday (August 11) said that a recent “resignation” statement, allegedly published by a newspaper, attributed to her mother was “completely false and fabricated”. According to the alleged statement, Hasina said she could have continued to remain in power if she had given Bangladesh’s “St Martin’s Island and Bay of Bengal to America”.
The statement seems to be taken from a 2023 speech by Hasina in which she claimed that “there will be no problem to hold on to power if Saint Martin’s Island is leased out, but she won’t do that,” according to a report by Prothom Alo. She, however, did not take the name of any country.
In her speech, the former prime minister also accused the opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), of wanting to sell the island. She said, “How did the BNP come to power in 2001? They came to power by pledging to sell gas. Now do they want to sell the country or come to power by pledging to sell St Martin’s island?”
Here is a look at St Martin’s Island and its history.
The island is located in the northeastern region of the Bay of Bengal, close to the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is nine kilometres away from the southern tip of Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar-Teknaf peninsula.
The 7.3 km long island is mostly flat and sits at an elevation of 3.6 metres above the mean sea level. It is Bangladesh’s only coral island — there are reefs from 10-15 km to the west-northwest — and is also a breeding ground for sea turtles.
The island has a permanent population of about 10,000 people. As it is a prominent tourist attraction, an average of 10,000 tourists stay there every day, according to a report published by The Daily Sun.
What is the history of the island?
The island was once part of the Teknaf peninsula (around 5,000 years ago) but gradually got submerged into the sea. Around 450 years ago, the southern suburbs of present-day St Martin’s Island resurfaced — the northern and rest of the parts of the island rose above sea level in the following 100 years, according to The Daily Sun report.
The Arab merchants were among the first ones to settle on the island. They began to arrive there in the 18th Century. The merchants initially named the island “Jazira” (meaning “the island” or “the peninsula”) and later changed it to “Narikel Jinjira” or “Coconut Island”.
In 1900, British India annexed the island during a land survey. By then, some fishermen had settled on the island — they were either Bengali or from the Rakhine community (who were based in present-day Myanmar). During the British occupation, the island came to be known as St Martin’s Island, named after then Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong Martin, according to some reports.
After the partition of British India in 1947, it became part of Pakistan and subsequently, a part of independent Bangladesh after the 1971 Liberation War.
