Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose country and family have suffered incalculable loss from coups, on Monday issued a call to discard the term “martial law” from the military lexicon.

“We should exclude ‘martial law’ from the military lexicon as it has never helped the country or the armed forces, only resulting in bloodbaths,” the Prime Minister told an audience that included top generals as she addressed a virtual meeting of the Armed Forces Selection Board.

“A number of officers and soldiers were killed during these coups. The death toll in these coups was higher than the number of deaths from real wars. We don’t want to hear the cries of a father or a mother after losing their sons in coups,” Hasina said in an impassioned speech.

She was referring to the 19 coup attempts that took place during the military rule of Ziaur Rahman, who had taken charge of the country using provisions of martial law in 1977.

Bangladesh has been vulnerable to martial law since its independence in 1971, witnessing numerous coup attempts, some of them successful.

Undoubtedly, Hasina’s family has been the biggest victim of the army’s interest in running the government through martial law, which suspends regular laws.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first democratically elected leader of the government after independence and Hasina’s father, was killed along with 18 family members on August 15, 1975, in a coup. Five days later, the country was placed under retrospective martial law.

Hasina and her sister Rehana survived the attack as they were out of the country. But the martial law prevented her from returning to Bangladesh till 1981.

On Monday, Hasina sent out a message that martial law had no place in today’s democratic Bangladesh.

Major General (retired) Abdur Rashid later said: “A lot of people, including some in political circles, consider martial law a means of power transfer because of some past instances…. The Prime Minister made it clear today that it’s no longer possible.”

Hasina had chosen the occasion with care. She was addressing the senior-most officers, including chief of army staff General Aziz Ahmed, in the country’s defence establishment. The meeting with the generals, a bi-annual ritual, was held to clear promotions in the highest echelons of the armed forces.

The history of Bangladesh is replete with examples of officers and soldiers being killed in coups.

Ziaur Rahman was himself assassinated by a faction of officers in the port city of Chittagong on May 30, 1981. In less than a year, the country witnessed another coup when the army chief, General H.M. Ershad, assumed power by replacing an elected government. The dictator ran the country till 1990, suspending the parliament and the constitution.

“Our country has suffered so much because of martial law, which is unconstitutional,” said Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury, decorated war hero and former foreign secretary, supporting the Prime Minister’s views.

Some Bangladeshi politicians from the ruling Awami League and the Opposition that this correspondent spoke to said that despite the suffering inflicted by martial law, the possibility of the army stepping in to run the nation has always fascinated a segment of the population.

“There’s no denying that martial law has had a populist appeal in our country,” a senior politician said.

Rashid, himself an army veteran, agreed but was quick to add that such popularity had always been short-lived.

“We had an army-backed caretaker government in 2007 but its popularity was short-lived because of its excesses,” he said.

Hasina, whose family was almost wiped out in the coup of 1975, has been the beneficiary of the ordinary Bangladeshi’s refusal to be ruled by an army-backed, puppet civilian government.

Not only did Hasina win with a convincing majority in 2008, she has since then ridden to power in two successive elections. Many in the Opposition have accused her of using the armed forces to win the two elections but there is little doubt that Hasina has, at least till now, kept the men in uniform confined to the barracks.

The Prime Minister’s message on Monday suggested she had managed to establish political control over the military. “She made it clear that only the law enshrined in the Constitution will prevail in Bangladesh, and that’s a strong message,” Chowdhury said.