Exactly one year later, Bangladesh witnessed an even more venomous attack on civil liberties – this time by the protestors who are now in power. They have formed a political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP), with full backing from the administration. They act as the de facto rulers of the country, despite having no track record of winning elections.

According to official reports, at least four Awami League supporters died and nine were injured in Gopalganj. Unofficially, the toll is believed to be higher. Gopalganj is Sheikh Hasina’s electoral constituency, her hometown, the burial ground of her father and Liberation War hero Mujibur Rahman, and the strongest bastion of the Awami League. Officially, the incident began when League supporters allegedly tried to prevent NCP from holding a rally there. The reality, however, appears completely different.

Since the fall of the Hasina government, the NCP and its close ally Jamaat-e-Islami have been targeting Mujibur Rahman’s legacy. In February, they demolished the Dhaka house where Mujibur Rahman had lived and was assassinated in 1975. At their insistence, the Yunus administration criminalised the Awami League, equating it with terror groups, and misused state power to harass its activists. This is in addition to open threats and harassment directed at anyone who dared to raise questions even remotely favoring the League or its ideological anchor, Mujibur Rahman.

Over the last two weeks, NCP leaders, activists, and their support groups made provocative social media remarks, suggesting they intended to destroy Mujibur’s memorial in Gopalganj. They hyped their planned visit, calling it the “March to Gopalganj,” echoing the “March to Dhaka” on August 5, 2024, which had aimed to oust Hasina.

Awami League supporters in Gopalganj were kept in the dark about what was being planned. The heavy police deployment in support of the NCP rally only heightened tensions. An anxious Gopalganj, fearing a state-sponsored attack on their ideological roots, blocked the roads to the rally venue. NCP leaders arrived, escorted by large contingents of police and army.

What happened next is history. People resisted what they perceived as an assault. Police and army opened fire, killing several with impunity. In one video, someone is heard instructing police to aim directly at people. Exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin posted a video on Facebook showing police taking a youth named Ramzan into custody. He was allegedly carrying firearms. Ramzan was later found dead, a bullet piercing his chest—an extrajudicial killing.

The NCP leaders left unharmed, under army protection. But the issue didn’t end there. Law enforcement launched a massive crackdown against Awami supporters in Gopalganj. A former July 2024 protestor, now a minister in charge of rural affairs, posted photos of himself overseeing operations remotely. He vowed to destroy the Awami League’s support base in Gopalganj.

If Obaidul Quader and others were condemned in 2024 for insensitive remarks, yesterday’s events in Gopalganj revealed an even more shameful display of state muscle. Senior NCP leaders took to social media demanding that the administration “teach Gopalganj a lesson,” or else threatened to do it themselves. The Yunus administration’s silence in the face of NCP’s power play is unprecedented in recent Bangladeshi history.

Wednesday’s violence is merely the consequence of a year-long trend. Back in July 2024, mainstream media and intelligentsia were openly critical of the Awami League and Hasina. Social media was overwhelmingly anti-Hasina, with expatriate bloggers leading the charge.

More importantly, Western human rights watchdogs and media outlets were critical of the Hasina government. According to accounts from Jeffrey Sachs and others, the U.S. played a role in engineering regime change in Bangladesh.

Since then, the Western media has gone soft on the Yunus administration. Human rights concerns have faded. Social media is still dominated by the anti-Hasina, anti-Awami League cabal, while Bangladeshi mainstream media has lost its edge. Awami League activists and sympathisers are facing persecution, and 266 journalists are under criminal investigation – many on fictitious murder charges.

Except for a handful of Dhaka-based commentators, mostly using social media, critical voices have vanished. In 2024, opposition to the Awami League was visible on the ground, even if not in Parliament. Today, that space has been lost due to the directionless politics of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – the League’s historical rival.

The BNP, led by a figure in London, was expected to rise after Hasina’s fall. But in the past year, they have shown little political engagement and more involvement in petty extortion. They speak of democracy, yet endorsed NCP dictated ban on the Awami League. They hope for League supporters’ votes against Jamaat in the next election, but do not criticise NCP-Jamaat combine for orchestrating events like Gopalganj. They demanded elections by December, only to backtrack without explanation.

This vassal-like behavior has deprived Bangladesh of its historic balance between Left and Right. The microscopic Left was traditionally closer to the Awami League; BNP represented the center-right. At the far right stood Jamaat and other Islamist groups. With the League out, and NCP positioning itself between BNP and Jamaat, the balance has tilted decisively toward the Islamists – who now expect to make significant gains in the next election.

The Jamaat-Islamist combine is pushing to erase the League and Mujibur Rahman’s legacy from the ideological landscape – a development that may ultimately backfire on the BNP as well.

(Pratim Ranjan Bose is an independent columnist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect nyvoice24.com views.)
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