Deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday issued a stern warning against threats to ban her age-old Awami League, saying that the party is not a “parasite” or did not emerge with floodwaters.
“Their (the interim government) audacity astonishes me,” she said, in a virtual address to party workers and supporters from India, where she now lives after fleeing Bangladesh in August last year after her nearly 16-year-long Awami League government was toppled in a student-led uprising steered by Students Against Discrimination (SAD).
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, who was in a protracted row with the past regime for obscure reasons, flew from Paris three days later and assumed the charge of an interim government as the nominee of the SAD, which demanded the ban on Awami League.
A part of SAD leadership recently floated a political outfit called National Citizen Party (NCP), visibly with blessings of Yunus, whose administration by now disbanded Awami League's student wing Chhatra League.
Hasina said the Awami League was established in 1948 in the then Pakistan to wage a campaign to ensure people rights in the then East Pakistan, the independence struggle and eventually led to the 1971 Liberation War under stewardship of its founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
“The name of the country where they now live is also given by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib. He had united the people of Bengal using Awami League's organisational structure and made the country independent, nobody must forget this fact,” she said.
Hasina, 77, questioned what rights those demanding the ban have and said Yunus himself was a fascist because of his ruthless actions on workers, teachers, students and others who were trying to wage a campaign for their rightful demands.
The demand for Awami League's ban, however, did not get any positive response from its arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of ex-premier Khaleda Zia and most other political groups.
But the NCP and some extreme right-wing groups vowed to disband it and “bury” the country's original 1972 Constitution calling it a “Mujibist charter”.
The SAD initially waged a campaign for reforms in quota system for government jobs in July last year which in early August turned to be movement for toppling the regime as the security forces came down heavily on the protesters after they refused to halt street protests and await a “positive” Supreme Court decision on their demand.
According to a UN rights office report, some 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15, 2024 in actions by police and pro-government political elements like Chhatra League and later in retaliatory violence on law enforcement personnel and people linked to the past regime.
“But we have to make the calculation now, how many people were killed in their list of martyrs and how many beyond that list they have killed among Awami League activists, policemen, members of minority community, workers, students and teachers,” Hasina said.
She said the calculation would find that the list on the other side was heavier.
Hasina said while her government was in power, no student belonging to any opposition camp like Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student front of far-right Jamaat-e-Islami or BNP's student wing Chhatra Dal was debarred from carrying their pursuit for education and “nobody can deny it”.
“Today, if someone is found to have any link to Chhatra League, his or her certificate is being cancelled while they are not being allowed to study. So, who is the autocrat, fascist and who should be banned in this country,” she said.
The ex-premier came down heavily on Yunus calling him a usurper and saying he did not have any constitutional basis or peoples mandate to run the country while he assumed power under a “meticulous design” with the money supplied from overseas, misleading ordinary students and people.
“They at that time actually did not realise the design. Now they must have understood and I have nothing (grudge) against them,” she said.
Hasina added: “But those who have implemented the design receiving Yunus's money, their trial will be held in Bangladesh's soil one day, definitely. And how Yunus will get rid of his misdeed... His real face is now unmasked before the people of the world.”
She said Yunus lost his “cute image” before the people all over as they realised what a “fraud, corrupt, how big a militant he is”.
“He actually did not come to power through any mass movement, rather through a tricky plan... what value or legitimacy his orders carry?... Does Yunus or his advisory council have any legitimacy,” Hasina said.
The former premier also blasted the NCP leaders, without mentioning them for demanding ban on her party saying “their audacity astounds me”.
“They must not think, I have left abandoning everything. In line with the constitution as the voted representative of the people and elected nominee of parliament members, I am the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. There is no legitimacy of their power,” she said.
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