Bangladesh: Awami League slams Yunus for using security operations as ‘weapons of repression’

Dhaka, Sep 6 (IANS) Bangladesh’s Awami League on Saturday accused the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of turning “security operations” into instruments of repression in the country. The party alleged that these operations are shielding convicted killers and extremist militants rather than safeguarding the citizens of Bangladesh.

The message, it said, is clear that the interim government’s priority is not justice or public safety, but its own survival.

According to the Awami League, in most functioning democracies across the globe, a police raid or a national “red alert” signals a response to genuine threats — terrorists on the move, extremist networks to be dismantled, civilians to be protected. However, in Bangladesh, those same words have been weaponised over the past 11 months since Yunus came to power after the fall of the democratically-elected government led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

“When Yunus’s government declares a red alert, it is less about capturing terrorists than about insulating them from accountability. Acquittals, case withdrawals, and backroom deals replace due process. Meanwhile, the same state machinery unleashes violent crackdowns on civic protests, opposition movements, and even ordinary citizens daring to raise their voices. Peaceful demonstrators are branded as ‘threats’ while men with blood on their hands walk free. The state’s ‘protector’ has become its chief predator,” the Awami League stated.

Highlighting the abuse of Bangladesh’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act under Yunus regime, the party claimed that the law once envisioned as a tool against cybercrime is now wielded to silence dissent.

It stated that opposition leaders are dragged into courts on fabricated charges, partisan witnesses are paraded before compliant judges, while raids, arrests, and prosecutions unfold not as matters of justice but as spectacles of political revenge.

The Awami League emphasised that this is not the rule of law but a rule by law, hollowed out and repurposed as a weapon against the very people it was meant to protect.

“The consequences are devastating. Extremist groups — whose public massacres and brutal street killings once drew international alarm — now operate with disturbing impunity. Meanwhile, citizens face arbitrary arrest, torture, and harassment for little more than demanding democracy. It is a grotesque inversion of the state’s purpose: protection for militants, persecution for citizens,” the party stated.

Asserting that Bangladesh is now under “siege”, the party said, the security forces that once served as guardians of public safety now operate as enforcers of a “paranoid regime”.

Under the Yunus regime in Bangladesh, the party noted that dissent invites repression and protest carries the risk of life.

–IANS

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