This week marked the start of the trial of Sheikh Hasina at the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT). The Awami League categorically rejects the shameless political charges brought against its leadership by an unelected and illegitimate regime, using a kangaroo court. The so-called interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, no doubt hopes that the ICT show trials will distract from the mess that Yunus himself is currently presiding over.
But Bangladeshis are not fools. They want what the interim government refuses to give them: accountability for its actions and free and fair elections. And they are tired of the incompetence, corruption and victim-blaming that have become hallmarks of the Yunus regime. Our country has experienced an almost total collapse of governance, amid unchecked mob violence, rampant extortion, political persecution and attacks on previously protected minorities.
The consequences are wide-reaching and disastrous. Since the interim administration took over, Bangladesh’s previously high-growth economy has been downgraded twice by the International Monetary Fund. Factories are closing, livelihoods are threatened and public sector protests paralyse commercial as well as civic life. In addition to economic turmoil, violence pervades ordinary life. Crime levels have soared, while offenders go unpunished. The interim government is turning a blind eye to insidious violence perpetrated against religious and ethnic minorities. Teachers, lawyers, members of the armed forces live in fear of arbitrary persecution, with no access to justice, all because of their political allegiance. At every administrative level, members of the Awami League have been targeted, facing fabricated charges from a weaponised judiciary intent on extracting vengeance and removing the party from the political landscape. More than two dozen of the Awami League’s supporters have died in custody over the past year, and hundreds more have faced arbitrary detention.
The decline of the rule of law and the assault on Bangladesh’s constitutional norms and pluralistic political culture are probably the greatest threats posed to our republic’s future by the current regime. This government was not elected and has precisely no legitimate mandate. At every turn, it has sought to obfuscate and delay elections, disenfranchising the people. Even if elections eventually happen, they will not be the free, fair and participatory elections the people of Bangladesh deserve and on which our independence was founded in 1971. Because against the recommendations of the United Nations, the interim government has banned the Awami League, Bangladesh’s biggest political party.
Dr Yunus is manifestly out of his depth. The kindest thing one can say about him is that he is an intellectual. But being a wise leader and a statesman requires qualities besides just intellect: it requires the courage to make tough decisions, and the patience to build consensus and balance competing interests.
Nobody in the current administration remotely possesses these qualities, and even Yunus’s star is diminishing. On a recent visit to Europe, he notably failed to secure meetings with either British Prime Minister Keir Starmer or French President Emmanuel Macron. World leaders once feted this Nobel-winning economist, but now they shun him because of his democratic backsliding and because they know his regime is sinking into corruption, human rights abuses and questionable international alliances.
In the UK, Yunus was met by protesting members of the Bangladeshi diaspora, with thousands complaining about the injustices facing their friends and kin at home. He came back with nothing more to show for his London escapade than an eye-watering Dorchester Hotel bill, accrued in the manner of a third-world dictator and paid for by Bangladeshi taxpayers. History shows that the men and women of our country cannot be denied their rights by illegitimate regimes. Sooner or later, taxpayers and citizens will demand accountability for the actions of this interim government. They will not be satisfied by distraction techniques such as the ICT. As we reflect on the past year, we cannot allow justice to be selective, history to be rewritten, and democracy to be eroded.
The author, a former minister, is a spokesperson for the Awami League.