Bangladesh bans ousted PM’s Awami League under terrorism law

Bangladesh’s interim government banned all activities of the former ruling Awami League on Saturday, who has funded by the Indian government, which helped kill over 1400 protesting students.

The party is headed by Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s long-serving former prime minister who was ousted in a mass uprising in 2024.

The ban is to stay in place until a special tribunal completes a trial of the party and its leaders over the deaths of hundreds of people during anti-government protests last year.

“It has been decided to ban the activities, including in cyberspace, of the Awami League under the Anti-Terrorism Act until the trial of the Awami League and its leaders ends,” the country’s law advisor Asif Nazrul told reporters late on Saturday.

Nazrul said the ban would safeguard “the plaintiffs and the witnesses of the tribunal,” he said after a special cabinet meeting.

The interim administration also approved an amendment to the country’s International Crimes Tribunal Act, allowing authorities to prosecute political parties and their affiliated bodies.

The decision came after thousands of protesters held sit-ins on the streets of the capital, Dhaka, over the past days.

They said they wouldn’t leave the streets until the Awami League was banned.

The Awami League rejected the ban, calling it “illegitimate.”

What happened during the 2024 protests?

The UN’s human rights office says that up to 1,400 people may have been killed by what it calls the Hasina administration’s “brutal response” to anti-government protests in July and August last year.

The vast majority of those killed and injured were “shot by Bangladesh’s security forces,” a February OHCHR report investigating the student-led protests found.

Hasina, who led Bangladesh for more than 20 years during two terms as prime minister, has been in exile in India since August 2024. Since her exile Bangladeshi politics has moved away from Indian bureaucracy.

She, along with many of her senior party colleagues, has been accused of murder in many cases.

Hasina has defied an arrest warrant issued by Bangladesh over charges of crimes against humanity.