A ban on the Awami League, which was ousted in a mass uprising nine months ago, has become a popular demand in Bangladesh’s politics. Last week, the newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP) held a rally in downtown Dhaka demanding “a trial of Awami League, cancelling its registration and ban[ning] all its political activities” for trying to brutally suppress the Gen-Z revolution.
The demand has got some traction among the masses, and there are reasons behind it, too. According to the United Nations, around 1,400 people were killed between July 1 and August 15 last year, of which “as many as 12-13 percent” were children. “The vast majority” of those killed “were shot by Bangladesh’s security forces.”
There is no denying that the Awami League government under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina oversaw this massacre, which did not even spare a 6-year-old child who was playing on the roof of her house.
The interim government of Dr. Muhammad Yunus has understandably set up a tribunal to hand down justice to those who, for over a decade, denied people the right to vote, illegally detained individuals, and still do not have an iota of remorse in them.
In a recently made audio call, Hasina said that as 227 cases have been filed against her, she’s obtained “a license to kill 227 people.” The voice has been verified through forensic analysis, according to the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) formed by the government.
The work of the tribunal should have been seen in a positive light. After all, the first step toward the establishment of the rule of law is to bring accountability and justice to society.
However, this has not been the case with the Yunus administration, and the picture is far from rosy.
One Step Forward, a Few Steps Back
Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, appointed Advocate Tajul Islam as the chief prosecutor of the ICT. Islam will prosecute Hasina and her cronies. This is the same lawyer who defended Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leaders accused of crimes against humanity in 1971 in the ICT that Hasina set up over a decade ago.
Not surprisingly, the ICT webpage, which used to have all the verdicts against JI leaders and the proceedings of the cases against them, is no longer accessible.
During Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971, the role of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamist political party, was deeply anti-people and still remains a subject of intense historical and political trauma. Several senior leaders and members of JI actively opposed the independence of Bangladesh, aligning themselves ideologically and militarily with the West Pakistani regime, and many of the party members collaborated with the Pakistani military apparatus during the Liberation War.
Notably, JI-affiliated individuals joined various paramilitary organizations such as the Razakars, Al-Badr, and Al-Shams, which were formed under the patronage of the occupation forces. These paramilitary groups are widely accused of perpetrating heinous crimes, including mass killings, rape, and systematic targeting of civilians — atrocities that have left indelible scars on the collective memory of the Bangladeshi nation. So much so that in the national consciousness of Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami has become synonymous with traitors.
Take the word “razakar.” Originally a Urdu word meaning “volunteer,” it referred to a paramilitary auxiliary force populated by JI and like-minded groups during the war. In contemporary Bangladesh, however, the word “razakar” has evolved into a pejorative term, interchangeable with the word “traitor.”
There is no denying that the tribunal process run by Hasina to try JI leaders for war crimes was deeply controversial. Human Rights Watch criticized the trials as being procedurally flawed and lacking in adherence to international legal standards. The trials were marred by the disappearance of a key witness, raising concerns of state interference, and, finally, the credibility of the judiciary came into question when the chief justice publicly criticized some verdicts.
The flawed and unjust path that Hasina took to use the ICT to hang the JI leaders doesn’t mean that Yunus has to take the same route to try Awami League leaders.
The appointment of Advocate Tajul Islam and hordes of present and former JI sympathizers in the prosecution team tells us that the Yunus administration has vengeance — not justice — in mind.
Jamaat-e-Islami: Awami League’s Terrible Twin
The conduct and rhetoric of Jamaat-e-Islami in post-independence Bangladesh have frequently been characterized by a distinct sense of arrogance and denial. JI has avoided any substantive acknowledgment or accountability for its indefensible role during the 1971 Liberation War.
It has consistently failed to explain why a significant number of its leaders and members aligned themselves with the occupation army — a force that engaged in one of the most brutal campaigns of genocide in South Asian history. This is even more paradoxical since the victims of these atrocities were predominantly Bengali Muslims, the very people JI claimed to represent through its Islamist ideology. Moreover, the party has never attempted to reconcile how such acts of inhumanity — including the well-documented mass rape of Bangladeshi women — could be justified under any ethical or theological framework.
We see the same spectrum of arrogance in the Awami League leaders in 2025 when they refuse to take responsibility for the murder of innocent, unarmed civilians on the streets of Bangladesh.
The Way Forward for Bangladesh
It is important that both JI and the Awami League face trial for the crimes they committed against the people of Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s Supreme Court declared JI’s registration with the Election Commission cancelled in 2023, and there is no reason why it should be allowed to participate in the electoral process of a country that it has ideologically and militarily opposed. In that spirit, the party should be tried, and, if found guilty, be banned.
The Awami League must also face trial in a fair court of law, and before their formal banning, there is no legal ground that allows the Yunus government to prevent the party from holding rallies and taking out processions in the country.
The blanket arrests of members of the Awami League by the Yunus government is similar to how Hasina treated the opposition during her despotic rule. In the last few years of her term in office, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and JI were not officially banned. Yet, these parties weren’t allowed to hold any major political events. At the end of the day, such handling of a party does not bode well for democracy.
The choice before Yunus is as clear as daylight — ban the Awami League in a legal process or allow it to carry out its political activities the way others do.
There are ample ways Awami League can be banned — through an executive order, a trial or de-registration from the Election Commission. But the democratic way of handling this is through a fair trial in a court where the prosecution team will not be driven by one form of vengeance or the other.
As the election date is looming on the horizon, to expedite the process, the trial of JI and its leaders can proceed simultaneously with the trial of their Awami League counterparts. The onus will be on the prosecution to prove the guilt of the leaders of JI and the Awami League before a court that is not biased towards or against any political ideology.
The chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, Dr. Shafiqur Rahman, was contacted for his comment. He said he would reply but never did, despite several reminders.