In Patuakhali’s Kalapara area, 45-year-old Md Idris made a critical comment on Facebook about a local BNP leader. Within days, he was beaten to death.
Across the country, an individual was detained simply for criticizing Prime Minister Tarique Rahman on social media. Eight journalists faced charges under the Cyber Security Act. Two more were arrested for allegedly “offending religious sentiments.”
These are not isolated incidents buried in local news. They were documented in the Human Rights Support Society’s official monthly report for March 2026, published just six weeks into Tarique Rahman’s tenure as Prime Minister. They represent something Bangladesh has seen before — a systematic pattern of repression that bears an uncomfortable and unmistakable resemblance to the very authoritarianism that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party spent fifteen years condemning.
The irony would be almost literary if the consequences weren’t so deadly. The victims have become the perpetrators. The party that called Sheikh Hasina “fascist” has reached for the same tools within weeks of taking power.
The HRSS Documentation: March 2026
The Human Rights Support Society (HRSS) released its monthly report on April 4, 2026, covering political violence in March — barely a month and a half after Tarique Rahman was sworn in as Prime Minister on February 17.
The numbers were stark. The report, published in the Dhaka Tribune, documented not just the usual political clashes that have plagued Bangladesh for decades, but something more organized: the use of state apparatus to silence critics.
“Separately, under different sections of the Cybersecurity Act, eight journalists were charged in two separate cases. One individual was detained for criticizing Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, and two were arrested for allegedly offending religious sentiments.”
— HRSS Report, April 4, 2026
But the most chilling entry was this:
“In Patuakhali’s Kalapara area, Md Idris (45) was beaten to death for posting critical comments on Facebook against BNP leader Zahirul Islam.”
A 45-year-old man was beaten to death for a Facebook post.
Not by state forces. Not by police. By BNP activists — operating with the impunity that comes from knowing your party holds power. The same kind of impunity that allowed BNP activists to commit post-election atrocities against Hindu minorities in 2001 without a single prosecution.
Nine Organizations Sound the Alarm
The international response was swift and unprecedented. On March 19, 2026 — one month into Rahman’s government — nine major human rights organizations wrote a joint letter directly to the Prime Minister demanding immediate action.
The signatories read like a comprehensive roll call of international human rights credibility:
- Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
- Amnesty International
- Article 19
- CIVICUS
- FIDH
- Fortify Rights
- Human Rights Watch
- Kennedy Human Rights Center
- Tech Global Institute
Their demands were specific and urgent: release detained journalists, review cases filed under cybercrime laws, end arbitrary surveillance and censorship, and investigate attacks on major news outlets including Prothom Alo and Daily Star.
That these organizations felt compelled to write such a letter one month into a new government’s tenure — before it had even found its footing on economic policy — is itself a measure of how severe the situation had already become.
For context: these same organizations wrote similar letters about Sheikh Hasina’s government. BNP leaders, at the time, welcomed those letters. They cited them as evidence of international condemnation of Awami League authoritarianism. They called Hasina’s administration illegitimate. They demanded action.
Now the letters are addressed to them.
The Same Playbook, a Different Hand on the Lever
Bangladesh has a word for it: gotanugotikota — following the beaten path. Every government inherits the tools of its predecessor. Every government promises not to use them. Every government uses them.
But the speed and brazenness of BNP’s replication deserves documentation, because the parallels are precise rather than approximate.
Under Hasina (2009–2024):
- Used the Digital Security Act to arrest social media critics
- Targeted journalists for “anti-government” content
- Arrested people for Facebook posts critical of the government or its leaders
- Made arrests without warrants under cybercrime provisions
- Enabled political activists to physically attack opponents with impunity
BNP’s response was unequivocal. Party leaders called Hasina’s government “fascist.” They documented over 300,000 false and fabricated cases filed against their leaders and activists. They demanded international intervention. They held press conferences with rights lawyers. They filed cases in international forums.
Under Rahman (February 2026–present):
- Using the Cyber Security Act to arrest social media critics
- Targeting journalists for “anti-government” content
- Arresting people for Facebook posts critical of the government or its leaders
- Making arrests without warrants under cybercrime provisions
- BNP activists beating a critic to death with apparent impunity
The playbook is not similar. It is identical. Only the party’s name has changed.
The Cyber Security Act: Bangladesh’s Permanent Tool of Repression
No article on Bangladesh’s cycle of political repression is complete without examining the instrument that enables it: the country’s cybercrime legislation.
The story begins in 2006, when the BNP-Jamaat government passed the Information and Communication Technology Act — a law that would eventually be used to arrest over 1,200 people. BNP wrote it. BNP used it.
Awami League inherited it. Sheikh Hasina’s government used it so aggressively that they eventually replaced it with the Digital Security Act in 2018, which expanded the provisions and made more offenses non-bailable. Approximately 2,000 cases were filed under that law. About 1,000 people were arrested.
When international pressure mounted, Hasina’s government nominally “replaced” the Digital Security Act with the Cyber Security Act in 2023. Rights groups immediately noted that the new law retained every problematic provision of its predecessor. The U.S. Embassy stated bluntly that it “continues to criminalize freedom of expression, retains non-bailable offenses, and too easily could be misused to arrest, detain, and silence critics.”
Amnesty International called it “a replication of the ‘draconian’ Digital Security Act.”
The July 2024 uprising created an opportunity to break this cycle. The interim government could have repealed the law entirely. Instead, it made amendments. The core architecture of political censorship survived.
And when Tarique Rahman took power in February 2026, he inherited a fully operational tool for silencing dissent — and he began using it within weeks.
The arrests of eight journalists in the first six weeks of his government are not the beginning of a new story. They are the latest chapter in a story that has been running for two decades, through BNP, Awami League, and BNP again.
The Score-Settling: 1/11 in the Crosshairs
Beyond the general crackdown on critics, there is a more specific and deliberate campaign underway: the systematic targeting of individuals associated with the 1/11 emergency government of 2007.
The arrests began almost immediately after Rahman took power:
- March 23, 2026: Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Masud Uddin Chowdhury arrested — a key 1/11 figure who served as military coordinator during the emergency period
- March 26, 2026: Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Sheikh Mamun Khaled arrested — former Director General of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI)
- March 30, 2026: Mohammad Afzal Naser arrested — with the prosecution openly stating he was detained for being “involved in the arrest and torture of Tarique Rahman” during the emergency period
That last statement deserves to be read again carefully. A man was arrested not for committing a crime today, but for his role in arresting someone who is now Prime Minister. The government stated this openly.
This is not law enforcement. This is personal revenge elevated to state policy.
The 1/11 emergency was declared on January 11, 2007, when a military-backed caretaker government took power amid a constitutional crisis that had brought Bangladesh to the brink of a violent general election. The emergency government arrested hundreds of political figures from both major parties, including Tarique Rahman, and launched an anti-corruption drive that the World Bank, Transparency International, and multiple international observers described as Bangladesh’s best chance at breaking its cycle of political corruption.
Whether 1/11 was justified — whether emergency rule, by definition, can ever be fully justified — is a complex historical debate. This publication has engaged with that debate extensively. But what is happening now is not a debate. It is targeted retribution. And the individuals being arrested are not being charged with the crimes they actually committed or may have committed. They are being punished for having once held Tarique Rahman accountable.
What BNP’s Own History Teaches Us
There is a bitter irony in the pattern of repression that has emerged in 2026, because BNP’s own behavior during its 2001–2006 tenure provides the most damning context for evaluating its current conduct.
When BNP came to power in October 2001, it used its victory to unleash what the Bangladesh High Court’s own judicial commission later described as a wave of terror against minorities, political opponents, and dissidents. The commission documented over 18,000 rapes of Hindu women and girls in the post-election period. Twenty-five ministers and MPs of the BNP-Jamaat government were identified as involved in organizing the violence.
The perpetrators were never punished. Cases were filed and then dropped. Witnesses were intimidated. The state machinery protected those responsible.
Transparency International ranked Bangladesh as the world’s most corrupt country for five consecutive years under that government. RAB, the paramilitary force created under BNP, killed over 600 people in “crossfire” — a Bangladeshi euphemism for extrajudicial execution — without a single prosecution of the forces involved.
After 1/11, BNP spent years arguing that those anti-corruption prosecutions were politically motivated. Some of those arguments had merit. Some did not. But the record of what BNP actually did during 2001–2006 — documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group, U.S. diplomatic cables, and Bangladesh’s own courts — is not a matter of political interpretation.
It is history.
And history is now repeating itself — this time with BNP as the government, reaching for the same tools of repression it once condemned.
The Victim-Perpetrator Cycle: Bangladesh’s Permanent Crisis
Bangladesh has been running this cycle since independence. Governments arrive with promises of accountability. They use that accountability as cover for personal revenge. The institutions built to protect citizens — courts, police, cybercrime tribunals — become instruments of partisan warfare. And the next generation of politicians learns that if they ever come to power, they will need to neutralize the same institutions that their predecessors weaponized against them.
This is not a BNP problem or an Awami League problem. It is a structural problem — a failure of democratic consolidation that has persisted across every government Bangladesh has ever had.
But recognizing the structural nature of the problem does not absolve the current government of responsibility for its choices. Tarique Rahman had options. He had a democratic mandate, international goodwill, and a country that had just demonstrated — through the July 2024 uprising — that its citizens were willing to fight for something better.
He chose to reach for the tools of repression instead.
The death of Md Idris for a Facebook post is not an abstraction. It is a 45-year-old man beaten to death by political activists who understood, correctly, that their party’s hold on power would protect them. That understanding — that violence against critics carries no consequences — is the precise culture of impunity that BNP spent fifteen years condemning under Awami League.
It is now BNP’s culture of impunity.
What International Observers Need to Understand
For international partners, governments, and human rights organizations engaging with Bangladesh, the emerging pattern of the Rahman government carries specific implications.
First: the democratic mandate of the February 2026 election does not confer immunity from scrutiny. A government that wins a free election and then immediately begins arresting critics, beating dissidents to death, and using cybercrime laws to silence journalists is not exercising democratic governance. It is using democratic legitimacy as a shield for authoritarian practice.
Second: the targeting of 1/11 figures is not anti-corruption action. The prosecution openly admitted that at least one arrest was motivated by the arrestee’s past role in holding Tarique Rahman accountable. That is personal revenge using state power. It should be called what it is.
Third: the Cyber Security Act must go. Every human rights organization that has examined this law — from Amnesty International to the U.S. Embassy — has concluded that it is incompatible with freedom of expression. It has been used by every government that has held power since 2006. It will continue to be used for repression until it is repealed.
The nine organizations that wrote to Prime Minister Rahman in March 2026 asked for specific actions. They have yet to receive satisfactory responses. The silence itself is an answer of a kind.
A Pattern, Not an Anomaly
What is happening in Bangladesh today is not a sudden, unexpected deterioration. It is the latest iteration of a pattern that this publication has documented across five years of BNP-Jamaat rule, across fifteen years of Awami League rule, and across the 1/11 emergency period.
The institutions of democratic accountability in Bangladesh — an independent judiciary, a free press, civilian oversight of security forces — have never been fully built. Every government that has come to power has had the same choice: build those institutions and constrain its own power, or use the absence of those institutions to entrench itself.
Every government has made the same choice.
The death of Md Idris for a Facebook post. Eight journalists charged in the first six weeks of a new government. A man arrested for criticizing the Prime Minister online. A retired general detained for having once arrested the man who is now Prime Minister.
These are not stories from 2001. They are not stories from 2010. They are stories from May 2026, three months after a democratic election that Bangladesh’s international partners celebrated as the dawn of a new era.
The new era looks familiar.
The victims of yesterday are the perpetrators of today. And until Bangladesh builds institutions strong enough to break this cycle — institutions that protect the rights of critics regardless of which party holds power — the perpetrators of today will become the victims of tomorrow, and the cycle will continue.
Bangladesh deserves better. Its people have demonstrated, repeatedly and at great personal cost, that they are willing to fight for something better.
The question is whether this government — like every government before it — will listen.
Based on the first one hundred days, the answer does not inspire confidence.
Sources
- Human Rights Support Society (HRSS) Monthly Report, Dhaka Tribune, April 4, 2026
- Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch et al. — Joint Letter to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, March 19, 2026
- Human Rights Watch: “No Place for Criticism: Bangladesh Crackdown on Social Media Commentary” (2018)
- Amnesty International: “Restore freedom of expression in Bangladesh & repeal Cyber Security Act” (2024)
- U.S. Embassy Bangladesh — Statements on Cyber Security Act 2023
- Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index, Bangladesh (2001–2005)
- Bangladesh High Court Judicial Commission on Post-Election Violence (2009, report filed 2011)
- Al Jazeera Media Institute: “Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act is criminalising journalism” (2022)
- International Crisis Group: Bangladesh reports, 2002–2007
- The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune — reporting on 2026 arrests of retired military officials
- WikiLeaks / U.S. Embassy Dhaka cables — Tarique Rahman as “symbol of kleptocratic government” (2005)
Bangladesh Untold documents the history of Bangladesh that powerful interests prefer you not know. Every claim is sourced. Every source is cited.
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