Political Persecution Under New Management: The Party That Cried Witch Hunt Is Running One
In twenty years of opposition, BNP documented 142,983 cases filed against its leaders and called every single one “false and harassing.” In twenty months of a new political era, the Bangladesh Awami League faces over 100,000. The country’s oldest party has been banned under anti-terrorism law. A twenty-year-old student was arrested for a Facebook caption. A cartoonist was beaten in a police interrogation room over a drawing. Three United Nations special rapporteurs sent a formal letter of alarm. The fourth article in our series on whether BNP 2026 is just BAL 2.0 — and this time, the evidence is in BNP’s own words.
There is a specific number that every BNP member knows by heart. From 2007 to January 2025, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party counted 142,983 cases filed against its leaders and activists under successive Awami League-aligned administrations. BNP cited this figure in parliament, in press conferences, in international lobbying documents, in appeals to human rights organizations, in statements to foreign governments. The cases, BNP insisted, were “false and harassing” — instruments of political repression dressed up as law enforcement, designed not to deliver justice but to drain, demoralize, and destroy the opposition.
BNP was right. Mass case-filing as a tool of political persecution is a real phenomenon in Bangladesh. It has been documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and every credible observer of the country’s political culture. When a government files thousands of cases against opposition figures, cycles activists through arrests and bail hearings, and uses the legal apparatus to impose cost and fear rather than to prosecute genuine crimes, that is persecution — regardless of what party does it and regardless of what crimes the targets are accused of committing.
BNP knew this. They said so, repeatedly, for fifteen years.
Which makes what is happening now very difficult to explain.
The Bangladesh Awami League, whose activities have been banned under an anti-terrorism law passed by BNP’s parliamentary majority, claims that in twenty months following the August 2024 political transition, more than 100,000 cases have been filed against its leaders and activists. More than 650 cases have been filed against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina alone. Three United Nations special rapporteurs formally warned that the measures being applied may constitute “unnecessary and disproportionate restrictions” on fundamental rights. 101 Bangladeshi journalists issued a joint statement calling the AL ban “contrary to democratic practice.” A former Speaker of Parliament was arrested. A college student was jailed for a Facebook caption calling a BNP parliamentarian a “pothead.” A digital marketing consultant was beaten in police custody for sharing a cartoon.
142,983 cases in twenty years. Over 100,000 cases in twenty months.
BNP built its entire political identity on the injustice of the first number. They have not explained the second.
The Number That Changed
The statistics come from BNP’s own data, acknowledged in parliament. On April 1, 2026, Law Minister Md Asaduzzaman confirmed to a member of parliament that from 2007 to January 2025, 142,983 cases had been filed against BNP leaders and activists. Of those, 23,865 had been withdrawn, and a six-member committee was actively working to withdraw more.
BNP described every one of those 142,983 cases as “politically motivated.” The party never acknowledged that any of its leaders might have had a legitimate case to answer. The number was not evidence of crime; it was evidence of persecution. That was the official BNP position for eighteen years.
The Awami League, speaking from exile and hiding, now makes the same claim about the cases against it — and has made it with comparable numbers. The party’s Joint General Secretary AFM Bahauddin Nasim, speaking from abroad, alleged over 500,000 cases total against party members at all levels, over 400,000 arrests, over 2,000 activists killed, and around 10,000 missing.
Police have disputed these figures, calling the highest estimates “unrealistic.” The precise numbers are genuinely difficult to verify: the government does not maintain centralized statistics on cases filed against political party members, the Law Minister confirmed. What is documented is that the scale is enormous. Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2026, noted that “thousands” had been arrested on political grounds during the interim period with bail routinely denied. The human rights organization HRSS documented at least 195 people killed in 1,411 incidents of political violence between August 2024 and January 2026.
The pattern is familiar because it is the same pattern BNP spent two decades condemning. The names have changed. The machinery has not.
The Ban That Should Not Exist in a Democracy
On April 9, 2026, Bangladesh’s parliament passed the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Act 2026, giving permanent statutory basis to a ban on the activities of the Bangladesh Awami League. The ban had been imposed by the interim government in May 2025 through ordinance; BNP’s parliamentary majority made it law.
The Awami League is not a fringe organization. It was founded in 1949. It led Bangladesh’s Liberation War. It has governed the country across multiple democratic periods. It has tens of millions of members. It received the support of a substantial portion of the Bangladeshi electorate through multiple elections.
Under the new law, all AL activities are prohibited — political meetings, publications, media advocacy, participation in elections — until tribunal proceedings against its leaders are complete. The Election Commission has cancelled its registration. An entire political party, with roots in the independence movement of the country itself, has been removed from legal political existence through counter-terrorism legislation.
The opposition leader in parliament, Shafiqur Rahman of Jamaat-e-Islami, objected — noting that he and his party had been on the receiving end of a similar ban imposed by the AL government just days before it fell. “We received a comparative sheet only three-four minutes ago,” he said. “This law is certainly a sensitive one.” His concern was procedural; the speaker overruled him.
Three United Nations special rapporteurs had already sent a formal communication to Bangladesh on December 29, 2025, warning that the measures may have imposed “unnecessary and disproportionate restrictions” on freedom of association, peaceful assembly, and the right to a fair trial. The letter, signed by Ben Saul (Special Rapporteur on human rights while countering terrorism), Matthew Gillett (Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), and Margaret Satterthwaite (Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers), asked Bangladesh ten specific questions — including what “specific, current and concrete risks” justified a party-wide ban, how long restrictions would last, and what safeguards existed for political pluralism ahead of elections.
The response was public within sixty days, as required. The ban became law five months later.
“Banning a political party is among the most serious restrictions on freedom of association and should be used only in exceptional circumstances… using counter-terrorism powers to suppress a political party rather than addressing specific and credible threats of violence [is a serious concern].”
— UN Special Rapporteurs’ formal communication, December 29, 2025
101 Bangladeshi journalists issued a public statement after the law passed:
“The foundation of democracy lies in freedom of expression, political pluralism, and the people’s right to form opinions freely. Banning the activities of any political party through administrative or legal processes is contrary to democratic practice and may set a dangerous precedent for future political culture.”
— Statement of 101 journalists, April 2026
For context: BNP spent years calling for the repeal of the AL’s ban on Jamaat-e-Islami. It argued that banning political parties was undemocratic and authoritarian. BNP is now the party that has made a ban permanent through its own legislation.
The Cartoon Cases: A Specific Kind of Repression
In August 2024, Tarique Rahman made a gesture that earned him rare respect from Bangladesh’s liberal and progressive communities. He shared a satirical cartoon of himself on Facebook — drawn by cartoonist Mehedi Haque — and posted a message to accompany it.
“I am deeply gratified that the freedom to draw political cartoons has been restored in Bangladesh.”
— Tarique Rahman, August 2024
He recalled that before 2006, cartoonists like Shishir Bhattacharjee had freely caricatured him and his mother. He contrasted that openness with the Awami League era, when artists like Ahmed Kabir Kishore faced enforced disappearance, torture, and imprisonment for their work. The message was clear: under a BNP-led government, political satire would be welcome. Even satire of Tarique himself.
On the night of April 17, 2026, Detective Branch officers arrived at the home of AM Hasan Nasim, a digital marketing consultant in Dhaka’s Agargaon area. No warrant was shown. After his devices were searched, he was taken to the DB office for questioning about a cartoon published on a Facebook page called Pathorghata.com. The cartoon showed Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni serving whales and sharks to three political figures — PM Tarique Rahman, Opposition Leader Shafiqur Rahman, and NCP lawmaker Nahid Islam. The image was a direct reference to Moni’s own remark in parliament, nine days earlier, about serving such items at lunch.
Nasim denied running the page. During interrogation, he alleged that Joint Police Commissioner Mohammad Nasirul Islam ordered officers to beat him after he denied involvement, and that an Additional Deputy Commissioner struck him repeatedly with a stick — one blow aggravating an existing back condition.
On April 18, he was charged under Sections 25 and 27 of the Cyber Security Ordinance 2025. Section 25 addresses sexual harassment or blackmail. Section 27 concerns threats to state security or sovereignty. The cartoon contained neither sexual content nor any threat to state security. Legal observers noted that the case also violated Section 40(1) of the same ordinance, which restricts who may file such complaints — the complainant, Nazrul Islam, had no authorization from anyone depicted in the cartoon.
None of this prevented the arrest. None of this secured prompt bail. It was only after four days in jail — and significant public outcry — that a court granted Nasim bail on a bond of Tk 1,000.
Hasnat Abdullah, an NCP member of parliament and one of the frontliners of the July uprising, stood up in parliament and called it out directly. He compared the arrest to “Hasina-era practice.” He said that what was being done was exactly what BNP had condemned for fifteen years.
He was right. And he was in parliament, not in jail, which is the only meaningful distinction between his situation and what would have happened under the previous government.
The Student, The Facebook Caption, The Arrest
On April 25, 2026, police from Debiganj Police Station arrested Nishad Islam. He was twenty years old. He was in twelfth grade.
His crime: he had shared a video of a state minister speaking in parliament, with a caption that read, in rough translation: “This is what happens when you go to Parliament after smoking weed. And this pothead is our area’s MP.”
The FIR alleged the video had been “doctored using artificial intelligence.” The complaint was filed by Mohammad Abdus Salam, a local BNP youth-wing leader, who said the post had damaged his standing as a party activist. Nishad was not accused of threatening anyone. He was not accused of publishing false information about an individual. He wrote a rude caption about a politician.
His brother, Sohel Islam, told journalists: “They could have just told us — warned him. Instead they went straight to filing a case. That’s what I condemn.”
Nishad was released on bail the next day. Three days earlier, another man in the same jurisdiction — Shakil Ahmed — had been arrested over a different post: a caption about the prime minister’s daughter alongside a composite image. His complaint was also filed by a BNP volunteer-wing leader. Shakil remained in detention for nearly a month before being granted bail.
The arrests drew comment from Sabhanaz Rashid Diya of the Tech Global Institute, who reviewed both posts and concluded that neither met the constitutional or statutory threshold for criminal restriction. “Any restriction on expression must be reasonable and must be based on specific grounds — state security, public order, decency, morality or defamation. Based on the information available to us, this content does not meet any of those standards.”
Human Rights Watch’s Meenakshi Ganguly was direct: “Free speech requires a society to tolerate peaceful expression of views, even those that they find disagreeable.”
Amnesty International’s Rehab Mahamoor noted that “insult is not a reason to restrict freedom of expression” and that public figures must tolerate more criticism than private citizens. “Imprisonment is no answer to alleged defamation.”
What BNP Said vs. What BNP Does
This pattern has a specific texture that makes it distinct from the usual argument about political hypocrisy. BNP did not merely promise in vague terms that things would be different. They made specific, documented, repeated promises about the exact practices they are now engaged in.
On the Cyber Security Act: BNP, throughout the AL era, was a consistent critic of the Digital Security Act and its successors, documenting cases of journalists and activists arrested under its provisions, calling for its repeal. In August 2024, Tarique explicitly invoked the case of cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore — subjected to enforced disappearance and torture for his drawings — as an example of what the new Bangladesh would leave behind. The interim government repealed the Cyber Security Act but replaced it with a Cyber Security Ordinance 2025 that retained most of its broad provisions. The BNP government inherited and has deployed this ordinance against cartoonists and students.
On mass case filing: BNP spent years presenting the 142,983 cases filed against its members as definitive proof that the AL was not a democratic party. The implicit argument was that no legitimate government prosecutes its political opponents in this volume. Over 100,000 cases in twenty months suggests BNP’s government has no principled objection to the practice — only to being its target.
On banning political parties: BNP’s position for fifteen years was that the AL’s ban on Jamaat-e-Islami was undemocratic. The party never publicly supported the use of counter-terrorism law against political organizations. It is now the party that has codified a ban on the AL into permanent statute.
On judicial independence: As documented in our previous article on institutional capture, BNP’s parliament repealed the Supreme Court Secretariat Ordinance and the Supreme Court Judges Appointment Ordinance — reforms BNP had explicitly endorsed — leaving the judiciary once again available as an instrument of executive management. BNP’s government then began using the International Crimes Tribunal, a court whose integrity it had attacked for years while AL wielded it, to pursue cases involving BNP’s own political opponents.
On freedom of expression: Tarique Rahman said in August 2024 that freedom to draw political cartoons had been “restored.” In April 2026, a man was beaten in police custody for sharing one.
The Historical Baseline
It is worth being precise about what political persecution looked like during BNP’s 2001–2006 government, because the comparison is instructive and because it is documented by the same international organizations now raising alarms about the current period.
Human Rights Watch documented systematic use of police and paramilitary forces to harass, detain, and torture political opponents. Operation Clean Heart (2002–2003) resulted in 44 deaths in custody. The Rapid Action Battalion, established under BNP, killed over 600 people in what authorities called “crossfires” — extrajudicial executions that RAB’s own personnel later admitted were deliberate. When the opposition mounted peaceful protests, BNP deployed force. When journalists reported on abuses, the government leaned on editors and proprietors. When courts inconveniently ruled against the government, BNP amended the constitution to change the outcomes it didn’t like.
That is the baseline from which BNP came into the 2009–2024 opposition period claiming persecution. The party that created RAB, presided over 44 custody deaths, and extended the Chief Justice’s retirement age to manipulate the caretaker process argued for fifteen years that it was the victim.
The question Bangladesh faces in 2026 is not whether the current government’s actions rise to the level of BNP’s 2001–2006 record. It is whether the trajectory is in the direction of that record — whether the early months of mass cases, cartoon arrests, party bans, and custody deaths represent an aberration or an acceleration.
The HRSS has already documented 39 custodial deaths in three months. That is not an immaterial number. In the AL era, each custody death was a documented data point in the case against the government. The same standard applies now.
The Voice in Parliament Nobody Expected
One of the genuine surprises of BNP’s first months in government has been the existence of voices inside Bangladesh’s institutions willing to name what is happening.
Hasnat Abdullah, MP, stood in parliament and compared the arrest of a cartoonist to “Hasina-era practice.” He said explicitly that BNP’s promises required demonstration through action, not rhetoric. He said, in the chamber of the parliament BNP controls with a two-thirds majority: “We want space to express disagreement, criticise even the PM while standing in parliament.”
Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni — the very official whose cartoon triggered Hasan Nasim’s arrest — said publicly that if the matter was solely about criticizing him through a drawing, the person should be released.
These are not insignificant moments. They suggest that even within BNP’s own coalition there is awareness that what is happening is wrong, and some willingness to say so. What they have not produced is concrete institutional correction: Nasim was in jail for four days; the case against him remains active; the arrests of students and social media users for criticizing political figures have continued.
Intentions acknowledged in parliamentary speeches do not release people from prison. Institutional reform does.
The Math and What It Means
Here is the mathematics of the situation, stripped of all narrative framing.
BNP documented 142,983 cases against its leaders over eighteen years and called it persecution. At that rate, it was roughly 7,944 cases per year. The Awami League claims it has faced over 100,000 cases in twenty months — roughly 60,000 per year. Whatever the precise figures, the documented trend is the same in kind and greater in speed.
BNP argued that a party which files mass cases against its political opponents is not operating within a democratic framework. That argument does not become incorrect when it is BNP filing the cases.
A political party banned under anti-terrorism law cannot participate in elections, cannot organize, cannot publish, cannot hold meetings. BNP was never subjected to this measure, even at the height of its persecution under AL. The Awami League’s situation is structurally more severe than anything BNP experienced in opposition — and it is happening under a government built on the promise of democratic restoration.
None of this is a defense of the Awami League’s own record, which Bangladesh Untold has documented in detail. The party that presided over RAB’s extrajudicial killings, the Digital Security Act, the rigging of elections, and the Aynaghar detention facility does not deserve a pass on its crimes. It deserves fair trials before independent courts — exactly what the UN special rapporteurs requested.
What it is getting, instead, is 650 cases against one person, a ban under counter-terrorism law, and a legal framework that makes political participation impossible while its leaders are in prison, in exile, or in hiding.
That is not accountability. That is political persecution. And the party running it spent twenty years telling Bangladesh that political persecution is wrong.
The Pattern Holds
Bangladesh Untold has now published four articles in this series examining whether BNP 2026 replicates the authoritarian patterns it condemned under Awami League rule. Across four articles, covering political violence against critics, press freedom, institutional capture, and political persecution, the finding is the same.
The pattern holds.
This does not mean BNP and AL are identical. It does not mean the July 2024 uprising was wrong. It does not mean Tarique Rahman’s government is as far along the road to authoritarianism as the AL government it replaced. It means that the structural incentives of power in Bangladesh — the temptation to use state institutions for political management, to silence critics, to dismantle independent oversight, to burden opponents with legal harassment — operate on every party that holds office. BNP is not immune. Three months of evidence suggests it is not even trying to be.
BNP’s own words are the most effective measure of its failure. Not our words. Not the UN’s words. Not Human Rights Watch’s. BNP’s.
Tarique Rahman said freedom of political cartoons had been restored. A cartoonist was beaten in custody for drawing one.
BNP said 142,983 cases against its leaders proved persecution. Over 100,000 cases have been filed against AL in twenty months.
BNP said banning Jamaat-e-Islami was undemocratic. BNP has now banned the Awami League by statute.
BNP said it would break the cycle. The cycle is unbroken.
Bangladesh has seen this before. The question is whether it will keep seeing it — and whether the people who built their political careers on condemning it will find any reason to stop doing it now that the power to do it is theirs.
Bangladesh Untold is a source-backed documentation project covering Bangladesh’s modern political history. All claims in this article are drawn from verified reports by The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, Netra News, BD-Voice, Human Rights Support Society (HRSS), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and parliamentary records. This is the fourth article in Series 9: BNP 2026 = BAL 2.0?
Leave a Reply