The Awami League has announced a month-long demonstration, including leaflet distribution, protest rallies and processions, blockades, and general strike throughout February demanding the resignation of interim government chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus.
The party will distribute leaflets from February 1 to February 5, protest rallies and processions on February 6 and February 10, road blockade on February 16, and countrywide dawn to dusk general strike on February 18, the AL shared the information in a post on its verified Facebook page Tuesday night.
The AL which was ousted from power amid a student-led mass uprising on August 5, 2024 announced the month-long protest programme at a time when most of the party’s senior leaders are either in jail or in hiding.
Terming the interim government as ‘illegal and unconstitutional’, the AL in the Facebook post claimed that they would protest against the attack on religious and national minorities, skyrocketing prices of essential commodities, arrest of several thousand AL leaders and activists, and murders and enforced disappearances, and demanding the release of all political prisoners.
The Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the AL, in line with the AL programme, also announced a month-long demonstration in February demanding the ‘resignation of Yunus for restoring democracy’.
The programme of the banned student organisation was announced in a press release signed by BCL president Saddam Hossain and general secretary Sheikh Wali Asif Enan on Wednesday.Â
The programmes include leaflet distribution from February 1 to February 5, protest rallies and processions on February 6, protest rally on February 10, roadway, railway, waterway, airway and port blockade on February 16, and dawn to dusk strike on February 18.
The chief adviser’s press secretary, Shafiqul Alam, said on Wednesday that the AL won’t be allowed to hold any programme until ensuring justice for July-August killings.
‘They [AL] will have to offer an apology to the nation for the killings,’ said Shafiqul, addressing a press conference in the Foreign Service Academy in the city on Wednesday.
He said that the interim government represented the people of Bangladesh.
‘We will not allow any attempts to push the country into violence. If killers hold any protest or rally, the country’s people will reply then in a hard way,’ he added.
He said that the AL would have to face trial for mass killings and offer apology for mass killings if the party wanted to continue politics in Bangladesh.
Asked why AL leaders at the grassroots would not be allowed to do politics as the party high-ups were responsible for the killings, he wanted to know whether any of the leaders uttered a sentence saying that they did not accept killings as per Sheikh Hasina’s direction.
‘Not a single person told this. Rather, many of them tell lies and spread rumor,’ Shafiqul added.
Professor Yunus-led interim government took power on August 8, 2024, three days after the ouster of the AL regime and the overthrown prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s fleeing to India on August 5, 2024.
According to the latest government data, 834 people were killed in the July-August uprising.
AL came to power in 2009 through a general election.
In the 2014 general election, the AL won and formed government again but the election was criticised as a farcical election as 153 AL candidates won uncontested and major political parties including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party did not join the polls.
In 2018, the AL won the general elections again amid allegations of overnight rigging and ballot stuffing ahead of the polls.
In 2024, the AL won once another in a rigged general election, also marred by low turnout and boycott by major opposition political parties, including the BNP.
