Bangladesh bans Awami League activities after tribunal pressure
Bangladesh’s interim government has banned the Awami League’s activities while it prepares a tribunal trial tied to last year’s anti-government uprising.
2025-05-10 saw Bangladesh’s interim government take its toughest step yet against the party of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Officials banned all activities of the Awami League, moving the country’s most important former ruling party into legal limbo while a special tribunal prepares a case tied to last year’s mass uprising. AP reported that the decision was made by the cabinet led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus and was framed as a national-security measure.
The government said the ban applies online and offline under the Anti-Terrorism Act and will remain in place until the tribunal completes its work on allegations tied to the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the anti-government uprising in July and August last year. Law affairs adviser Asif Nazrul said the decision was intended to protect national security, sovereignty and the safety of activists, plaintiffs and witnesses connected to the tribunal. That language shows the state is pairing criminal law with political containment.
Hasina, who was ousted in the uprising, has been in exile in India since Aug. 5. Her party and many senior colleagues have already faced murder accusations, and AP noted that the U.N. human rights office said in February that up to 1,400 people may have been killed during three weeks of anti-Hasina protests. The scale of that violence explains why the interim government is treating the matter as both a legal reckoning and a legitimacy crisis.
The ban was also a response to street pressure. Thousands of protesters, including supporters of a student-led political party and members of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, had gathered in Dhaka and demanded that the Awami League be banned by Saturday night. The government’s move therefore reflects a mix of judicial process, street mobilization and a post-uprising struggle over who gets to shape Bangladesh’s next political order.
The decision could reshape the country’s transition. The Awami League ruled Bangladesh for years and still has deep organizational roots. Removing it from active politics is not simply a punishment for a single episode; it is an attempt to redraw the field after the fall of Hasina’s government. Whether that produces accountability or further polarization will depend on how the tribunal proceeds and whether the ban survives legal and political challenges. For now, the message from Dhaka is that the old ruling party is being kept out until the state finishes its case against it.
