Dhaka, Sep 26 Bangladesh police on Saturday detained dozens of people suspected of being activists of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party.
The arrests took place hours after Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said policemen would be rewarded for arresting “associates of fascism”, a reference to members and supporters of the now-banned party.
The arrests come amid a broader campaign against Awami League leaders and supporters since Hasina’s ouster in August 2024.
“Those who can bring associates of fascism and Awami forces under the law will be rewarded,” Ahmed told a police ceremony in the capital held as part of Police Week-2026.
The minister said, “They had been hiding here all this time” and asked police to use their intelligence mechanisms to identify and track them down.
The mass-circulation Ittefaq and several other newspapers reported that shortly after Ahmed’s remarks, police in riot gear raided the office of the left-leaning Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASOD) in the Gulistan area of central Dhaka and detained more than 50 people attending a meeting.
JASOD has been a political ally of the Awami League.
Police said those detained had been chanting “Joy Bangla”, a slogan historically associated with the Awami League, during the meeting, which was attended by several hundred people.
“Joy Bangla” – meaning “Victory to Bengal” – became a prominent slogan of the Bengali nationalist movement in the late 1960s and the battle cry of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War. It was declared the country’s national slogan in 2022, when Hasina’s Awami League government was in power.
Hasina was ousted on August 5, 2024, after weeks of student-led protests that began over a quota system for government jobs and escalated into a broader anti-government movement amid a deadly security crackdown. She resigned and fled to India as the government collapsed.
In December 2024, the Bangladesh Supreme Court’s Appellate Division stayed Joy Bangla’s national slogan status.
The use of the slogan, since Hasina’s ouster, is widely perceived to have become closely associated with supporters of the Awami League, who have used it previously at political gatherings and protests.
JASOD’s office secretary Sajjad Hossain told the Prothom Alo newspaper that some 400 party leaders and activists from across the country had rallied to join the party’s central representative conference.
He claimed activists of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) first started beating the meeting participants in police presence and later police emerged with large prison vans and started detaining them.
“No leader or activists could get out. Police is detaining all of them in phases,” Hossain said.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s spokesman Akhtar Hossain told reporters that over 50 people were detained from the scene while the “operation is still underway”.
“‘Joy Bangla’ slogan was chanted inside the JASOD office. The detainees are being questioned. Next steps will be taken based on data analysis and information obtained during the interrogations,” he said.
Police said in another incident they detained four suspected Awami League activists from the capital’s Dhanmondi area as a group of party supporters staged a flash street march and exploded crude bombs.
According to media reports, law enforcement agencies in the past few days intensified campaigns and crackdowns against Awami League leaders and activists across Bangladesh as party activists seemed to be trying to make their street presence visible with programmes like flash processions.
The Dhaka Tribune, in a recent report, said police faced “increased accountability pressure” amid a series of Awami League flash marches while its field-level officials were warned they could face punitive action if such activities took place in areas of their jurisdiction.
In a recent incident, over 100 Awami League leaders and activists staged a flash march on September 11 in Dhaka’s posh Gulshan area, which also houses most diplomatic missions, despite police presence and surveillance.
Fifty-two suspected Awami League supporters were arrested following the incident to face charges under the tough Anti Terrorism Act.
The reports suggested government pressure on police intensified after an audio phone clip of a police officer was leaked on social media, in which he was heard saying the police on the streets were “extremely weak”, and also alleged high-level corruption.
The officer said police would not be able to stop Hasina if she returned from exile in December, as she announced.
The officer was subsequently arrested and remanded in police custody on treason charges.
(PTI News)
