The Violence Never Actually Stopped

One of the loudest promises made throughout 2024 and 2025 was that Bangladesh was turning a page, that the fear and repression associated with the last years of Awami League rule would give way to something genuinely freer and safer. I've tried, in earlier posts, to take that promise seriously rather than dismiss it out of hand. Looking at what actually happened in the run-up to February's election, and in the months since, I don't think the promise has held up the way people hoped it would.

The pre-election period saw hundreds of violent incidents across the country. Clashes between BNP and Jamaat supporters, the two parties now sharing power and opposition in parliament, broke out in multiple districts, including one clash in Naogaon and Kushtia that left roughly twenty people injured. At least sixteen political activists were killed in the months between the election's announcement and the vote itself. A garment worker was beaten to death by senior staff in January over theft allegations, a grim reminder that the vulnerabilities facing ordinary workers didn't disappear along with the old government. The Editors' Council of Bangladesh had to publicly appeal to the interim administration and Election Commission to protect journalists covering the vote.

Human Rights Watch's own reporting on this period noted that even as the interim government banned Awami League and moved past some of the worst tools of the old regime, it also arbitrarily detained thousands of perceived political opponents of its own. I don't say this to draw a false equivalence between that and what preceded it, the scale and specific character of state violence under different governments has differed in real ways. I say it because I think the framing of 2024 as a clean, decisive break from political violence was always going to be tested by what came next, and I don't think it's passed that test yet.