Ousted former prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday issued a stern warning to the current interim caretaker government in the country, saying “if you play with fire, it will burn you too.” The deposed ex-PM was warning against threats to ban her age-old Awami League party.

Addressing her supporters on Sunday, Hasina accused Professor Muhammad Yunus of erasing Bangladesh’s history, especially those linked to the Awami League’s contribution to the country’s freedom struggle.

Hasina slams Yunus

“Their (the interim government) audacity astonishes me,” she said, in a virtual address to party workers and supporters from India, where she now lives after fleeing Bangladesh in August last year after her nearly 16-year-long Awami League government was toppled in a student-led uprising steered by Students Against Discrimination (SAD). The SAD has been demanding a ban on Awami League.

The Yunus administration has disbanded Awami League’s student wing Chhatra League.

Hasina said the Awami League was established in 1948 in the then Pakistan to wage a campaign to ensure people rights in the then East Pakistan, the independence struggle and eventually led to the 1971 Liberation War under stewardship of its founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

“The name of the country where they now live is also given by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib. He had united the people of Bengal using Awami League’s organisational structure and made the country independent, nobody must forget this fact,” she said.

Hasina questions ban

Hasina, 77, questioned what rights those demanding the ban have and said Yunus himself was a fascist because of his ruthless actions on workers, teachers, students and others who were trying to wage a campaign for their rightful demands.

The demand for Awami League’s ban, however, did not get any positive response from its arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of ex-premier Khaleda Zia and most other political groups.

Some extreme right-wing groups vowed to disband it and “bury” the country’s original 1972 Constitution calling it a “Mujibist charter”.

According to a UN rights office report, some 1,400 people were killed between July 15 and August 15, 2024 in actions by police and pro-government political elements like Chhatra League and later in retaliatory violence on law enforcement personnel and people linked to the past regime.

“But we have to make the calculation now, how many people were killed in their list of martyrs and how many beyond that list they have killed among Awami League activists, policemen, members of minority community, workers, students and teachers,” Hasina said.

She said the calculation would find that the list on the other side was heavier.

“Today, if someone is found to have any link to Chhatra League, his or her certificate is being cancelled while they are not being allowed to study. So, who is the autocrat, fascist and who should be banned in this country,” she said.