Bangladesh Nationalist Party Chairperson and former PM Khaleda Zia
| Photo Credit: ANI

Tax authorities in Bangladesh on Monday (August 19, 2024) decided to unfreeze the bank accounts of Bangladesh Nationalist Party Chairperson Khaleda Zia, 17 years after banks were ordered to block them.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has instructed banks to unfreeze the accounts of BNP Chairperson Zia, the Daily Star newspaper reported.

In August 2007, the NBR’s Central Intelligence Cell directed banks to freeze the accounts of the BNP Chairperson, who has been elected Bangladesh’s prime minister twice since 1990.

The decision was based on a recommendation of a panel formed during the then Army-backed caretaker government, said a senior official of the NBR.

Since then, her accounts have remained blocked. The BNP has on several occasions demanded that they be unfrozen.

The latest move comes after a mass uprising toppled Sheikh Hasina, a long-time rival of Khaleda, on August 5, ending the Bangladesh Awami League’s 15-year rule. An interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on August 8.

Ms. Zia, 79, was released from jail after Hasina, 76, fled to India on August 5.

Ms. Zia served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006.

The NBR said they received an application from Khaleda’s lawyer seeking to unfreeze the accounts.

“As there are no tax-related issues pending investigation relating to her, we have advised banks to unlock all her accounts. We have asked them to take immediate action and provide a compliance report,” the official was quoted as saying.

Bangladesh’s main opposition party plans to hold a mass rally on Saturday in the capital to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the transfer of power to a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee general elections next year.

But the ruling Awami League party has warned that any attempt to trigger violence would be met with force, and said it would hold a “peace rally” near the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s headquarters, where supporters of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the party’s leader, also plan to gather.

The opposition says it is attempting a final push to remove Ms. Hasina as the Election Commission prepares to announce the country’s 12th national election, expected to be held in January.

Tensions are high in Bangladesh, a parliamentary democracy with a history of violence during political protests, especially before elections. The rivalry between Ms. Hasina and Zia has been ongoing for decades, and Ms. Hasina’s government has been under pressure for months as the opposition has held largely peaceful anti-government demonstrations. But experts say violence could break out anytime.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary general of Zia’s party, said it would continue to push for the resignation of Ms. Hasina’s administration and the installation of a caretaker government.

“We don’t trust this government. They must go first to hold a free and fair election. Otherwise they would rig the election,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Ms. Hasina hopes to return to power for a fourth consecutive term and says the election should be held under her government’s supervision as specified in the constitution.

Ahead of Saturday’s rally, Obaidul Quader, the Awami League party’s general secretary, said its members would be on the streets, and pledged to retaliate if there are any attacks by opposition supporters.

“The answer of violence is not silence. The answer of violence is violence,” Quader told reporters on Thursday. “If our peace rally is attacked, our activists will not sit idle.” Amid worries over whether the polls will be free and fair, a diplomatic row is also brewing between Ms. Hasina’s government and the United States.

The U.S. State Department said in September it is “taking steps to impose visa restrictions on Bangladeshi individuals responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.” These include members of law enforcement, the ruling party and the opposition.

The Biden administration has made the push for free and fair elections in Bangladesh “a prime focus of its democracy promotion policy abroad,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.

The imposition of visa restrictions followed previous measures including restrictions on the country’s elite anti-crime force. Rights groups and the U.S. say the force is responsible for many enforced disappearances of government critics and opposition activists. The restrictions have resulted in a decrease in the number of deaths in so-called “cross-fire” incidents in recent months, media reports said.

Rights groups and the U.S. also criticised the government for enacting a controversial cyber security law, saying it is designed to silence critics and the opposition, an allegation authorities deny. Critics have also slammed the recent jailing and subsequent release on bail of two Bangladeshi rights activists.

Ms. Hasina recently told parliament that the U.S. wants to remove her from power at any cost. But the opposition and critics have welcomed the move by the U.S., which is the largest importer of Bangladesh’s garment products.

Reactions to the U.S. move in Bangladesh have broken down along partisan lines, Kugelman said. Ms. Hasina’s administration slammed it as “meddling” while many critics welcomed it, saying they hope it will push back against what they view as Ms. Hasina’s growing authoritarianism.

Recent elections in Bangladesh, especially the last one in 2018, were widely believed by the West to be flawed. The Awami League party doesn’t have a good track record of overseeing free and fair elections since Ms. Hasina returned to power in 2008.

Kugelman said the government and opposition “are on a collision course” and that “there’s a good chance we could see an election with no opposition participation.”

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) activists form a human chain to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, along a street in Dhaka on August 30, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Thousands of Bangladeshi protesters marched on August 30 demanding information on hundreds of people they say security forces have abducted during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s nearly 15 years in power.

Opposition supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies joined families of those missing to mark the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, many with black gags over their mouths.

The government denies the allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, saying some of those reported missing drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe.

National elections are due in Bangladesh by the end of January, but rights groups and foreign governments have long raised concerns over efforts by Ms. Hasina’s government to silence criticism and stamp out political dissent.

“I am not just afraid… every single day I wake up, I am absolutely terrified,” said Humam Quader Chowdhury, a BNP official.

He said he had been detained by security forces for seven months.

Mr. Chowdhury told protesters in the capital Dhaka that, during his detention, he saw a senior official on television deny he was in custody.

Ten-year-old Mariam Bushra held a photograph of her missing father, opposition activist and lawyer Ahmad Bin Quasem.

“I want the return of my father,” she said.

Human Rights Watch said security forces have committed “over 600 enforced disappearances” since Ms. Hasina came to power in 2009, and nearly 100 remain missing.

The others were later released, produced in court or reported to have “died during an armed exchange with security forces”, HRW said.

“Bangladesh authorities are fooling nobody by continuing to deny the reality of enforced disappearances, and instead are prolonging the suffering of families,” Julia Bleckner, HRW’s senior Asia researcher, said Wednesday.

Security forces are accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters and disappearing hundreds of leaders and supporters.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion security force and seven of its senior officers were sanctioned by Washington in 2021 in response to those alleged rights abuses.

A Bangladesh court ordered the state-run telecoms regulator to delete speeches of an exiled opposition leader from social media as the country readies for general elections, officials said on Monday.

Tarique Rahman, 55, acting chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is a leading figure and staunch critic of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, but the London-based politician must address his supporters remotely.

The BNP and its allies have staged a series of protests since last year demanding Hasina step down and allow a caretaker government to oversee the general elections due by the end of January.

“The High Court ordered the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission remove the speeches and remarks of Tarique Rahman from social media”, Deputy Attorney General Bipul Bagmar told AFP.

The order bolsters a 2015 ruling that banned the publishing and broadcasting of speeches by Rahman in domestic media after he was accused of making “derogatory” remarks against Hasina’s father, Bangladesh’s first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

BNP legal chief Kayser Kamal called the order “unconstitutional, biased and politically motivated”.

Mr. Rahman has accused Ms. Hasina of vote rigging and human rights abuses during her nearly 15-year-long stay in power.

Western governments have expressed concern over the political climate in Bangladesh, where the ruling party dominates the legislature and runs it virtually as a rubber stamp.

Earlier this month, Mr. Rahman was sentenced in absentia to nine years jail for corruption, triggering protests from hundreds of supporters who called the trial politically motivated.

Mr. Rahman, based in London since 2008, had already been given a life sentence in 2018 for his role in a 2004 grenade attack that killed more than 20 people during a political rally for then-opposition leader Hasina. Rahman’s mother Khaleda Zia was premier at the time.

Two-time former premier Zia is under effective house arrest after she was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate graft cases in 2018.