Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India in August as a student-led uprising saw protesters flood streets of the capital Dhaka, bringing a dramatic end to her iron-fisted tenure.
Since then a caretaker government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has taken charge, tasked with implementing far-reaching democratic reforms and staging fresh elections.
Hundreds of thousands of people attended Friday’s demonstration, one of the biggest since Hasina’s toppling, which was organised by her longtime opponents of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)
“We have gathered here to protect the voting rights of the people and to prevent the re-emergence of fascists,” Tarique Rahman, the BNP’s exiled vice-chairman, told attendees via a videolink from his home in London.
“We must be cautious. Though the autocrats are gone, ill forces are still active. We cannot afford for the interim government to fail.”
The BNP was subjected to repeated crackdowns under Hasina’s government, which rights groups say was behind the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.
“Sheikh Hasina has fled, but the conspiracy continues,” BNP general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told the rally.
“Her associates are plotting to undermine the movement. We must be very careful.”
Rahman, the son of two-time Bangladeshi premier and Hasina’s chief rival Khaleda Zia, has lived in London since 2008 and was convicted in absentia of graft charges during Hasina’s government.
Thousands of BNP members were arrested in the months before January elections that returned Hasina to power, staged in the absence of credible opposition parties.
The party has reasserted itself in the wake of Hasina’s ouster, and several members of Yunus’ interim government have served under prior BNP governments. Around 200 Bangladeshis abducted by security forces during toppled premier Sheikh Hasina’s rule are still missing, a commission tasked with investigating enforced disappearances said Tuesday.
Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India in August as a student-led uprising saw protesters flood streets of the capital Dhaka, bringing a dramatic end to her iron-fisted tenure.
Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.
A commission of inquiry set up by the caretaker government now running the country said that five people had been released from secret detention centres after Hasina’s ouster, but that many more were still unaccounted for.
“There is no trace of at least 200 people. We have been working to locate them,” commission member Noor Khan said.
The commission said it had identified at least eight secret detention centres in Dhaka and its outskirts, some with cells as small as three by four feet (90 by 120 centimetres).
It said the walls of these cells had engravings that appeared to show their occupants having kept tally of the number of days they had been detained.
One commissioner said there had been efforts by unnamed law enforcement agencies to erase evidence of these secret detention centres after Hasina’s overthrow.
Commissioners said most disappearance cases brought to its attention blamed the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police unit.
The RAB was sanctioned by Washington in 2021 alongside seven of its senior officers in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina’s rule.
Commission chair Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury said that institutional breakdowns in the government and judiciary had also allowed a climate of impunity to flourish under Hasina.
“They used the law enforcement agency not in the public interest, but for their own agenda and political interest,” he said.
The commission was established by the interim government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus as part of its efforts to implement far-reaching democratic reforms.
Yunus has previously said he inherited a “completely broken down” system of public administration that needed a comprehensive overhaul to prevent a future return to autocracy.
