Bangladesh Army rejects student-led NCP leader’s allegation of political interference

Dhaka: The Bangladesh Army on Sunday rejected allegations made by a newly formed student-led party that the military was hatching a plan to rehabilitate deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, calling them "hilarious and an immature array of stories." The National Citizen Party (NCP) staged protest rallies at the premier Dhaka University campus on Saturday, vowing to thwart at any cost a “military-backed plot” to rehabilitate the party.

The military headquarters, in a statement issued to Sweden-based Bangladesh-centric news outlet Netro News, said," “It was nothing other than a political stunt.” The Army called the claims "hilarious and an immature array of stories." The statement, however, said Army chief General Waker Uz Zaman met with two NCP leaders Hasnat Abdullah and Sarjis Alam on March 11 at his Dhaka Cantonment residence as they had long sought a "courtesy meeting" with him.

 It said the Army chief’s office had asked them to come to the Army headquarters but the pair instead went to his official residence Sena Bhaban. They waited there until the Army chief came there after completing his official duties.

The Army statement came as tensions started gripping Bangladesh after the NCP, which was floated last month with widely assumed blessings of Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus, accused the military of political interference.

Abdullah, one of the key leaders of the party, on Saturday claimed that the military was trying to rehabilitate a "refined" Awami League.

As NCP staged protest rallies at the Dhaka University campus, several hundred followers of Abdullah chanted slogans against the Army chief and demanded that Hasina and her 'cohorts' be hanged after trial.

In a Facebook post two days ago, Abdullah claimed that a “conspiracy is afoot to rehabilitate the Awami League” in the name of “refined Awami League at the behest of India”.

"Those who are supposed to discharge their work inside cantonment, should stay there . . . in the 'post-revolution Bangladesh' no interference in the political landscape from the cantonment will be accepted," Abdullah said in a press briefing at the NCP office on Saturday.

Abdullah was a key organiser of the now-defunct Students Against Discrimination (SAD) that led last year's violent mass uprising, toppling Hasina's 16-year regime and installing Yunus as the chief adviser of the interim government.

NCP convenor Nahid Islam backed Abdullah, saying the Army or any other state institution had no "authority to propose or make decisions" about politics.

The Army remained calm, evading any confrontation with the activists on Saturday.

Several civil society figures and ex-military officers also appeared on social media platforms to express their reservations over NCP leaders’ blatant comments against the military leadership.

Hasina has been living in India since August 5 last year, when she fled Bangladesh as the fallout of the uprising.

Most of her senior party leaders and cabinet colleagues were either arrested or on the run, both at home and abroad, facing accusations of mass murder and crimes against humanity to suppress the protesters.

The past government had called out Army troops to tame the protestors by joining hands with police, but the military preferred to stay on the sidelines expressing their reluctance to use lethal weapons against the protestors.

Yunus on Thursday told a delegation of the International Crisis Group that his administration “has no plans to ban the Awami League, but individuals within its leadership accused of crimes, including murder and crimes against humanity, would be tried in Bangladesh's courts”.

 Yunus also said the government did not rule out referring Awami League leaders to the International Criminal Court in The Hague following a UN fact-finding mission that reported potential crimes during the July-August 2024 protests that toppled Hasina's nearly 16-year regime.

Former prime minister Khaleda Zia's BNP on Friday said it had no objection to the return of her deposed rival's party to politics under clean leadership.