A group of US lawmakers sent a letter to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus yesterday (23 December), expressing concern over the total ban on a political party ahead of elections in February.
Representatives Gregory W Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Bill Huizenga and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, chair and ranking member of the Subcommittee on South and Central Asia, sent the letter, cosigned by Representatives Julie Johnson and Tom Suozzi.
Welcoming the CA’s willingness to step forward at a moment of national crisis in Bangladesh to lead an interim government ahead of elections, it urged the interim government to “work with parties across the political spectrum to create the conditions for free and fair elections that allow the voice of the Bangladeshi people to be expressed peacefully through the ballot box, as well as reforms that restore confidence in the integrity and nonpartisanship of state institutions.”
It added: “We are concerned that this cannot happen if the government suspends activities of political parties or again restarts the flawed International Crimes Tribunal [ICT].”
The letter emphasised that freedom of association and the principle of individual rather than collective responsibility are fundamental human rights.
“We are concerned that the decision to fully suspend the activity of any one political party, rather than focus on persons determined to have committed crimes or gross violations of human rights through the due process of law, is inconsistent with those principles.”
Highlighting previous elections, the letter said, “The Department of State and many other international observers noted that the 2018 and 2024 General Elections were not free or fair. And in a February fact-finding report, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that security services killed 1,400 people during protests in July and August 2024.”
It said genuine accountability for these acts and others
should model the values of Bangladesh’s democracy, “rather than continue a cycle of retaliation.”
In May this year, the interim government banned all activities of the party of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted last year after a student-led uprising, under the Anti-Terrorism Ac
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