How the Yunus-Led Interim Government Has Turned Justice into a Tool of Political Repression in Bangladesh

I. The Criminalization of Law and Lawyers

It began, as so many stories of injustice do, with a courtroom and a promise of fairness that never came.

On 2 September 2025, twelve lawyers in Barguna district walked into the District Sessions Judge’s Court—heads high, robes pressed, faith intact. They had come not as fugitives, but as officers of the court, surrendering in good faith to defend themselves against false and fabricated charges of vandalism and arson at a local BNP office.

The judge denied their bail. They were taken away in handcuffs.

Eight days later, on 10 September, the High Court granted six weeks’ bail to ten of them. For their families waiting outside prison gates, it was a moment of relief—wives preparing meals, children waiting at the door. But as the release orders reached the jail, the cruel machinery of the Muhammad Yunus–led interim government moved again.

Moments before their release, the lawyers were re-arrested under a new case fabricated under the Special Powers Act by the Betagi Police Station and sent straight back to prison.

Among them were Mahabubul Bari Aslam, former President of the Barguna District Bar Association, and Advocates Mojibur Rahman, Saimum Islam Rabbi, Humayun Kabir Poltu, and Nurul Islam, respected figures in their communities. Their “freedom” lasted mere minutes—a cruel illusion that turned hope into heartbreak.

This episode exposes the grotesque logic of repression now governing Bangladesh: even when the highest court speaks, its voice is silenced by handcuffs. Bail means nothing; legality itself has become a crime.

In a democracy, imprisonment should be a last resort, used only when guilt is proven beyond doubt. But in today’s Bangladesh, under a regime led by a Nobel Peace laureate, imprisonment has become a first response—a weapon of control, not justice.

According to documentation by Justicemakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF) between August 2024 and September 2025, there were 75 incidents of imprisonment involving 203 lawyers. These are not isolated misfortunes. They are deliberate acts of political engineering, designed to dismantle independence within the legal profession, particularly among lawyers affiliated with the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) or those who dared to defend victims of state abuse.

Each story reveals a pattern: fabricated charges, coerced surrenders, manipulated hearings, and endless pre-trial detentions. The justice system, once a shield of rights, now functions as an arm of persecution.

II. The Anatomy of Fabrication

Behind every fabricated case lies a story of fear.

According to JMBF’s findings, the largest share of imprisonments arose from false charges of attempted murder (15 incidents, 103 victims) and murder (25 incidents, 43 victims).

These were not random choices—they were deliberate. Murder charges carry the heaviest stigma, branding lawyers as violent criminals and ensuring long detentions before trial. The government didn’t just want to silence these lawyers—it wanted to erase their credibility, to paint defenders of justice as enemies of peace.

Other common allegations—sabotage (8 incidents) and vandalism (9 incidents)—served as flexible tools to justify mass arrests. And then there are the colonial-era relics—seditious conspiracy and extortion—revived like old weapons from a dictator’s arsenal.

These laws once served imperial masters; today, they serve an interim regime that governs through fear, turning patriotism into sedition and dissent into treason.

III. Arrest as a Weapon of Fear

Among the 75 imprisonment incidents, 57 involved arrests leading to imprisonment, affecting 73 victims. These were not ordinary law-enforcement actions—they were public performances of power.

Lawyers have been detained from homes, offices, and even from courtrooms. The message is unmistakable: no one is untouchable.

JMBF’s data show this pattern across the country—murder, attempted murder, sabotage, vandalism, and “seditious conspiracy” cases repeated with numbing precision. Arrests have become a psychological weapon, designed to terrify not just individuals but the entire legal fraternity.

Each detention silences one voice—and intimidates a hundred more. Bar associations hesitate to meet; young lawyers choose self-censorship over survival. The courtroom, once a place of courage, now feels like a cage.

IV. The Trap of “Voluntary” Surrender

Perhaps the most insidious tactic employed by the interim government is the manipulation of voluntary surrender.

JMBF documented 18 such incidents, involving 130 lawyers—many accused of “attempted murder” or “vandalism.” These were lawyers who followed the law, who appeared before judges when summoned. Yet, instead of receiving fair hearings, they were immediately remanded or imprisoned.

The ordeal of Advocate Abu Sayeed Sagar, former president of the Dhaka Bar Association and ex-Legal Affairs Secretary of the Awami League, epitomizes this tactic.

During the politically tense 2023 Supreme Court Bar Association election, a brief scuffle became the pretext for criminal charges. Sagar obtained six weeks of anticipatory bail from the High Court. Then, on 5 October 2025, he voluntarily surrendered before the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge’s Court to renew his bail—a lawful and responsible act.

Instead of being heard, he was denied bail and sent to jail by Judge Sabbir Fayez.

This case shows how the Yunus-led regime has weaponized compliance itself. What should have been a routine legal procedure became a punishment for obedience.

Under Yunus, surrender no longer signifies respect for law—it is a trapdoor to imprisonment.

V. A Regime Built on the Ruins of Rights

The persecution of lawyers is not an accident—it is a blueprint of authoritarian control.

Since mid-2024, under the pretext of “transition,” the Yunus-led interim government has suspended civil liberties, silenced journalists, and targeted professionals suspected of political disloyalty.

The irony is unbearable: a man once celebrated for empowering the poor now presides over the imprisonment of those defending the powerless.

VI. The Collapse of Judicial Independence

Every dictatorship begins by capturing the courts. The Yunus government has done one worse—it has hollowed them out from within.

Judges are pressured, prosecutors politicized, and bail hearings endlessly delayed. Lawyers are denied access to case files, while police fabricate evidence with impunity.

This is not merely domestic injustice—it violates Bangladesh’s obligations under Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits arbitrary detention.

When judges become instruments of fear instead of arbiters of law, the entire edifice of justice collapses.

VII. Imprisonment as Preventive Repression

In this new Bangladesh, imprisonment no longer follows crime—it anticipates it.

Lawyers are detained not for what they did, but for what they might do. This is preventive repression—criminalizing potential dissent.

By incarcerating lawyers, the regime has effectively imprisoned the idea of justice itself. When defenders become defendants, a nation’s moral compass is lost.

VIII. The Human Cost

Statistics cannot capture the sound of a cell door closing on a lawyer who once argued for others’ freedom.

Many imprisoned lawyers languish in overcrowded cells, denied medical care, cut off from their families. Some have been beaten. Others have fled abroad, leaving behind shattered practices and broken lives.

In every courthouse corridor, fear now walks silently. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of intimidation.

IX. The International Dimension of Betrayal

When Muhammad Yunus took charge, many abroad saw him as a reformer—a moral voice who would guide Bangladesh toward democracy.

But moral authority demands moral action. The mass imprisonment of lawyers is a betrayal not just of Bangladesh’s Constitution, but of international law and the ideals Yunus once symbolized.

Bangladesh is bound by the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (1990), which guarantee that lawyers must perform their duties “without intimidation, hindrance, harassment, or improper interference.”

Under Yunus, every one of those principles has been broken.

X. The Erosion of Democracy in the Name of Transition

The government calls itself “interim.” But its methods are permanent tools of authoritarianism.

It claims to save democracy by suspending it; to ensure order by silencing dissent. History knows this lie well—from Chile to Egypt, every junta has claimed necessity as its moral cover.

Bangladesh today stands on that same precipice.

XI. A Call for International Solidarity and Accountability

The time for polite diplomacy is over. The international community must see beyond the Nobel halo and confront the stark reality unfolding in Bangladesh, where lawyers are imprisoned for defending justice. Independent investigations by the UN and other human-rights bodies are urgently needed to document the systematic persecution of legal professionals. International legal associations should actively monitor trials and proceedings, recording every violation of due process, while governments must consider targeted sanctions, including visa restrictions and asset freezes, against officials responsible for repression.

Equally critical is the protection of at-risk lawyers, with states providing emergency visas and asylum to those facing imminent arrest. Silence or neutrality from global institutions, including Nobel committees and academic bodies, is no longer acceptable; it amounts to tacit complicity in the erosion of democracy and the rule of law. The world must act decisively to uphold both human rights and the integrity of the legal profession in Bangladesh.

XII. Conclusion — When the Defenders Become the Accused

The mass imprisonment of lawyers in Bangladesh marks a moral collapse of governance.

By turning the courts into instruments of punishment, the Yunus-led interim government has criminalized justice itself.

Imprisonment has ceased to be a verdict; it has become policy.

Muhammad Yunus once preached empowerment. Today, his government practices suppression.

The world must judge him not by medals, but by the misery of those imprisoned for defending freedom. Because when the defenders of justice are silenced, it is not only lawyers who are imprisoned—it is the conscience of Bangladesh itself.

Written by Advocate Shahanur Islam

About the Author: A human rights lawyer; laureate 2023 of the French Government’s Marianne Initiative for Human Rights Defenders; and founder president of JusticeMakers Bangladesh in France (JMBF). Email: shahanur.islam@jmbf.org; Website: www.jmbf.org

×