National Citizen Party (NCP) Convenor Nahid Islam has demanded “effective” government steps to ensure the security of former chief advisor Muhammad Yunus and all other members of the previous interim government.
He made the demand in a statement on Tuesday, saying the interim government had steered Bangladesh through a time of crisis, leading the push to “restore democracy and rebuild an economy reduced to rubble”.
Yunus, a Nobel laureate, came under fire while leaving New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport in a wheelchair at 3:45pm local time on Monday.
Lamiya Morshed, the former interim government’s principal coordinator for SDG affairs and executive director of the Yunus Centre, was beside him, carrying luggage.
A video circulating on social media shows Imdad Chowdhury, general secretary of the New York Metropolitan Awami League, and Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, general secretary of the US Jubo League, and a group of others standing in front of Yunus.
Then, Yunus was wheeled back into the terminal.
Nahid, a former member of the government government, said the episode had once again exposed the “brutal, violent and inhuman character” of the Awami League’s “terror-reliant politics”.
“We strongly condemn and protest such attempts by ‘fascist’ criminals,” he said.
Ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India on Aug 5, 2024, in the face of a mass uprising, ending 15 years of unbroken Awami League rule.
Nahid, who was on the front line of the movement that toppled her government, later joined the Yunus-led interim government as a student representative. He resigned afterwards and formed the NCP.
The Awami League and its affiliated organisations were banned from carrying out activities under the interim government, and the current parliament has passed a bill to that effect.
Nahid, who is the opposition's chief whip in parliament, said: “Even two years after being utterly rejected by the people of this country, there has been not the slightest change in the character of the Awami League’s cadre force. There is no sign of even minimal remorse for their past misdeeds.”
“This criminal network, active at home and abroad, must be completely resisted,” he added. “The trials of those involved in the July genocide and the enforced disappearances and killings of the fascist era must be completed and verdicts swiftly executed.”
In the statement, he also demanded the immediate trial of the Awami League as a party on charges of “genocide and violence”.