Bangladesh bans largest Islamic party over unrest

The Bangladeshi government has issued an order outlawing the country’s largest Islamic party and all its affiliates following last month’s deadly unrest that prompted the government to impose a curfew and deploy troops.

As the government believes that Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (Society of Islam), its student wing and its front organizations are involved with terrorist activities, the government declared these banned, the government order issued on Thursday said.

The government possesses enough evidence that Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing were involved in the recent killings, destructions and terrorist activities directly and through incitement, the order said, referring to the last month’s violent protests over government job quota reforms.

At least 150 people were killed, according to the official counts, during the protests but the local media put the death figure at more than 200.

“The Jamaat-e-Islami and its entire front organizations will not be allowed to operate as a political party from now on,” Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anisul Huq told reporters in Dhaka.

Jamaat, a radical religious party advocating for sharia in Bangladesh, was banned soon after Bangladesh’s 1971 war of liberation as it was sided with Pakistani forces to carry out atrocities on unarmed civilians during the war.

But it resumed activities in 1977 after the then military dictator Ziaur Rahman allowed the party to operate following the assassination of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975.

The party also joined the coalition government of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, widow of Ziaur Rahman, in 2001.