Bangladesh under Yunus: A revolution drowning its children

When the Monsoon Revolution forced Sheikh Hasina from power, many hoped the storm would bring democratic renewal. Instead, it has begun to drown the dream of a freer, pluralistic Bangladesh. Muhammad Yunus, once hailed as a saviour and symbol of democratic restoration, is now presiding over a state that mirrors the worst tendencies of its predecessor — arbitrary arrests, censorship, and ideological purges — all while Islamist radicals creep ever closer to the centre of power. His slick PR machine denies basic facts. Bangladesh looks like a Orwellian dystopia. Chaos reigns.

In March 2025, a joint letter signed by global human rights organisations — including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Fortify Rights, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) — was addressed to Yunus. It expressed alarm over the growing number of arrests, harassment, and violence against human rights defenders, artists, and journalists. The message was clear: the interim government is failing to protect civil liberties. Yunus, once the darling of the development world, now finds himself being warned by the very institutions that once championed his rise. Powerful, vindictive or powerless to intervene?

That concern is echoed in a confidential threat analysis commissioned by the Canadian government — the KIRON Monthly Report (November 2024) — which has been quietly circulated among counterterrorism professionals and development officials. It reveals that extremist digital ecosystems in Bangladesh are expanding at a disturbing pace. Subscriptions to monitored violent Islamist channels have reached 25.7 million, with al-Qaeda-linked groups dominating the space. These groups are not just preaching — they are recruiting, planning, and going mobile offline.

Using encrypted platforms such as Rocket Chat, Tor Orbot, and VPN-based communications, al-Qaeda propagandists have shared detailed tutorials on anonymising communications, setting up burner networks, and evading state surveillance. This is not amateur-hour radicalism — it is methodical insurgency. While Yunus’s government detains singers and screenwriters, jihadist cells are perfecting their logistics. The threat isn’t hypothetical. It is metastasising.

Rather than confronting this ideological onslaught, the government has allowed it to seep into the national fabric. Historians have been purged for resisting attempts to “reinterpret” 1971. A museum exhibit on the genocide of Hindus, Buddhists, and secular Bengalis has been shelved. Influencers with clear ideological ties to extremist groups now shape social media narratives. The cultural and historical anchors of the republic are being severed — and the state is complicit, or cowardly.

Worse still, the artistic class that once gave Bangladesh its moral vocabulary — poets, singers, playwrights — is being persecuted en masse. Arrests under vague “anti-state” charges have become common. These artists are not fomenting unrest. They are defending memory. Their crime is refusing to forget what Bangladesh fought for.

Yunus may plead that he inherited a broken state. That is true up to a point, but Sheikh Hasina won global praise for hitting United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) like they were minor speed bumps on the road to development rather than massive milestones for any developing nation. But the state is now breaking further under his watch — not just structurally, but spiritually.

Yunus has not even begun to address the cancer of violence embedded in Bangladesh’s political culture. Civil discourse has long been absent. The BNP, the main opposition force, is currently imploding under the weight of its own contradictions. “Factional clashes” — sometimes literal — have torn the party in two. Rival wings exchange accusations, insults, and lawsuits. Sometimes bullets. It is a party at war with itself, hardly a credible alternative if it were to form government tomorrow. And yet, the interim administration shows no urgency in fostering a healthier political ecosystem. What Bangladesh desperately needs is a mature parliamentary democracy — one where trust is placed in the Sangsad, not in mobs, militias, or messiahs. Violence must be replaced with institutional legitimacy. Shouting must give way to structured dissent.

The irony is bitter. A revolution that promised to rid the country of authoritarianism is now enabling a creeping theocracy. The arrests are not of war criminals or violent extremists — but of cultural guardians and independent minds. The silence from Yunus’s cabinet is deafening. Either they are complicit, or they are powerless. Both possibilities are terrifying.

Bangladesh has been here before — on the edge of losing itself. In 1971, it was the soul of the nation that demanded liberation. In 2025, it is the soul of the nation that is under siege.

Muhammad Yunus must act — not as a banker-turned-symbol, but as a leader of a people in crisis. That means ending the arbitrary arrests. It means standing firm against ideological encroachment. And it means confronting the digital and offline jihadists who are preparing a darker future under the guise of moral purity.

If he does not, then he is not governing a revolution. He is burying it. His legacy too.