Interim Govt Outlaws Chhatra League

The interim government has tonight banned the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), conceding to demands from the student movement protesting against discrimination.

The Home Ministry issued an official gazette with immediate effect, declaring that the government invoked the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009 to ban the BCL, a 76-year-old pro-Awami League student organisation.

This decision comes just a day after students issued an ultimatum to the government, warning they would take to the streets unless the BCL was banned within the week.

Several hundred students, who had been demonstrating outside the vice chancellor’s office at Dhaka University, cheered as news of the ban spread.

Andul Kader, a coordinator of the student movement, announced near the TSC that students would march and distribute sweetmeats on university campuses nationwide at 3:00 pm today in celebration.

According to the gazette, the government made the decision under section 18(1) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009, listing the BCL as a banned organisation in the second schedule of the act.

The section stipulates: "For the purposes of this act, the government, on reasonable grounds that a person or entity is involved in terrorist activities, may, by order, enlist the person in the schedule or proscribe the entity and enlist it in the schedule."

The government has evidence that the BCL has engaged in various conspiratorial, subversive, and terrorist activities against the state since the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August, the notification states.

It further claims that the BCL, as a "brotherly" organisation of the AL, was involved in actions threatening public security, including murder, torture, and oppression of students in dormitories, particularly in cramped, informally known "gono rooms."

The BCL was also accused of extorting money for dormitory rooms, manipulating tenders, and committing serious crimes such as rape and sexual harassment of women, particularly over the last 15 years of the autocratic AL regime. These allegations, backed by media reports and court rulings, have implicated BCL leaders and activists.

Since the student protests began on 15 July, BCL members launched violent armed attacks on protesting students and the general public, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent students and civilians, and leaving many others in danger, the notification adds.

"Bangladesh and Dhaka University are now free from this disgrace. We thank the interim government," said Nusrat Tabassum, another coordinator of the student movement, at the university’s Raju Sculpture.