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Published on July 17, 2025
We express deepest condolences to scores of victims now fighting a battle between life and death and those murdered in Gopalganj at the hands of law enforcement, including the Bangladesh Armed Forces, a state-sponsored plot to send a stern warning against dissenters.
We call upon the authorities to ensure the treatment of the injured, as news is coming in that hospitals have been asked not to extend treatment to the wounded.
We draw the attention of the global community to the potential escalation from a series of chilling public calls by Yunus-backed mob leaders from the unregistered National Citizens Party to exterminate dissenters, including Awami League leaders and activists, in the aftermath of the deadliest crackdown.
These anti-democratic fascists are desperately trying to conceal public outbursts against their months of mob rule with indiscriminate tagging of citizens as agents of the Awami League.
We condemn in the strongest terms the cover-up drama and a web of lies by the regime's press office to hide the massacre in Gopalganj, as police and other forces used lethal weapons and fired live rounds on thousands of civilians who came to show defiance against the ongoing destruction of Bangladesh’s liberation war legacy.
Unleashing law enforcement, including the army and applauding them for disproportionate abuse of lethal weapons to crush dissenters constitutes a blanket immunity and violates all basic foundations of human rights.
In eleven months, while a crime wave has plagued the nation and countrymen are jolted by a sense of insecurity, law enforcement did not use such lethal weapons, clearly indicating the current massacre was executed only to decimate the dissenters and fuel ongoing pogrom against Awami League leaders and activists.
We assert, those NCP leaders sought to destroy the remaining symbols of country’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as he was buried in Gopalganj after brutal assassination in 1975, in a similar manner these forces with full protection of law enforcement used mob for days to demolish the Dhanmondi 32 residence, another symbol deeply associated with the architect of country’s independence.
Before this massacre, a wave of brutal crackdown, including intimidation, arbitrary arrest and indiscriminate physical torture had been unleashed by law enforcement members on residents in Gopalganj, trampling on fundamental human rights in sync with NCP leaders' plot to exterminate citizens holding ideals of the founding fathers.
In eleven months, tens of thousands of dissenters, including journalists, rights activists, minorities and leaders and activists of the Bangladesh Awami League were jailed, framed in false murder charges. Hundreds of citizens affiliated with the Awami League were murdered using mob terror, and scores of party activists were subjected to custodial death, but no legal action has been taken to stop this ongoing pogrom.
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