Bangladesh’s new dawn is darkened by settling of old scores

DHAKA, Bangladesh—When Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was toppled in August in a student-led uprising, it was supposed to be a new dawn for the young country. Instead, the raw wounds left by her repressive rule have prompted many to pursue revenge by weaponizing the law—just as she did.

Two journalists, seen by some as propagandists for Hasina’s regime, are under investigation for allegedly abetting the killing of protesters by her government. A sportsman who was a lawmaker from Hasina’s party was among more than 150 named in another murder case linked to protester deaths—even though he was abroad playing in a cricket tournament at the time. In one murder case registered this year, related to a protester who died last year, some 700 people have been named as suspects.

In some incidents, angry mobs have lynched supporters of Hasina’s party, the Awami League.

The country’s reckoning poses a stiff challenge for Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, a soft-spoken development economist, who answered the call of student protesters to lead the country.

Yunus must answer demands for justice from those who were victims of Hasina’s long rule, while preventing a spiral of violence that could derail his efforts to shepherd the country from the unelected government that has taken power to a stable democracy.

“We always try to remind ourselves, this is the new Bangladesh,” he said in an interview. “We don’t want to copy the old Bangladesh.”

The thirst for justice runs deep following the harsh rule of the 77-year-old Hasina, who took refuge in India after being toppled last summer. Some 1,500 people died in demonstrations that broke out in July, initially over access to government jobs, before spiraling into a broader challenge to Hasina’s rule.

On the long list of people targeted by the former government is Yunus himself. He was ousted from the pioneering microfinance organization he founded and faced numerous investigations. He denied any wrongdoing. This year, the country’s main anticorruption agency filed graft charges against him, with a trial looming in August. Supporters feared he would soon be behind bars. Since taking power, he has been cleared of charges by courts.

Hasina, whose father was the leader of Bangladesh’s independence struggle, didn’t start out an autocrat. Her first stint running the country came after she and other parties fought to end a period of military rule during which she was often under arrest.

Back in power since 2009, Hasina was far quicker to punish her enemies. Critics say the courts were used to pursue political opponents, some of whom were sentenced to death, including several from Bangladesh’s main Islamist party, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Investigators have unearthed secret detention centers and evidence of torture during her reign and are examining nearly 1,700 complaints of enforced disappearances.

A commission set up by the Yunus government said in its preliminary report this week that some victims were shot in the head and tossed in rivers with cement bags tied to their bodies. One prisoner, former army officer Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, released in August after eight years of captivity in a dark cell, said he prayed to God every night “asking that my body is not turned into a meal for dogs.”

Mohammad Arafat, who served as information minister under Hasina, denied that her government was authoritarian. He said that disappearances weren’t part of Awami League policy and that intelligence agencies in Bangladesh are subject to very little civilian oversight, which he said has “obvious drawbacks.”

After Hasina fled, there was a short period of violent score-settling. More than 100 people were likely killed in retaliatory attacks, mainly Awami League and police officials, says the United Nations Human Rights Office. The government says such incidents have largely declined.

Many people with links to the previous government remain in hiding, terrified of being attacked or arrested.

In August, Firoz Khan, a member of a youth organization affiliated with the Awami League, left his home near the port city of Chattogram, formerly known as Chittagong, to avoid trouble. But after he ran out of money in the months that followed, he returned to pick up cash from a friend in October. He was recognized and soon a mob formed looking for him.

He waited them out by climbing a tree in the dark and then his family called a motorized rickshaw driver to spirit him away. But members of the mob discovered him and beat Khan with steel rods.

Khan’s family members found him bloody and unconscious in the rickshaw. They rushed him to a hospital, where he was declared dead. A person affiliated with the Awami League’s rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has been arrested on suspicion of murder in the case. The suspect’s lawyer says his client is innocent.

“I can’t find any reason other than politics,” said Roksana Akter, Khan’s sister-in-law, who was among the family members who found his body.

A senior member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party said attacks are often driven by personal grudges, rather than political motives, and the party is quick to expel anyone who targets members of the Awami League.

The country’s Hindu community also fears being targeted because they are seen as supporters of Hasina, whose secular politics reassured religious minorities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

In November, religious tensions erupted in Chattogram, culminating in street clashes, the arrest of a Hindu religious leader and the killing of a Muslim lawyer. The government has pledged to protect religious minorities and said news reports that they are under threat have been exaggerated.

By far the most commonplace form of revenge is lodging a police complaint, as it was during the Hasina years.

A national police spokesman said that more than 2,350 cases have been filed against alleged perpetrators of the July and August violence against protesters and that more than 10,000 people have been arrested.

“What’s happened is the families of the victims, they are filing cases,” said Yunus. “As a government, I cannot tell the father of the young boy who was killed during the mass uprising, I cannot tell them, ‘Do not file a case.’” He said the government was pursuing select cases against senior officials—it plans to seek the extradition of Hasina to stand trial—while also pushing to improve the legal process to prevent abuses.

One of the cases that political experts find most concerning is the legal proceedings against Farzana Rupa and her husband Shakil Ahmed. The couple worked for a pro-Awami League television station and Rupa, in particular, was a lightning rod for criticism.

After Hasina fell, Rupa and her husband were dismissed from their roles and threatened, according to a family member and online posts seen by the Journal, and went into hiding with their teenage daughter. They were arrested at Dhaka’s international airport on Aug. 21 on their way to France and accused of making provocative statements that contributed to protesters’ deaths.

As the protest movement was heating up in mid-July, Rupa had asked Hasina a question at a press conference that suggested protesters were being disrespectful to veterans of the 1971 war of independence. The moment became notorious after Hasina responded using an inflammatory slur, razakar, that refers to traitors of the independence war, angering many Bangladeshis. The press conference became a turning point for the protest movement, with many protesters adopting the term—ironically—to refer to themselves.

International press freedom groups have criticized Bangladesh’s government over the couple’s arrests, warning these moves appear similar to Hasina’s own playbook.

The couple has been denied bail. At least two other journalists perceived as being pro-Hasina were detained on accusations of instigating murder and many other journalists have been accused of similar crimes.

The Yunus government said it has set up a committee to look into cases against journalists, which will seek to have any improper charges dropped.

In letters to the committee, Ahmed and Rupa said they were innocent of murder. A family member said that the pair was impartial in covering Hasina.

Earlier this autumn, Zi Khan Panna, a lawyer in his 70s, discovered that he had been accused of attempted murder when a journalist heard about the case and informed him.

Mohammad Baker, a vegetable seller, had been seeking justice for his son, who was shot in the leg in a protest against Hasina in July. In October, politically connected lawyers helped him write up a complaint of attempted murder. Together, they drew up a list of accused that came to some 180 people, Baker said.

One of the names on the list was Khan, who had spoken out in defense of the protesters.

“Is it possible to run this country like this?” Khan said. “Not at all.”

Khan isn’t sure why he was accused. A family member of Khan’s speculated that the lawyer was included in the list because of his secular beliefs. With the departure of Hasina, political experts expect Islamist groups to become more prominent in the country’s politics.

Baker said he had seen Khan on television but knew little about him, and that including Khan’s name was a mistake. A court has granted Khan bail, but hasn’t formally struck his name from the case.

“I am a simple man,” Baker said. “I filed the case because they have killed and injured hundreds of people.”

Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com