With Sheikh Hasina's death sentence, Bangladesh comes full circle

The Bangladeshi International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which today sentenced ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia, accusing her of ordering a brutal crackdown on a 2024 student uprising. was established in 2010, during Hasina’s rule, to try war crimes from the 1971 Liberation War.

This is profoundly symbolic. The very institution that once validated the founding of Bangladesh and its traumatic break from Pakistan in 1971 is now being used to eliminate its long-time leader. The tribunal, once a vessel of anti-Pakistani justice, now serves what many see as an internal purge.



The fall of the Mujib legacy

Hasina is not merely a political figure but the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely revered as the “Father of the Nation” for leading Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. Her rule was often framed in continuity with her father’s heroic liberation narrative. Yet, since her ouster in August 2024, the regime that replaced her has systematically dismantled that legacy by openly embracing Pakistan and disowning the country's freedom struggle.

Shortly after Hasina was removed last year, protestors toppled a golden statue of her father in central Dhaka. That act of vandalism made for a powerful political statement. It was erasing of the Mujib legacy. The attempt to destroy the remaining parts of his house, as reported in the wake of the verdict, underscores how violently symbolic this reckoning has become. Moreover, earlier in the year, the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi 32, Mujib’s former home, was demolished by bulldozers.

This incidents are not accidental lawlessness but deliberate unravelling of national history. Institutions, statues and memorials linked to Mujib are being erased or redefined, inidcating a forceful rewriting of the national narrative. With Hasina's death sentence erasing of the Mujib legacy is complete.

Bangla-Pak ties: From liberation to reconciliation

Hasina's death sentence, which rounds off a series of various other incidents since her ouster to shun the legacy, shows that Bangladesh is undergoing a radical change of its national identity.

The 1971 Liberation War remains the foundational chapter of Bangladesh, a brutal separation from West Pakistan after suffering atrocities, mass killings and repression from Pakistani military. Mujib’s legacy, memorialised in national sites is about resistance, sovereignty and a national identity forged in opposition to Pakistan.

Yet, under the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh has moved in a markedly different direction. There is now a revival of trade and even military and intelligence ties with Pakistan, signalling a normalisation that the founder generation would likely have rejected. This marks a symbolic full circle, of course, not by re-absorption into Pakistan but forming of a close alliance.

With Hasina's sentencing, the Yunus regime is not just displacing a political rival turning over a chapter in its history. The war crimes tribunal, once a bulwark of liberation legitimacy, has become a tool for rewriting that very story. Close political or military ties with Pakistan were historically unthinkable, not only for reasons of geopolitics but because of the emotional and symbolic weight of the liberation struggle. Yet the new leadership has chosen to re-engage decisively with Pakistan, reopening areas of cooperation that had been frozen for generations. At the same time, the regime is adopting a hard stance against India as well as allowing persecution of its own Hindu minority.

The country is not reverting to its former status as East Pakistan, but its leaders are symbolically discarding the ideological boundary that once defined its independence.

Yet this transformation comes with risks. Though the Yunus regime has banned Hasina's party, the party workers have started to protest. It may not be easy for the regime to reorient the whole country without facing a backlash from a large part of its population which still leans towards Hasina's party.