Dhaka, July 10: Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League has strongly condemned a BBC report that alleged Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordered the use of lethal force against protesters, calling it “false, distorted, and politically motivated.”
The BBC World Service recently aired a 35-minute report that included an alleged leaked 18-second audio clip attributed to Hasina. The Awami League dismissed the clip as “artificially generated using AI” and lacking authenticity, stating that it had no identifiable recipient and that the forensic firm cited by the BBC could not verify its genuineness.
In a detailed statement, the Awami League expressed “deep concern” over what it called a biased portrayal of Hasina and a failure to include her perspective. It accused the report of relying on sources linked to the “illegitimate, fascist regime of Yunus,” and noted that some contributors had histories of defending war criminals.
The party also criticized the BBC for ignoring the broader context of the July–August protests in Bangladesh, which reportedly involved violent attacks on police stations, jailbreaks, and infiltration by terrorist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to intelligence sources, these groups had planned coordinated attacks to destabilize the country.
The Awami League claimed the student-led protest movement demanding quota reforms was manipulated by anti-state actors with foreign backing, aiming to incite chaos and harm national sovereignty.
Concluding, the party said the BBC’s report “violates the principles of independent journalism” and appears to serve a political agenda against Sheikh Hasina. “We had hoped a respected institution like the BBC would not fall into the trap of such malicious narratives,” the statement said.
