The New Face of an Old Playbook: Why Bangladesh Must Prosecute the Enablers of the July Massacre

 A classic political maneuver is playing out across the media landscape of Bangladesh: the deployment of structural propaganda designed to rehabilitate the architectural pillars of the previous fascist regime. The recent, bizarrely structured "Health Management Roundtable" hosted by the UNICEF-led Bangladesh Child Protection Initiative was never an innocent public policy debate. It was an offensive display of old-school Awami League (BAL) propaganda machinery, engineered to launder the public images of individuals heavily accused of collaborating in the historic July 2024 massacres.

The strategy is transparent. When a political faction loses its grip on executive power, its remaining infrastructure—deeply supported by regional alignment from Indian agencies—shifts toward information warfare. By manufacturing a false crisis around national vaccine procurement and health policies, this network aims to panic the public, discredit the subsequent governance framework, and quietly slip back into civil society circles.

But Bangladesh must not suffer from institutional amnesia. The figures brought forward to front this roundtable—journalist Anis Alamgir, actress Meher Afroz Shaown, poet Aktaruzzaman Azad, literary figure Moazzapor, and journalist Masud Kamal—are not detached, neutral commentators. They are ideological enablers who stood by, defended, or actively justified a fifteen-year authoritarian regime that culminated in the horrific bloodshed of July 2024.

Anatomy of the Old-School Propaganda Machine

The mechanics of this current campaign rely on an identical script perfected by the old regime and its regional handlers over a decade and a half:

• The Selection of Culturally "Safe" Fronts: Realizing that hardline politicians face immediate public rejection, the machine utilizes media "influencers," artists, and journalists. These figures use their cultural platforms to present a veneer of objective concern, while delivering highly scripted, partisan talking points.

• Manufacturing Panic through International Proxies: The weaponization of a critical UN agency’s country director to issue dramatic, politically charged warnings just 48 hours before a national election is a signature external leverage play. It provides an institutional shield for domestic propagandists to stand behind while claiming that governance reforms will trigger a national catastrophe.

• Shifting the Blame of Systemic Failures: The current media narrative falsely accuses recent leadership of creating a vaccine crisis. The objective reality—that over 1,000 crore BDT of taxpayer and donor money was funneled into a procurement monopoly that paid out an astronomical 71-crore BDT middleman fee—is buried underneath emotional rhetoric.

The Cost of Impunity

Allowing individuals who normalized or actively participated in the regime's infrastructure to freely host public panels is more than a failure of vetting; it is a profound insult to the martyrs of the July Revolution. The survival of a fascist state does not merely rest on the police officers who pulled the triggers; it rests entirely on the intellectual and cultural vanguard that sanitized state violence, suppressed dissent, and acted as ideological agents for external interests.

When these individuals are given a microphone instead of a legal summons, the message sent to the public is dangerous: that complicity in mass atrocities carries no permanent consequences. It signals that if you wait long enough, hide behind an international NGO's funding, and pick a benign topic like pediatric health, your role in defending a regime that slaughtered its own students can be entirely erased.

The Demand: Direct Prosecution and Accountability

A genuine democratic transition cannot be built upon compromises with the enablers of crimes against humanity. If Bangladesh is to establish a true rule of law, the current administration must pivot from passive monitoring to aggressive, institutional prosecution.

• Immediate Criminal Investigation: The authorities must launch formal, comprehensive investigations into the actions, finances, and foreign ties of the media and cultural figures who acted as propagandists during the 2024 crackdowns.

• Freezing of Co-conspirator Assets: Any local entity or individual utilizing international donor funds to systematically undermine national procurement sovereignty and rehabilitate accused collaborators must face immediate financial scrutiny.

• Arrest and Formal Prosecution: Those explicitly accused of aiding, abetting, or acting as accessories to the July massacres through state-sponsored media manipulation must be arrested and held accountable before the International Crimes Tribunal.

The propaganda machine is attempting to rewrite history before the ink on the martyrs' graves is even dry. Bangladesh must respond not with hand-wringing debates, but with the full force of the law. Justice demands that these enablers face trial, ensuring that those who manufacture lies to cover up state terror are held legally accountable for their crimes