BANGLADESH’S former ruling party accused the country’s interim government today of “stoking division and trampling on democratic norms” by banning all party activities.

The government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted following a bloody mass uprising, announced late on Saturday that the Awami League can no longer be active online and elsewhere in the South Asian country under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Law affairs adviser Asif Nazrul said the ban would remain until a special tribunal completes a trial of the party and its leaders over the deaths of hundreds of students and other protesters during an anti-government uprising in July and August last year.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the country’s other main political party, headed by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, had previously opposed the move to ban the Awami League.

A post on the league’s official X account said on Sunday: “People no longer feel safe under Yunus,” denouncing the ban that “stoked division within society, strangled democratic norms, fuelled [an] ongoing pogrom against dissenters, strangled inclusivity [and] all undemocratic steps under [the] pretext of [addressing the] July-August violence and reform scheme.”

The party also condemned the thousands who took to the streets for two days calling for the Awami League to be banned.