BNP has characterised the past sixteen years as a “period of darkness,” accusing the former government of extensive political repression, enforced disappearances, fabricated legal cases, and systematic suppression of dissenting voices.

Marking the Human Rights Day, BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman made the statement in a Facebook post released on Wednesday.

Tarique Rahman said that for sixteen long years, Bangladesh lived beneath a darkened sky. Some felt it sharply, others carried the weight quietly. But for many, especially those whose politics diverged from the deposed regime’s ruling line, the darkness was a lived reality: midnight knocks, fabricated cases, brutality endured, terror seeping into daily culture, and families waiting by doors that never opened again.

No party bore this burden more than BNP. Across extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, custodial deaths, and false charges, BNP leaders, activists, and supporters formed the largest share of the wounded and missing. And in the 2024 mass uprising, it was again BNP’s ranks that suffered the highest number of deaths and injuries.

But the suffering stretched far beyond one political group. Students, writers, journalists, bystanders, and ordinary citizens also felt the impact of a climate where fear replaced the ‘everyday essentials’ that today’s Human Rights Day asks us to protect, the essentials of dignity, safety, and freedom of expression.

In those years, even I was stripped of the most basic rights of voicing my opinion. Since 2015, I was silenced by an order prohibiting newspapers, electronic media and social media in the country from publishing or airing my words. Yet even from enforced silence, I kept fighting for the rights and democracy denied to millions, proving that a spirit committed to justice cannot be muted by decree.

Throughout these long dark years, Deshnetri Khaleda Zia became one of the clearest symbols of endurance. Her years marked by imprisonment, politically driven cases, and persistent attempts to erase her mirrored the broader experience of a society bulldozed into living under an increasingly authoritarian regime. Yet she remained steadfast in the principles she had upheld throughout Bangladesh’s democratic journey. She has always championed that rights belong to every citizen, and that a nation cannot thrive when fear shapes its public life.

Her resilience was never hers alone; it reflected the resilience of countless ordinary people. My mother too, like so many others across the nation, was made to endure the agony of seeing her son imprisoned and physically tortured. Like families everywhere torn apart by targeted repression, I lost my brother, and she lost a son.

But here is what history often overlooks: pain does not always produce bitterness. Our Deshnetri, my mother, exemplifies this more than anyone I know. It can shape people into guardians of a better future, and into people who understand that a nation cannot be rebuilt by repeating the injustices it survived.

What Bangladesh needs now is larger than politics. We envision a united country where human rights are guaranteed, where plurality of opinions are welcomed, where opposition is a healthy part of democracy rather than a threat, and where no one is erased for their beliefs.

BNP stands strong, choosing resolution over retribution. We reject the politics of vengeance and affirm that no Bangladeshi, whether ally or opposition, should ever again fear the institutions created to protect their rights.

On this 10 December, the global reminder that human rights are ‘everyday essentials’ feels especially urgent. We hold the stories of Abrar Fahad, Mushtaq Ahmed, Ilias Ali, Sajedul Islam Sumon, Sagor-Runi and so many others to ensure such injustices and impunity are never repeated.

BNP have suffered deeply, yet emerged stronger, guided by the belief that truth, justice, accountability, reconciliation and a shared commitment to the rule of law can build a Bangladesh that honours every voice and every life, a nation where human rights are defended as essential to our collective future.