The Bangladesh Awami League party has stood with the people of the country for 77 years. Through occupation and uprising, war and liberation, poverty and progress, the party always fought for Bangladesh’s democratic aspirations. As it enters its 78th year, the party has made it clear that the struggle is not over and the Awami League will never break. This anniversary, however, is not a quiet celebration. It is a rallying cry.

To understand what is at stake today, one must first understand what the Awami League has given to Bangladesh. Founded in 1949, the party did not simply participate in the nation’s history, it made it. It stood at the forefront of the Language Movement, when Bengalis died for the right to speak their mother tongue. It championed the Six-Point Movement, the blueprint for Bengali self-determination.

It led the mass uprising of 1969 and then guided Bangladesh through the Liberation War of 1971 to independence under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This is not a party that inherited power. This is a party that earned it, through sacrifice, imprisonment and blood. No political force in Bangladesh can claim a deeper or more authentic connection to the ideals upon which this nation was founded.

When independence was won, the Awami League did not rest. It took on the grim, unglamorous work of rebuilding a country shattered by war. It built institutions from rubble. It laid the foundations of a modern state. That commitment to nation-building is the thread that runs through every chapter of Awami League governance.

Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina led Bangladesh through a transformation that the world recognised and admired. The achievements are not talking points, they are facts visible in the lives of millions of Bangladeshis. Under her watch, Bangladesh invested in infrastructure on an unprecedented scale, connecting communities and driving commerce. Energy production expanded to bring electricity to those who had lived in darkness. Digital connectivity was built not as a luxury but as a lifeline, linking citizens to government services, to markets, and to the world.

Poverty was reduced not through slogans but through sustained policy. Women’s empowerment became a pillar of national development, with girls studying in schools and women entering the workforce in numbers that would have seemed impossible a generation earlier. Social welfare programmes reached the most vulnerable, those that other governments had left behind.

These are the milestones of a government that governed for the people. These are the achievements that Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League will forever be associated with. No campaign of political persecution can take them away.

The 77th anniversary of the Awami League arrives under a cloud that should shame any government that claims to believe in democratic values. According to party leaders, thousands of Awami League activists have been subjected to arrests, legal cases, and political persecution. The party’s activities have been restricted. The political space that any functioning democracy depends upon has been deliberately narrowed.

The Awami League has been clear: these cases are not about justice. They are about politics. They are instruments of suppression dressed up in legal language. History has seen this before: governments that cannot win arguments resort to imprisoning those who make them. Governments that fear a party’s popularity try to destroy it through the courts rather than the ballot box.

The Awami League is calling for exactly what any honest person should support: the release of political detainees, the withdrawal of politically motivated cases, and the removal of restrictions on legitimate political activity. These are not radical demands. They are the baseline requirements of democratic governance and rule of law. They are enshrined in Bangladesh’s own constitution and in every international framework on human rights to which Bangladesh is a signatory.

The Awami League’s message at 77 is rooted in the same values that drove its founding 77 years ago: Freedom of expression, democratic rights, peaceful political participation, equal treatment under the law and national unity. Also included are rejection of extremism, communalism, and divisive politics.

These are not the demands of a party that seeks to dominate. They are the demands of a party that believes in a Bangladesh where all voices are heard, where politics is contested in public squares and at the ballot boxes rather than in prison cells and courtrooms. They are the demands of a party that respects the independence movement’s ideals enough to insist that Bangladesh lives up to them.

Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League have committed to pursuing their objectives through democratic means. That is the only commitment that matters. A party that fights for democracy through democratic methods deserves the freedom to do so. Denying them that freedom is not governance, it is fear.

Throughout its 77-year history, the Awami League has maintained that its ultimate source of strength are the people of Bangladesh – the farmers, garment workers, students, mothers, freedom fighters and their descendants – and not institutions, military or international backing.

That connection cannot be broken by arrests or restricted by filing legal cases. It cannot be legislated away or suppressed by decree. The Awami League has faced military dictatorship, assassination attempts against its leaders, their exile and imprisonment. But, every time, it has made a comeback because the people backed the party.

This anniversary is, therefore, not a moment of weakness but of reaffirmation. The Awami League enters its 78th year with its history intact, values uncompromised and commitment to the people of Bangladesh unbroken. Sheikh Hasina’s record of transforming this country speaks for itself. The party she leads speaks for the millions who believe that Bangladesh’s future must be shaped by national unity, democratic values, and the ideals of the independence movement.

(Abu Obaidha Arin is a Bangladeshi writer focused on politics, governance, and the societal impact of digital systems. Views expressed are own)