Sir Keir Starmer met with a senior official from Bangladesh’s ousted ruling party last month, despite the Awami League being accused of embezzlement and allowing its security forces to kill protesters.
The British prime minister met Anwaruzzaman Chowdhury, the ousted mayor of Sylhet city and a key party figure, at a dinner hosted by Labor at Glasgow’s Crowne Plaza hotel in December. The pair were pictured speaking at the black-tie event for Labor supporters.
The meeting was the culmination of decades of rapprochement between the Awami League and the Labor Party that helped the British party win key parliamentary seats and make inroads with Britain’s Bangladeshi community.
However, allegations of corruption against some members of Bangladesh’s former ruling family have attracted attention. Municipal minister under pressure from Starmer, Tulip Siddiqand raised questions about the wisdom of the long-standing relationship between the two sides.
The Awami League, led by Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina, ruled the South Asian country for 16 years previously. to be knocked down during a student-led protest last summer.
In Bangladesh, hundreds of people were killed over the summer in clashes between police and supporters of Sheikh Hasina and protesters. Regime-linked forces have been accused of using disproportionate force against civilians, including firing live ammunition.
Siddiq was named last month in an investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission, amid allegations that her family embezzled $5 billion from a nuclear power plant project. The family denies all allegations of wrongdoing.
Earlier this week, Siddiq also referred herself to the government’s ethics watchdog after the Financial Times revealed she had been offered a £195,000 property in London’s King’s Cross by someone linked to the Awami League.
Posts on social media reveal that the Labor Party has become closely aligned with the Awami League over the years, including accepting support from elected Bangladeshi politicians.
Starmer was pictured accepting a donation check on behalf of the Labor Party from someone with links to the Awami League, while he and Sadiq Khan, the Labor mayor of London, were pictured meeting key figures, including Chowdhury.
Khan said on Facebook that it was a “true honour” to meet Chowdhury last May, after receiving his support ahead of the capital’s municipal elections. During the meeting, Chowdhury said he had been campaigning for Khan for over a decade.
Chowdhury did not respond to a request for comment.
This relationship also helped Labor penetrate the British Bangladeshi community ahead of the general election. The FT’s analysis of election data suggests there were at least 17 parliamentary seats where the voting-age Bangladeshi population was larger than Labor’s winning majority last July.
Starmer’s seat of Holborn and St Pancras – which he won with a majority of around 11,000 votes last summer – has more than 6,000 voting age residents of Bangladeshi origin.
Awami League supporters campaigned across the country for Labor in last year’s general election, attending events in Lancashire and Greater Manchester and accompanying Siddiq on campaign trips, according to posts on social networks and people with knowledge of the events.
A Labor official told the FT that the “breakthroughs” into the community had been partly driven by the association between Siddiq and his once-ruling family in Bangladesh.
His grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, helped the country gain independence from Pakistan in 1971 before being assassinated four years later alongside many of his family members. Only Siddiq’s mother, Sheikh Rehana, and his aunt survived.
“Siddiq’s family is the Kennedy family of Bangladeshi politics,” the official said.
Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth term in 2023 amid allegations of electoral fraud, has long been seen as a secular force against the region’s Islamist politics. But the regime has been accused of siphoning off funds from the country’s banks and using detention without charge to silence dissidents.
The International Criminal Court in Bangladesh on Monday issued arrest warrants for Sheikh Hasina and 11 of her senior officials for their alleged role in enforced disappearances.
Chris Hopkins, director of political research at research institute Savanta, said Labor was more reliant on the diaspora vote than its political rivals, forcing it to forge alliances to reach out to certain communities. .
“It may not be a priority in the Westminster bubble, but it will be a priority for those communities and, rightly or wrongly, Labor will become guilty by association,” Hopkins added.
A grassroots organization, Labor Friends of Bangladesh – founded in 2005 but increasingly closely linked to the Awami League – has also played a leading role in coordinating Labor’s campaign efforts.
“In recent years [Labour Friends of Bangladesh] has been widely used to promote the Awami League,” said Ohid Ahmed, a former member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the League’s main political rival, who founded the grassroots group but left the Labor Party in 2010. “I don’t don’t think anyone on the other side or who believed in the other political parties. . . I was even able to attend their meetings.
Howard Dawber, chairman of Bangladesh Labor Friends since 2010 and deputy mayor of London, said the organization has supporters from all parties and “has worked very hard not to get drawn into Bangladeshi politics “. He added: “It’s a difficult tightrope to walk. »
Today, Labor’s use of the Awami League as a channel to reach a minority community may be forced to change.
“Historically, Labor understood that the Awami League was a good way to get votes, but despite many changes since then they have the misconception that they still have community support,” Ashraf said Hoque, associate professor of social anthropology at University College. London.
Besides diminishing the Awami League’s reputation, treating Anglo-Bangladeshi voters as one bloc has fueled unnecessary narratives about the community, he added. “This is a dysfunctional aspect of Labor politics.”
Labor said: “The UK and Bangladesh have long-standing ties in areas of mutual interest such as trade and security. It is entirely legitimate for politicians to meet with others from around the world, as MPs from all parties have done. Again, this does not mean an endorsement of their policies.”
Additional reporting by Oliver Hawkins
