Even the right to breathe feels like a hanging noose today. The surrounding air grows heavy with an unknown dread, and at the break of dawn, one hears the weeping of a mother or the heartbreaking laments of a wife. When a life grinds to a halt every minute and a fresh dream gets caged within four walls, the question arises—whose country is this anyway? Against whom is this cruel and indiscriminate war being waged?

The police are detaining more than one person every minute. It sounds unbelievable, but this is the rawest and most ruthless reality of this delta today. From May 1st to August 26th—a mere 118 days. Within this short span, nearly two hundred thousand people have ended up in dark prisons. Statistics show that an average of 1,650 people are arrested every day. Over a period of just four months, it is as though the entire population of a mid-sized town has been locked away behind bars!

The BNP has taken the seat of power, and Jamaat stands today as one of the major political forces in parliament. But if such ruthless oppression descends before the initial euphoria of power even fades, where does the security of the common people's future lie? More than 34,000 people have already been named as accused in over 23,000 cases. These are just the official records on paper. On what charges, under whose orders, and in whose interest were the remaining over 150,000 innocent people picked up? There is no state accountability or definitive explanation for these disappearances and arrests.

This scenario takes us back to that dark chapter from 2001 to 2006. Suppressing political opposition through phantom cases, military boots kicking doors in the dead of night, and creating an atmosphere of terror in every police station—the nightmare Bangladesh witnessed seems to have returned along the exact same blood-soaked path. The old stage of terror is being repackaged in a new guise. Ordinary citizens are being crushed in the wildfire of political revenge, whose only crime was the desperate plea to live in safety.

Who will answer for the tears of the mother waiting by the door latch, or the child unable to sleep at night awaiting their father's return? Power may change political hands, and streets may be stained with blood out of the arrogance of authority, but is stripping away the basic right to sleep peacefully in one's own house in an independent, sovereign nation called democracy? Or has the country turned into a vast open-air prison today, where every citizen is merely counting down the hours until their own arrest?

When politics becomes blinded by the madness of revenge, the tears of ordinary people fail to reach the blind ruler. But history forgives no one. The silent tears of those whose rhythm of life is being lost in dark cells under the arrogance of power will one day demand a full and precise accounting on the pages of history.

Author: Dr. Abul Hasnat Milton, Journalist, Political Analyst, and Chief Editor, The Source News Bangla