Beyond the Prison: How Bangladesh’s Anti Terrorism Law Produces a Society of Control

"We are in a generalised crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure prison, hospital, factory, school, family. The family is an “interior,” in crisis like all other interiors scholarly, professional, etc. The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It’s only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door.These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing the disciplinary societies. " ( Postscript on the Societies of Control; Gilles Deleuze May, 1990) In 1990, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote a short piece called "Postscript on the Societies of Control." He argued that the old way power worked, locking people inside fixed places like prisons, schools, and factories, was slowly livid . In its place, a new kind of power was rising. This power does not need walls. It works through open networks, constant tracking, and rules that can change at any moment. Deleuze called this the 'society of control '. Bangladesh is, right now, a striking example of this idea in action. And the clearest tool doing this work is not a new invention. It is an old law, dressed up again and again: the Anti terrorism Act.

A Law Built for One Purpose, Used for Another

The Anti-Terrorism Act was passed in 2009 under the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina. On paper, its job was simple. Stop terrorism. Punish people who plan violence against the state or its people. Nobody objects to that goal. But laws are not just words on paper. They are tools, and tools are used by whoever holds them. Over the years, rights groups say the Act was quietly turned into something else, a wide net that could catch journalists, activists, and ordinary critics of the government, not just violent extremists. This is the first sign of a control law rather than a discipline law. A disciplinary law punishes a clear, fixed crime. A control law stays vague on purpose, so almost anyone can be pulled into it when needed.

The Fall of Hasina Did Not End the Pattern

In August 2024, after weeks of deadly student-led protests that killed around 1,400 people, Sheikh Hasina's government collapsed. An interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, took charge. Many people hoped this would mean the end of repressive laws. Laws like the Digital Security Act and the old Cyber Security Act were scrapped or replaced. But the Anti Terrorism Act did not disappear. It did not even get weaker. It got amended and, according to Human Rights Watch, the new amendments gave the interim government even more power to ban political parties, restrict speech, and detain people without much oversight. This is the real heart of the story, and it is deeply Deleuzian. Deleuze's point was never that one bad government uses control to stay in power. His point was that control is a system, a logic, that can survive the fall of any single government. The people at the top can change completely. The law stays, and keeps doing its job.

Recent Events That Show the Pattern

Consider a few things that happened in just the last year or so: The ban on the Awami League (May 2025). Using new powers under the amended Anti-Terrorism Act, the interim government imposed a temporary ban on the Awami League, the very party that had ruled the country for over a decade. The ban restricted public meetings, publications, and even online speech supporting the party. Human Rights Watch pointed out something uncomfortable: the interim government, which came to power promising to end political persecution, was now using the exact same tool banning a party and criminalising its supporters' speech that critics had accused Hasina's government of using against her own opponents for years! Now we can look beneath some events ; The Dhaka Reporters Unity incident (August 2025). A group of sixteen people, including journalists and academics, gathered for a discussion at the Dhaka Reporters Unity. A mob accused them of being Awami League sympathisers and disrupted the event. What happened next is the telling part: instead of arresting the people who caused the disruption, police detained and charged the sixteen participants, the journalists and academics, under the Anti Terrorism Act. A law meant for bombers and militants was used against people sitting in a room having a conversation. Operation Devil Hunt (February 2025): After clashes between Awami League members and student protesters, a nationwide crackdown called "Operation Devil Hunt" led to at least 8,600 arrests. Many of those detained were held under the Special Powers Act and the Anti Terrorism Act laws that rights groups have long called tools "previously used to suppress dissent," now being used again, just by different hands. Continued unrest into 2026. Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death in November 2025 by the International Crimes Tribunal, tried in absentia for her role in the deadly 2024 crackdown. Meanwhile, violence has not stopped. Political activists have been killed. Protests continue against the government's own reform charter. And civil society groups report that anti-terror law is still being used to criminalise opposition figures and journalists, even as officials speak the language of reform and justice. Taken together, these events do not look like isolated mistakes. They look like a pattern. A law survives every change of government because it is useful to whoever is in charge at the time.

Why This Fits Deleuze So Well

Deleuze described control as something that never really finishes with you. In a disciplinary system, you serve your sentence, and you are done. The prison door opens, and you walk free. In a control system, there is no clean exit. Deleuze compared it to being in permanent, ongoing debt. You are never simply free; you are always being monitored, always one accusation away from being caught in the net again. That is exactly how the Anti Terrorism Act functions today in Bangladesh. Its definitions of "terrorism" and related offences are broad enough to stretch over almost any political activity the government of the day dislikes. A journalist attending a discussion event. A former ruling party's supporters are posting online. Protesters demanding reform. None of these is what most people picture when they hear the word terrorism. Yet all of them have been folded into its reach.

This is not really about ideology. It does not matter whether the government wearing the crown is the old Awami League or the new administration. The tool itself is built for continuous, flexible control, a permanent state of you might be next rather than a fixed line that everyone can see and avoid crossing. That uncertainty is not a side effect. It is the whole point. People who are unsure exactly where the line sits tend to censor themselves far more than the law technically requires.

A Necessary Caution

It would be unfair, though, to treat this as a settled verdict against everyone involved. The officials behind the 2025 amendments say they were needed to hold Awami League figures accountable for real abuses committed while in power, and that the changes came from demands raised by political parties and student groups after the uprising. Bangladesh does face genuine security concerns, including real extremist violence and communal attacks reported through 2025. A law addressing terrorism is not, by itself, illegitimate.

The more careful claim I want to articulate is that I won’t say everyone who uses this law has bad intentions. It is that the structure of the law, regardless of who is using it, behaves exactly the way Deleuze predicted control mechanisms would behave: flexible, survives political change, expands its own reach when convenient, and keeps citizens in a permanent, low-grade state of watchfulness rather than clear, fixed limits. Gilles Deleuze wrote his postscript over three decades ago, thinking mostly about Europe and the shift from factories to networks. He probably never imagined it would describe, almost exactly, how a specific law in South Asia would work across two very different governments in the same country. But that is exactly what has happened with Bangladesh's Anti Terrorism Act. It has outlived the government that wrote it. It has been used by the very people who once suffered under it. And it continues, quietly, to shape what people feel safe saying, printing, and organising not through walls and cells, but through the constant, shifting possibility of being caught in its net. That is not just a law doing its job. That is control, doing exactly what Deleuze said it would.