Bangladesh in turmoil

Bangladesh is a divided country whose fissures are getting deeper. This week, the Bangladesh government hanged two opposition leaders, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid – to much local and international outrage. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party, called a national strike as international human rights organisations criticised the ‘miscarriage of justice’ in the trials. The death sentences have been meted out by a controversial war-crimes tribunal set up in 2013. While the tribunal established by the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina Wajid was portrayed as being a replication of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the reality appears to be vastly different. After the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Abdul Qadir Molla was sentenced to death in 2013, it quickly became clear that neither truth nor reconciliation would have anything to do with the tribunal. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s first aim should have been to reconcile tensions in Bangladesh, rather that increasing the polarisation. It is important to note that the biggest opposition to the executions has come from within Bangladesh.
They are huge doubts about the fairness of the judicial process involved. Much of it seems to be tied in to the bitterness that marks Bangladesh’s modern politics with the hostility between Sheikh Hasina and her archrival Khaleda Zia playing a key role in what is happening. It simply cannot be a coincidence that the hangings were announced as Zia returned home from a trip abroad. That one of the executed opposition leaders was a six-time minister, while the other had also served as a federal minister, shows clearly that the executions had more to do with political vendettas than justice. Amnesty International has criticised the executions for targeting opposition parties, disappeared defence witnesses and clear violations of the rules and procedures of a free and fair trial. Moreover, it has questioned whether using the death penalty serves any purpose. Human Rights Watch has also pointed to how only four to five defence witnesses were allowed to the defendants. The latest hangings are an unfortunate outcome of the internal politics of Bangladesh. At Pakistan’s end, it is true that the overreaction to the hangings is a product of our collective denial of why 1971 happened. But that does not mean that the concerns over the trials of opposition leaders for war crimes are not real. How can justice for what happened in 1971 come through politics of revenge? Bangladesh today faces a long litany of problems. They stem from an unstable democracy and include extremism and grotesque human rights abuses including the murders of four bloggers, a publisher, an aid worker and others. These are the problems that need solutions. With opposition leader Khaleda Zia back after a prolonged stay out of the country, the wounds of Bangladesh are only going to get deeper if vengeance is allowed to take a front seat.