BangladeshBangladesh bracing for violent protests, strikes following Islamist leader's execution
Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, 62, an assistant secretary general of the Bangladeshi Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged Saturday for crimes committed during the 1971 bloody war between Bengali nationalists and the Pakistani army. A special war crimes tribunal found him guilty of heading a Muslim militia group which was responsible for a massacre of at least 120 unarmed farmers during the conflict. The hanging Kamaruzzman is likely to galvanize the Islamists to intensify their campaign of civil and economic disruption and destabilization. The Islamists have also joined non-Islamist opposition parties, chief among them the major opposition party, the BNP, in an effort to topple the government.
Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, 62, an assistant secretary general of the Bangladeshi Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged Saturday for crimes committed during the 1971 bloody war between Bengali nationalists and the Pakistani army. A special war crimes tribunal found him guilty of heading a Muslim militia group which was responsible for a massacre of at least 120 unarmed farmers during the conflict (see “Bangladesh Supreme Court to hear Islamist leader’s death sentence appeal in April,” HSNW, 12 March 2015).
Brief history
Most of Bangladesh population is Muslim. In 1947, when the British Empire exited and allowed the emergence of an independent India and an independent Pakistan, the area now called Bangladesh was divided into a larger East Bengal, where the majority of the population was Muslim, and a smaller West Bengal, where the majority of the people were Hindus.
The Hindu West Bengalis opted to join India, while East Bengal existed as independent administrative unit, loosely affiliated with Pakistan, for eight years. In 1955 East Bengal decided to merge with, and become a province of, Pakistan, and accordingly changed the name of the territory to East Pakistan.
Pakistan (then called West Pakistan) and East Pakistan were not contiguous, and were separated by a large swath of Indian territory.
The Muslim population of East Pakistan was divided: Those who emphasized Bengali nationalism wanted an independent Bengali state. They supported the Awami League, the pro-independence party.
Those who emphasized Muslim fealty wanted East Pakistan to remain part of a larger Pakistani nation. They supported the major anti-independence party, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Pakistan was aware of Bengali nationalist sentiment, and for sixteen years – 1955-71 – ruled East Pakistan with an iron fist.
In 1971 the simmering tensions erupted into an all-out war between Bengali nationalists and the Pakistani army. The Pakistanis’ strategy was brutal: they killed about 300,000 Bengali civilians, focusing on killing intellectuals, teachers, scientists, artists, writers, journalists, community leaders, doctors and nurses, agricultural experts, and other educated and trained professionals: The Pakistanis wanted to make sure that even if an independent Bengali state did emerge, it would be hobbled by the absence of experts and specialists in all walks of civilian life.
Especially galling for many Bengalis was the role played in the atrocities by those Muslim Bengalis who opposed Bengali independence, and who were members of Jamaat-e-Islami: Thousands of them volunteered to be trained and equipped by the Pakistani military, and formed marauding militias which were especially brutal against fellow Bengalis – brutal and more effective than the Pakistani military because of their familiarity with the terrain and the people.
