Bangladesh bracing for violent protests, strikes following Islamist leader's execution

Special tribunals for 1971 crimes
Three years ago, a popular movement was beginning to gain support in Bangladesh, calling for the punishment of the leaders and members of the Muslim militias and those who offered political support for the atrocities these militias committed.

After Kamaruzzaman’s execution, Imran Sarkar, who started a movement calling for the trial of war criminals in February 2012, told the Guardian: “Today is a victory for us. We made the tribunal, tried the war crimes accused and secured justice. We hope to see the rule of law established by the trial. We want a just society.”

In December 2013 the hanging of another Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, who had been found guilty by the tribunal of killing intellectuals, prompted widespread unrest in Bangladesh, leading to violent clashed between Jamaat-e-Islami supporters and the security forces.

Jamaat-e-Islami harshly denounced Kamaruzzaman’s execution as an act of “revenge and pre-planned murder” and called for a countrywide general strike.

Kamaruzzaman’s lawyers argued during his trial that he was only 19 when the nine-month war broke out and was too young to have led any militia against independence.

Three women who lost their husbands testified against Kamaruzzaman.

“All thirty-two widows who are still alive are happy the notorious killer has been hanged. Finally we got justice,” said Mohammad Jalal Uddin, a farmer who lost seven members of his extended family in the killing.

The trials of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders – twelve others have so far been convicted, five of whom sentenced to death and awaiting execution — have been criticized by international human rights groups and specialist in the laws of war. “The execution of Mr. Kamaruzzaman has taken place following a trial which has been widely recognized as being deeply flawed” Shishir Manir, legal counsel to Kamaruzzaman, told the Guardian.

The special tribunal was set up in 2010 by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, who is the leader of the Awami League and the daughter of the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, co-founder of the Awami League, the leader of the pro-independence forces during the 1971 war, and the first president of independent Bangladesh. Hashina said the tribunals were set to “secure justice for victims of the 1971 conflict and heal the rifts of the civil war era”.

Hasina said the trials of the Jamaat-e-Islami leaders would continue despite pressure from abroad and opposition at home. Jamaat-e-Islami received less than 3 percent of the popular vote in the last election, and has not been effective as a political organizations since most of its senior leaders have been convicted and jailed.

Ravina Shamdasani, UN high commissioner for human rights, last week urged Bangladesh not to execute Kamaruzzman, saying that his trial failed to meet international legal standards.

The United States, too, urged Bangladesh not to go ahead with the execution. “We have seen progress, but still believe that further improvements … could ensure these proceedings meet domestic and international obligations,” said the state department spokeswoman Marie Harf.

After Bangladesh gained independence in 1971, the new government put many of the Jamaat-e-Islami leaders on trial, but these trials were halted after the August 1975 military coup in which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family – except two daughters, one of them Sheikh Hasina, who were on a visit to Germany at the time – were killed. His daughter Hasina revived the tribunal process in 2010, fulfilling a pledge she made during the 2008 elections, which brought her to power.

Jamaat-e-Islami may be in disarray, but 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 Hasina.

The Hasina government, 2009-presnet
Critics of Hasina say that rather than model herself after Nelson Mandela to lead an effort of national reconciliation, she has proved herself petty, small-minded, and vindictive, turning Bangladesh from a disorderly but vibrant democracy into an increasingly repressive political system. Observers note that Hasina has embarked on personal vendetta against people who, she believes, wronged her family four decades ago and who, she argue, are trying to deprive her family of its rightful place at the summit of Bangladesh politics. Just two examples:

• The increasingly bitter clashes between Sheikh Hasina and former prime minister Khaleda Zia, leader of the opposition party BNP, have earned the two politicians the title of “battling begums” (battling ladies). The battle royal between these two representatives of Bengali dynastic political families is but the latest chapter in feuds dating back to independence from Pakistan in 1971. Khaleda Zia’s husband, Ziaur Rahman, became military dictator after the 15 August 1975 assassination of Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father. Ziaur Rahman was himself assassinated six years later, in 1981, by assassins affiliated with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League.
• When Hasina came to power in 2009, she ordered the creation of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and anti-terror unit of the Bangladesh security forces. This initial mandate notwithstanding, since 2009 the RAB engaged almost exclusively in killing, arresting, or harassing leaders and members of the BNP opposition. Journalists and human rights observers have recorded the “disappearance” of 202 BNP leaders and supporters in the last five years. Hundreds of opposition activists who were not “disappeared” or murdered in extrajudicial killings on the orders of Hsina’s government, were put in jail on trumped up criminal charges. Many have gone into hiding.

Critics of Hasina say that her increasingly repressive policies, coupled with her vindictiveness and the desire to punish those who plotted against her father in 1975 – and the family members of those who plotted against her father – have caused her government to follow policies which have deepened social divisions, intensified inter-communal suspicion and mistrust, and undermined the rule of law. International legal observers say that the special tribunals she has set up are not much more than kangaroo courts where the prosecution and the judges play fast lose with the rules of evidence in order to reach verdicts decided on in advance.

The Financial Times notes that analysts inside and outside of Bangladesh say they fear that Hasina’s rule is now so repressive that she can never stand down for fear of reprisals by a future BNP government. Hasina is thus leading Bangladesh toward entrenched authoritarian rule which would end the regular alternation of power between the Awami League and the BNP.

Observers also note that the jailing and executions by Sheikh Hasina’s government of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders for 1971 war crimes is, in fact, not much more than token acts by a government so consumed and distracted by its campaign against Khaleda Zia and her BNP opposition party, that it has neglected dealing with the real danger of Islamist extremism nurtured in Bangladesh’s proliferating madrassas, or Islamic schools.