International commentators call the recent violent attacks in Bangladesh human rights disaster, linking it to the country’s “transformation from a rather dysfunctional but manageable democracy into an authoritarian state”, London’s Financial Times reports.
The newspaper referred to the International Crisis Group’s latest report on Bangladesh’s political conflict, which warned of a possible democratic collapse.
The ICG report said the government’s heavy-handed measures are damaging its own legitimacy and benefiting extremists.
Financial Times published an article titled “Bangladesh pays for bad politics in blood” on Thursday, focusing on the killings of bloggers, foreigners, and followers of Hinduism, Christianity, Shia Islam, Sufism and the Ahmadi sect.
Also, The Guardian newspaper ran a similar report recently, which said Bangladesh’s pluralism is at risk if Sheikh Hasina does not stop extremists.
According to Financial Times, the first mistake by premier Sheikh Hasina’s government was “to yield to hardline Muslim views on the supposed horrors of atheism or homosexuality instead of standing up for pluralism and secularism”.
“The second was the sustained assault by security forces and the judiciary on government opponents, including editors and liberal and Islamist politicians,” the newspaper pointed out.
However, it added, officials depict the onslaught as a response to the violent campaign of strikes and boycotts waged by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party and its Jamaat-e-Islami allies around the last general elections two years ago.
“But the victimisation of the main opposition parties and neutral observers has reached levels extreme even by the standards of the country’s traditionally unpleasant politics, with mass arrests, extrajudicial killings and implausible prosecutions,” wrote Financial Times.
The newspaper quoted William Milam, a former US ambassador in Dhaka, as saying that he feared Bangladesh is now on a “frogmarch towards not only authoritarianism but really one-party dictatorship”.
The report mentioned that Hasina, whose government has taken to denying that al-Qaeda or Isis are active in Bangladesh, blamed the “BNP-Jamaat nexus” for the latest killings.
“The truth is that the government faces a challenging task in fighting terrorists, who are usually local radicals impressed by international brands such as Isis, but is making the job still harder by persecuting its legitimate opponents and driving them underground,” said the newspaper.
“Ms Hasina cannot say she has not been warned about the path down which she is leading Bangladesh and its 160m people,” the newspaper added.
Source: Prothom Alo
That is the way it is ( for politicians in 3rd world ), if you want to stay in power. Sweet talks are okay for a conversation but running a country is altogether a different ball game.
Hasina is doing just fine for she has no place to fall back to.
Does anybody think that democracy has a type like’dictatorial democracy’? If there is any, then it is being practiced in right earnest in Bangladesh.Just look how the UZ and UP elections have been conducted. Even though 10% – 12% of the opposition party candidates won, they have been either castrated or sent to jail or hiding. This is the real face of democracy in this country.