Despotic in Dhaka

Bangladesh is sliding into one-party dictatorship

IN TERMS of international news stories per head of population, Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country of more than 160m, is among the world’s most underreported places. But recently it has been attracting headlines for ugly reasons. First came the religiously motivated murders—of more than two dozen secular bloggers, liberals and others since 2013, typically hacked to death with machetes; then, on May 11th, the execution of Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the country’s largest Islamist party, for atrocities committed during the war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. Less reported is Bangladesh’s remorseless descent into authoritarian rule. All three phenomena are symptoms of the same disease: a political culture that cannot brook dissent and which views power as a means to crush it.

The hanging of Mr Nizami is a reminder that Bangladesh was born with the disease. In the war of secession, probably hundreds of thousands died in the former East Pakistan, the Bengali half of a geographically divided country. The Bangladeshi government estimates that 3m died and accuses Pakistan of genocide, systematically killing intellectuals and professionals to blight the new country’s prospects. A crucial role was played by Al-Badr, a pro-Pakistan militia which in 2014 Nizami was convicted of having led.

Many Bangladeshis resented that for so long no one was held responsible for the crimes committed in 1971. So when the government of Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister from the Awami League, set up a tribunal in 2010 to try suspects, it was a popular move. It remains so, but the process has been a travesty: a witch-hunt to weaken opposition to the League rather than a search for justice. Mr Nizami is the fourth senior figure in his party, Jamaat-e-Islami, to be executed. The party was a coalition partner in the previous government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Sheikh Hasina’s nemesis, Khaleda Zia. Mr Nizami served as her industry minister. Jamaat is in decline, but still a force in parts of Bangladesh. Protesters took to the streets after the execution, though not in huge numbers; a strike called after the rejection of Mr Nizami’s final appeal on May 5th was poorly observed.

Bangladesh used to have a kind of rotating one-party system. Sheikh Hasina is trying to keep the one-party bit without the rotation. One of her supporters looks to Malaysia as a model, another moderate Muslim-majority country with a strong economic record and a democratic constitution, but with one party apparently immovable from power. In Bangladesh from 1991 to 2006 the League and BNP would rule in turns, winning elections thanks to popular disgust at the other’s failings, and using their stints in office to enrich themselves and hound the opposition. So entrenched was the winner-takes-all mentality that even the possibility of free elections was unimaginable, and polls were held under supposedly impartial caretaker governments. But after a landslide victory in 2008, the League changed the constitution to get rid of the caretaker arrangement. As a result the BNP boycotted the most recent election, in January 2014. No longer enjoying a popular mandate, and with opposition marginalised, the League has bullied and muzzled the press and bought off public officials with a hefty pay rise. The courts, civil service, army and police are all thoroughly politicised.

That Bangladesh’s government can get away with trampling on democracy, freedom and the rule of law owes much to two factors. One is the “Bangladesh paradox” that, despite everything, the country’s development record is respectable. Somehow, the political mayhem—the repression, the frequent street protests and strikes, the recurrent violence—does not do too much economic damage. Even now, GDP is growing by more than 6% a year.

The second factor is the awfulness of the most recent BNP government. On top of its incompetence, corruption and authoritarianism it was also seen as pandering to extremist Islamist groups. Under its rule, Bangladesh’s most important foreign relationship, with India, languished. (Mr Nizami, besides his war crimes, was also convicted of involvement, as a cabinet minister, in a huge arms-smuggling scandal in 2004, funnelling weapons to insurgents in India’s north-east.) In opposition, the BNP’s record is hardly much better. In early 2015 it was blamed for the killing of civilians to enforce a transport blockade it had called in an effort to bring down the government.

Bad news

For all its sins, the League is still heir to the liberal, secular dreams many Bangladeshis nurtured when they were led to independence by Sheikh Hasina’s father, Mujibur Rahman. The spate of murders, however, makes a mockery of these ideals. Targets have included atheists, liberals, Hindus, gay-rights activists and, on May 7th, a Sufi Muslim leader. The government insists that culprits are being hunted, caught and prosecuted. But it has seemed far more critical of the victims’ perceived crimes against Islam than of their murderers. The perception is of a culture of impunity and that the League, too, is appeasing Islamists.

The government blames the murders on the BNP and Jamaat. It resists claims that Islamic State and al-Qaeda are to blame, because it likes to present itself as the best bastion against Islamist extremism in Bangladesh. Many outsiders, nevertheless, fear fanaticism is on the rise. Last month eight Bangladeshi migrant workers were detained in Singapore, having allegedly formed a group called Islamic State in Bangladesh and plotted attacks in their homeland. With mainstream political competition foreclosed, extremist fringes are likely to thrive. The religious murders may provide grisly evidence of this. They also attract headlines abroad that foster the paranoid nightmares said to haunt Sheikh Hasina: that, having vanquished her enemies at home, she will somehow be brought down by meddling foreigners.

Source: The Economist