A Country in Crisis
“Are there any Hindu temples in the country that has not been burnt yet?”
A survivor wailed her lament to the news cameras. The channel was covering the latest atrocity in Bangladesh, when miscreants torched a small temple and desecrated the idols[1].
Bangladesh is in the middle of a political and communal crisis. Long been spared the curse of communal violence (Bangladesh did not see the heavy Hindu-Muslim rioting of the 1947 partition, as well as serious clashes when neighboring India was plunged into chaos in 1996, 2001 and 2006[2]), the country’s 9.2% Hindi minority are now the target of outright violent hostility. Today, Amnesty International released a statement deploring the wave of violent attacks against the Hindu minority and calling on the government to act promptly and provide them adequate protection[3]. The finger of blame has been squarely pointed at the country’s largest Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. Most of the leaders of that party are either in jail (awaiting sentencing for war crimes) or have been sentenced already.
Meanwhile, the work stoppage and lost productivity has cost the impoverished South Asian country US$3 billion so far[4]. Since the death sentence verdict for Delwar Hossain Sayedee, the Vice President of Jamaat-e-Islami, on 28 February, 2013, 16 people died on the first day of strikes called by the party in protest. The following day’s violence left 60 dead. Everyone expected some sort of a backlash after the verdict against Sayedee, but the intensity of the violence and the increasing casualty figures have surprised and shocked many people[5]. The youth wing of the party, the Chhatra Shibir, are alleged to have attacked government buildings, rail links between major cities and torched buses ferrying innocent commuters. Jamaat-e-Islami has officially threatened a few atheist bloggers with death, and they now face a ban from politics due to acts violence perpetrated by the Shibir[6]. Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad, a group responsible for overseeing Hindu temples, said over 700 Hindu houses had either been torched or vandalized[7].
The Jamaat-e-Islami have vehemently denied the claims, and they maintain their protest is against a war crime tribunal that is unfair, unjust, and dishonest. However, survivors of the attacks (over 40 temples have been burnt already) have all stated that the attackers were taking part in rallies organized by the Jamaat-e-Islami and Chhatra Shibir[8]. The Jamaat-e-Islami party has countered by blaming supporters of the ruling Awami League party for the violence. They have also claimed the whole tribunal process is an attempt by the ruling party to settle scores and not about delivering justice[9]. Meanwhile, a group of influential Islamic scholars have planned a rally in Dhaka on March 23, 2013, calling for the death sentence for war criminals and a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami politics, further denting the Jamaat’s religious credentials[10].
The only time minorities and civilians were targeted with such ferocity was way back in 1971, when the country fought for its independence from Pakistan. In fact, the roots of the present violence go back to that conflict, and the two are inherently linked.
The Liberation War of 1971
The year was 1971 and a brutal genocide was going on in East Pakistan. In an attempt to crush the Bengali forces seeking independence for East Pakistan, the West Pakistani military regime unleashed a systematic campaign of mass murder, rape, looting, arson and genocide which aimed at killing millions of Bengalis and destabilizing the country[11].
“Kill three million of them,” said President Yahya Khan at the February conference, “and the rest will eat out of our hands.”[12] Bangladeshi authorities claim that 3 million people were indeed killed, while the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, an official Pakistan Government investigation, put the figure as low as 26,000 civilian casualties[13]. The fact is that the 1971 war was one of the worst genocides of the World War II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and probably surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66)[14]. To put this into perspective, the Nazis took 5 years to kill 6 million Jews during the Second World War. The Pakistani Army and its collaborators killed 3 million in just over 9 months.
Chilling firsthand testimony of these massacres came from a brave Pakistani journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas. In an attempt to prove that the situation was normal, the West Pakistani regime deported all foreign journalists, and invited 8 of their own, with close ties to the military, to East Pakistan. They were given a 10 day tour of the province. When they returned home, seven of them duly wrote what they were told to. Mascarenhas, however, refused[15]. With great courage, and making a great sacrifice – he had to leave the land of his birth with his family, never to see it again – he published his article in UK’s Sunday Times. It was this article that alerted the West, so far in support of Pakistan, to the reality on the ground, and gave Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, the boost to resolve the crisis.
It must be mentioned here that Mascarenhas also referenced the murder of non-Bengalis by Bengalis (he estimated the number between 20,000 and 100,000[16]), but then added that the Pakistani army genocide far surpassed that in scale and in planning. At the time of his report, 250,000 Bengalis had already been killed by the Pakistani army, and a further 2 million deaths were planned. Over the course of the next few months, 10 million Bengali refugees (mostly Hindu) would flee to India and a little over 400,000 women would be raped, some repeatedly in army bases. The Guinness Book of Records lists the Bangladesh Genocide as one of the top 5 genocides in the 20th century. Bangladesh finally won her independence on December 16, 1971 when the Pakistani army formally surrendered.
The International Crimes Tribunal
Currently, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh is Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had led Bangladesh to freedom. One of the promises made by her party in the elections of 2008 was to set up a tribunal to try those few Bangladeshis who had aided the Pakistani army in 1971 in their reign of terror. These had belonged to the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the largest Islamist party in East Pakistan, and their para-military unit Al Badr. Another militia group was composed of by some other religious Bengali parties, and named “Al Shams”. The Pakistani Army, composed largely of elements from Punjab, found itself and its cause pretty much alienated from the local populace, and therefore sought the help of these three groups. Together, the Jamaat, Shams and Badr worked as the local guides for Pakistan Army supporting the troops providing logistics and information. However, as it failed to penetrate the general public which supported independence from Pakistan, its operational capabilities and efficiency remained low[17].
The tribunal, called the International Crimes Tribunal, should have been the standard of justice in the South Asian nation. For over forty years, people had seen those who had plotted against the very birth of the country reinvent themselves as “Islamic leaders”, patriots, scholars and leaders. Some, initially having fled to Pakistan after the war, had returned after a military coup had assassinated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. For years they had walked through the land in impunity. Suddenly, they would be facing the nation, finally on trial for their misdeeds. For older people who had lived through 1971, the memories of the war were still fresh and wounds still raw. The Tribunal was, and remains, extremely popular in Bangladesh.
However, the rampant corruption that troubles poor countries has made its way to this tribunal. For one, only members of the Opposition were charged and put on trial for crimes against humanity[18]. That may have been just a coincidence – the Jamaat attracted these religious scholars while most freedom fighters had gravitated towards the Awami League. However, greater discrepancies were to follow.
According to Human Rights Watch, “none of the judges heard all the evidence and were unable to assess the credibility of key witnesses, particularly in a trial involving 40-year old evidence and complex legal issues”. The chair of the court resigned after audio tapes and email correspondence were published concerning his conduct in his capacity as the presiding judge in the Sayedee case and other ICT matters.[19] The Economist published further emails and communications on December 13 which it said showed collusion between the judge, the prosecutors, and the executive.[20] Bangladesh newspaper Prothom Alo recounted of how a key defense witness was not allowed to testify[21] and his defense lawyer Toby Cadman (a British citizen) was not allowed entry into the country.
According to OpenDemocracy, under the guise of administering expedient justice, and in the absence of credible opposition, the government has clamped down on all critical voices. In 2010, Mahmudur Rahman, the Acting Editor of the daily Amar Desh was arrested and brutally tortured in custody. This was in response to an article printed in Amar Desh which implicated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, in corruption. More recently Kader Siddiqi, a decorated 1971 war hero, was summoned to court for suggesting the Bangladesh Home Minister, MK Alamgir, was involved in collaboration with the Pakistani Army in the war of 1971[22]. Justice, it seems, is only for those in the Opposition.
The Shahbag Protests
When the Tribunal found him guilty and handed down a life sentence to Abdul Quader Mollah on February 5, 2013, bloggers and online activists started a protest that soon grew to thousands of people in Shahbag intersection of Dhaka, demanding the death sentence for Mollah. For many Bangladeshis, it heralded the promise of something new – a peaceful, non-partisan protest. Perhaps it would change the way politics was done in Bangladesh. Yet, the movement as a reawakening was doomed to failure from the start.
The Qurʾān instructs Muslims to stand up for justice; yet for Shahbag activists nothing short of the death penalty for all those charged would do. “Fashi chai” (‘we want a hanging’) was their slogan. Forgotten was the notion of innocent until guilty, or the concept of a fair trial, or the independence of the judiciary.
Second, since they decided not to stand up for justice but for an end to a political party (the Jamaat-e-Islami), no one from Shahbag raised their voice against the injustices done by the government. The offices of newspaper, Naya Diganta were attacked and burnt by ruling regime youth following Shahbag’s calls. When the police arrived afterwards, far from dealing with the arsonists, they raided the offices and detained an employee. Meanwhile another opposition newspaper, the Daily Sangram, has suffered repeated police raids upon its offices without any specific allegations being made. Shahbag has threatened arson against both these papers, as well as the daily Amar Desh; the latter was symbolically burned within Shahbag itself[23].
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block Shahbag activists faced was the presence of atheists and those virulently opposed to Islam amidst them. While Bangladesh is a fairly tolerant society with freedom of religion, the organizers should have realized the optics of allowing a few atheist bloggers represent them in the media while they were opposed to the largest “Islamist” party in the country. The number of these bloggers might have been low, but they managed to attract a very large audience.
Asif Mohiuddin, a key organizer of Shahbag protests, had an anti-Islam blog. In an interview on Christian Science Monitor, he said, “Us pushing for the death sentence is the tip of the iceberg; this is a way to begin to unravel religion from politics.”[24] Another blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, another anti-Islam writer and atheist, was tragically hacked to death for his statements[25]. The police have since arrested five students for his murder[26]. These events perpetuated an appearance that the Shahbag movement was a movement against Islam in Bangladesh, when reality was much more complex. Today, those arrested for the murder of Rajib Haider had admitted to be working under the auspices of the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership.
What Can Be Done Now?
“Indeed, Allāh will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. And when Allāh intends for a people ill, there is no repelling it. And there is not for them besides Him any patron.” – Qurʾān, 13:11
As a nation, we must pray to Allāh for guidance. We must try and change the condition of our people – if we can do so by our actions, that’s the best. If not, then by our tongue and speech, and if not, we must hate evil within our heart. In Bangladesh, the debate has become polarized. Either you support the razakars (traitors) and war criminals, or you are against al Islam. Honest citizens must be the voice of reason. We have to say that yes, we support a trial and we want those who are guilty to be punished, but by a fair, transparent and honest tribunal. And if, as is the case sometimes, there is no enough evidence to find someone guilty, even if we know he is, we must resign ourselves to leaving the judgement of that individual to Allāh alone.
Source: Muslim Matters
