War crimes trial draws global flak

An acrid call of history is whistling around almost half a century after Bangladesh yanked herself from the yoke of the Pakistani rule. But Pakistan is not alone in calling the recent hanging of two prominent politicians of Bangladesh as ‘unjustified and unfair.’

The relics of history is so poised and glued to rigidity that major media outlets and the politicians of the nations standing firm on Pakistan’s side in 1971 also labeled the hanging of Jamat leader Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid and BNP’s Salahuddin Quader  Chowdhury  as ‘political retribution’ while the rights groups reiterated anew that the trial did not meet international standards.

More worryingly, a slew of U.S. lawmakers anchored in foreign policy decision making described the ICT trial as “very flawed” while the State Department said on last Friday that ‘executions should not have taken place until it’s clear the trial process met international standards.’ An influential US media even painted the executions as “score-settling between old political rivals, not the giving of justice to victims of war.”

Such an image of the nation is hardly conducive to sustaining Bangladesh’s global clout as a moderate Muslim nation progressing faster in upward socio-economic indexing.

Analysts are also concerned that, as more hangings are expected of many other accused, the planned progress of the nation will be stymied by the instances of terrorism spiking phenomenally; the indicted number of the accused totaling 25 so far (13 from Jamat, 5 from Muslim League, 4 from BNP, 2 from JP and, 1 from Nejame Islami).

While many of those accused await hanging amidst tightening of political space for all shreds of oppositions—the civil society and the mass media inclusive—the justice has become, evidently, synonymous to political retribution to many global observers.

There’re more talks now than any time before that the incumbent AL regime is an autocratic labyrinth, and, the fears of international observers seem primed by the lessons of the recent past.

According to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a total of 60 people—including 29 civilians, nine security personnel and 22 extremists—were killed in terror incidents in 2014 alone. Another 379 victims—including 228 civilians, 18 security personnel and 133 extremists—were killed in 2013.

Bangladesh became part of Pakistan in 1947 due to its demography dotted by the predominance of people of Islamic faith. The Muslim League, Jamat-I-Islam and many others opposed the 1971 war on the same perspective they’ve held. In post-liberation period, they aligned with the BNP firmly to constitute what has popularly become the ‘nationalist-Islamist coalition.’

The bona fide of this compact was centered, and remains so to date, on its undiluted determination to withstand Indian ubiquitous hegemony over Bangladesh; a factor the incumbent Awami League is often accused of being oblivious about, or indifferent toward.

Meanwhile, this horrid secularist-Islamist tug was exploited by both camps

whenever political expediency warranted its judicious application, unbeknownst that politics and religion are not the twain to jibe well when the bone of the contention is to find a common ground to facilitate national reconciliation for the greater benefit of the people.

If this internal cleavage is allowed to spin further beyond the label of containment, the entire region of South Asia will plunge into bigger crisis. Moreover, a sane and durable response to terrorism is not state-sponsored acts of further terror. For terrorism anywhere is a convenient and less expensive means to seeking social justice by people or group that feels stings of victimization.

Unless handled with care and sensibility, the antagonism of the two camps can easily get dissolved with the streams of the international façades of political Islam wrecking havoc elsewhere. The regional and global ramifications, compounded by toxic enticement of doctrinal religious intoxication, can transcend Bangladesh’s borders too easily, or might already have done so by now in a substantive manner.

One point of caution poses centrally to the understanding of what’s brewing in and around Bangladesh: the natural trend of the Muslims of neighbouring countries to empathize with the pains of Bangladeshi Muslims if it’s proven that the latter is victimized for their faith and other ethnic dogmas.

Muslims constitute about 10 per cent of Myanmar’s over 51 million populations (2014 census), mostly abutting Bangladesh borders,  while, in India, Islam is the second-largest religion; about 15 per cent (173 million in total) of the Indians being of Islamic faith, according to the 2011 census.

From a pure geopolitical standpoint, something more ominous is also discernible. The 2011 census offers another clear picture of Muslim demography in neighbouring West Bengal and Assam; the West Bengal having a Muslim population of 25.39 million, almost 28 % of the over 91 million total, while 34.7 per cent of the total of over 31 million Assamese is of Islamic faith.

The perilous potentiality of this demographic dynamite was grasped fully by Sir Stafford Cripps in 1942 when he suggested a constitutional remedy to India (the so called Cripps mission) entailing provisions for provinces unwilling to join the Union to have separate constitution, form a separate Union, and, the proposed new constitution – making body and the British Government to negotiate treaties to effect the transfer of power, as well as safeguard racial and religious minorities; meaning the Muslims, Sikhs and the many other vulnerable ones.

The united Bengal and Assam were slated to constitute a single entity under this scheme, which Gandhi described as “a post-dated cheque” while Nehru said, “The proposal will keep intact the existing structure and autocratic powers and a few of us will become the viceroy’s liveried camp followers to look after canteens and the like.”

Nehru and Jinnah got a better bargain in 1947 by getting their respective countries, albeit at the cost of their hands smudged by the blood of over 500,000 innocent people and the displacement of another helpless 15 millions. If Sir Cripps were wrong, the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 wouldn’t have been engendered by the Pakistani regime’s barbarity on unarmed Bengalis. The sudden death of religious nationalism in 1971 made no sense ever since why Bengalis should remain vivisected and straddled over two diverse nations.

As well, if the tribulations of 1971 entailed a mission to secularize the Muslim predominant East Bengal, literally, why did not the incumbent AL regime change Islam as the state religion from the constitution when its merciless knifing and axing of this veritable charter through the infamous 15th amendment did everything else to turn the nation into a virtual one – person dictatorship?