Bangladesh's 'Tahrir Square' protest demands death for war criminals
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/14/bangladesh-protest-death-penalty
Object of public wrath is Islamist politician found
guilty of war crimes during Bangladesh's
war of independence in 1971
- Jon Boone and Naimul Haque in Dhaka
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 February 2013 20.05 GMT
Thousands
of people in Dhaka cheer in unison after
surpassing seven days of a demonstration calling for the execution of war
criminals. Photograph: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/ zakir hossain
chowdhury/Demotix/Corbis
Festering resentment among a youthful population super-charged by social
media is by now a familiar ingredient to mass protest movements around the
world.But the latest example of the phenomenon in the Shahbag area of the capital of Dhaka that has been dubbed Bangladesh's "Tahrir Square" is not attempting to topple a military dictatorship.
A crowd estimated to be hundreds of thousands strong has been camped on the streets for 10 days demanding the execution of war criminals.
The movement has created such strong feelings that some expatriate Bangladeshis have flown home to support the call for the death penalty. Children have been filmed with the slogan "We want death by hanging" painted across their cheeks and torsos.
The object of the public wrath is Abdul Quader Mollah, an Islamist politician found guilty this month of crimes including massacres, torture and rapes during Bangladesh's bloody war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.
Another eight members of Mollah's Jamaat-e-Islami party are also on trial, as are two members of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, including a former government minister.
The men had attempted to resist efforts by what was then called "East Pakistan" to break away from the rest of Pakistan, triggering an immensely violent conflict. It is estimated that anywhere between 300,000 and 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army and their allied local militias.
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was elected on a platform of making the prosecution of war crimes a priority of her government.
Although Mollah's conviction was a moment of immense symbolism in a country whose politics was forged by the brutal nine-month conflict, a large section of Bangladeshis were angered that he was only given a life sentence.
One observer, prominent media analyst Gazi Nasiruddin Ahmed, said the protests demonstrated the power of the young people who helped propel the ruling Awami League to a landslide victory in 2008.
"The youth believes the war criminals and collaborators of the occupation Pakistan army must be tried to give the families of the liberation war martyrs a sense of closure," Ahmed said.
Many people have given credit to a group called the Blogger and Online Activist Network for first calling people to the streets. Websites continue to fuel the mood of national outrage, with laptop wielding bloggers camping on the road, uploading photos and live streaming speeches.
Public fury at the impunity many war criminals have enjoyed in the last 42 years grew further when Mollah, nicknamed the "Butcher of Mirpur" for his crimes, flashed a "V" for victory sign when he came out of the courtroom. Analysts in Dhaka say many people believed Mollah was so cocksure because he believes he could be pardoned under a possible change of government. Even some human rights activists who normally abhor the death penalty have supported it in this case. The trial was criticised by some legal experts for failing to follow due process.
Supporters of his Jamaat-e-Islami party have held counter-protests around the country.
On Thursday Shahbag, which protesters have renamed "New Generation Roundabout", became a sea of candles, lit to mark those killed during the 1971 war. "I never thought I'd see something magnificent like this," said Imran Ashraf Chowdhury, a man in his late forties. "The young ones have done us a great favour by awakening national consciousness in people."
Police said that one man died of head injuries after being beaten by Jamaat-e-Islami supporters on Wednesday during fights between the police and the Islamists in the capital's main business district. At least two supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami have died after clashes with police.
Shahbag: The Social revolution in Bangladesh video
Blogger's death rekindles anti-Islamist protests in Bangladesh
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/bloggers-death-rekindles-anti-islamist-protests-bangladesh-1C8405474
More than 100,000 Bangladeshi protesters, angered by the killing of one of their leaders, poured back onto the streets of the capital on Saturday to demand the death penalty for those found guilty of war crimes in the 1971 independence conflict.The demonstrators, who denounced a life sentence handed down this month on an Islamist leader involved in the war, reversed a decision to scale back demonstrations, now in their 12th day.
Rajib Haider, an architect, was a key figure in organising the demonstrations and wrote a blog devoted to them under the pen name Thaba baba. He was attacked outside his home on Friday night after returning from a 100,000-strong rally in Shahbag Square.
On Saturday, an even larger crowd thronged the square to attend funeral prayers for Haider, many vowing to avenge his death or breaking down in tears as his coffin passed.
Haider's family told reporters they believed he was stabbed to death for standing up to the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party and drawing people to the protests. Police said they had detained five suspects.
"Haider's death has rekindled our spirits," said Nasiruddin Yusuf, a film-maker. "It will not go in vain."
Large protests gripped other cities. Security forces patrolled streets in much greater numbers than in previous days.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Haider's home and told his grieving parents justice would be done.
"Rajib Haider's killers have no right to do politics," she said in comments broadcast live on television. She said Jamaat and its affiliates "do not believe in democracy. They believe in terrorism. That is what they are proving again."
The protests were triggered by the life sentence imposed on Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant secretary-general of Jamaat, Bangladesh's largest Islamist party. Most Bangladeshis had expected a death sentence on charges of murder, rape and torture.
Protesters vow to remain
Protest leaders vowed to remain on the street until Mollah, 64, is sentenced to death, along with others convicted of committing crimes during the war.
Some say they would accept parliamentary amendments to provide for stiffer penalties to be issued by the war crimes tribunal, set up in 2010 by Hasina, daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
"The young generation is shining a light on the spirit of the liberation war we fought more than 40 years ago," said Dhaka University professor Abul Barakat, 58. "We couldn't achieve all the dreams of the war. Now, perhaps no one can stop them."
In its first verdict last month, the tribunal sentenced a former Jamaat leader, Abul Kalam Azad, to death. Azad was tried in absentia as he fled the country last April.
State minister for law Qamrul Islam, shown on television addressing a rally near Dhaka, said the disbanding of Jamaat "is a public demand. It's just a matter of time when Jamaat will be banned from politics."
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Hasina's arch rival, former premier Begum Khaleda Zia, says the prime minister is using the tribunal as a political weapon. Hasina denies the accusation.
Bangladesh became part of Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947 but broke away in 1971 after a war between Bangladeshi nationalists, backed by India, and Pakistani forces. Three million people died and thousands of women were raped.
Some factions in what was then East Pakistan opposed the break with Pakistan. Jamaat denies accusations that it opposed independence and helped the Pakistani army.
(Reporting by Anis Ahmed and Serajul Quadir; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
17 Feb 2013
Bangladesh rises against the Jamaat. Is Hasina with masses?
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/53436-bangladesh-rises-against-the-jamaat-is-hasina-with-masses?.html
The stunning Shahbag
protest in Dhaka shows young Bangladeshis want
nothing to do with Jamaatis. But why is the Awami League going soft on
razakars?
Something remarkable is
happening in Bangladesh
which has gone under-reported, if not unnoticed, by newspapers and news
television channels, especially in India. Given our media’s proclivity
to get excited every time a non-event occurs in Pakistan, this is not entirely
surprising. What is a pity and a shame is that the international media, which
goes into overdrive if 10 people gather at Tahrir Square or a bunch of lazy
layabouts decide to ‘occupy’ Wall Street, has missed a story that tells more
than one unfolding tale in a country with a bitter past and an uncertain
future, a nation whose blood-soaked birth is unparalleled in recent history.
Since February 6, tens
of thousands of young Bangladeshis, many of them still in their teens, have
been gathering at Shahbag in Dhaka, waving their country’s national flag,
demanding death for all perpetrators of war crimes during the Liberation War of
1971. The men they want to see hanged without any trace of mercy are razakars,
or collaborators, who joined hands with the Pakistani Army in committing
gut-wrenching atrocities to put down the freedom movement in what was then East Pakistan. Women and girls were gang-raped and then
bayoneted; men were dragged out of their homes and shot dead; intellectuals
were murdered in cold blood; entire villages were laid to waste.
But the mass murder of
three million men, women and children by the Pakistani Army (whose patrons in
America refused to intervene) and its collaborators, all of them associated
with the Jamaat-e-Islami, failed to kill the spirit of the Bengali nation:
Bangladesh was born after its tormentors surrendered to the Indian Army. Sadly,
that was not the end of the story. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his entire family
were assassinated by Army officers — his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, was the only
survivor. Decades of martial law followed and it required a popular uprising to
restore democracy.
Since then we have seen
power alternating between the Awami League, headed by Sheikh Hasina, and the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of Gen
Ziaur Rahman who ruled the country for a while. The Awami League still retains
some of the secular values enshrined by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; the BNP happily
aligns with the Jamaat-e-Islami, now led by the razakars of 1971. The Jamaatis
were never brought to trial; the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman enjoyed
immunity till 12 of them were sentenced to death, seven in absentia, after
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina initiated legal proceedings against them. Five of
the killers were executed but others still remain at large, sheltered in
Western countries.
It is to Sheikh Hasina’s
credit that she also set up a War Crimes Tribunal to try the razakars and
ensure justice was done to the victims of 1971. Depositions by witnesses
revived the horrors that were perpetrated by the Jamaatis. Despite criticism
from human rights organisations which strangely argue that it is unfair to
bring the mass murderers of Bangladesh
to trial, the tribunals have done a splendid job considering four decades have
lapsed since the unspeakable atrocities were committed.
Of those accused of
collaborating with the Pakistani Army, Abul Kalam Azad has been sentenced to
death in absentia; Abdul Quader Mollah, a senior Jamaat leader, has been
sentenced to life imprisonment; Delwar Hossain Sayedee, another senior Jamaat
leader, is in jail awaiting the tribunal’s verdict; the trial of six razakars,
including Gholam Azam, is still on and they are in jail; and four others are
being investigated. It is the judgement in the five cases filed against Abdul
Quader Mollah that has brought Bangladeshis out on the streets and ignited the
mammoth protest at Shahbagh in Dhaka: Life
sentence is not acceptable to the protesters; they want him, and all
collaborators, to be hanged.
There are two reasons
that are being cited in support of this demand. First, the punishment is not
commensurate with the crimes the razakars committed — for instance, in one of
the cases in which Mollah was charged he was found guilty of having
collaborated in the killing of 381 innocent civilians. Second, if the BNP were
to return to power, it would happily grant clemency to the razakars to appease
the Jamaat and they would walk free. Neither is acceptable to those who want to
see the razakars brought to justice and Bangladesh
cleansed of Jamaat’s toxic ideology which makes Jamaatis natural allies of
their ilk in Pakistan.
There’s a third factor
that has kept the Shahbag protest alive, with more and more people joining in
every day, and sparked similar demonstrations across Bangladesh, since February
6: Many Bangladeshis have begun to feel that the Awami League has suddenly
adopted a soft line in view of the coming national election. This is what makes
the Shahbag protest significant. Those demanding death for the razakars would
be inclined towards voting for the Awami League (large portraits of Sheikh
Hasina have been seen at the jam-packed square) and have resolutely thwarted
the efforts of the Jamaat-e-Islami and its students’ wing, the Islami Chhatra
Shibir, to run riot against the on-going trials. They have braved the Jamaati
thugs and rallied in support of the Awami League. They have, in a sense,
re-ignited the spirit of 1971 although most of them were born much after the
birth of Bangladesh.
What, then, makes them
suddenly uneasy about the Awami League’s intentions and politics? Are they
sensing that there is a subtle shift towards not enraging the Jamaat and its
various powerful organisations? Are they beginning to feel that Sheikh Hasina
is once again toying with opening lines with the Jamaat as she did in 1996 when
she allied with the party of razakars? For all her bluster, Sheikh Hasina has
hesitated to push for a full return to the secular politics of her father’s
time. An example will suffice: She could have restored the original
Constitution in toto but she elected to retain the amendment that makes Islam
the state religion.
If the seeds of doubt
were to germinate, Sheikh Hasina would find it difficult to carry popular
opinion with her and the Awami League could well lose the election to the BNP.
The Jamaat will go with Begum Zia, having tasted unfettered power when she was
Prime Minister and the Jamaatis were part of her Government. This, no doubt,
augurs ill for Bangladesh.
More importantly, it does not augur well for either India or the world.
Post Script: On Friday
night, Ahmed Rajib Haidar, a blogger who was active in mobilising anti-Jamaat
activists for the Shahbag protest, was brutally murdered near his home. If this
was meant to send a chilling message to those chanting ‘Death to razakars’, it
has had the opposite effect. There’s greater determination in the ranks now.
But there’s also a question which is being asked: Is the Awami League batting
straight?
(The writer is a senior
journalist based in Delhi)
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