Pakistan, time to face the truth about Bangladesh

SMITA PRAKASH

There was some buzz again last week that Dr Manmohan Singh was contemplating a visit to Pakistan next month, before he hangs his boots. It is one of those rumours which in the past nine years has been neither denied by the foreign office nor confirmed. And the ‘news’ gained ground when a visiting bunch of Pakistani journalists reported that all that was left was a fixing of dates. Meanwhile it appears that the Prime Minister might instead be traveling to Myanmar to attend the summit of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation). The interesting grouping consists of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. Look East Sir, look East.

Pakistan is too occupied with ‘peace talks’ with the Taliban — which it calls a stake holder in its domestic political process — to bother with the Indian Prime Minister. Try figuring this out: the Taliban has asked Imran Khan to negotiate on its behalf in the peace talks with the government!

Last week, that Pakistani ‘social worker of repute’ Hafiz Saeed, no wait, ‘Professor’ Hafiz Saeed said in a rally that India was exerting pressure on the Bangladeshi government to hang Jamaat leaders. He was referring to the death sentence handed down by a Chittagong court to 14 men, including Bangladesh Jamaat chief Motiur Rahman Nizami, in the sensational 10 truck arms smuggling case of 2004. ULFA chief Paresh Barua was also given the death penalty in absentia.

In April 2004, Bangladesh police had seized 4,930 types of sophisticated firearms, 27,020 grenades, 840 rocket launchers, 300 rockets, 2,000 grenade launchers, 6,392 magazines and 1,140,520 bullets when they were being loaded on to 10 trucks headed to North East India. Barua, then in Bangladesh, worked closely with the ISI and the BNP, especially Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rehman. Both Barua and Tarique fled Bangladesh when the Awami League government came to power.

The ISI has always maintained its links with the Jamaat in Bangladesh, either through Bangladesh’s National Security Intelligence during BNP rule or lately through various non-state actors. Three Myanmar born Pakistani Taliban operatives were caught in Dhaka last month on a ‘jihad mission’.

Not just the ISI, Pakistan’s politicians too are vocal in their support for trans-national jihadi terrorists. Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Chaudhary Nisar described the capital punishment to Bangladesh’s war criminal Abdul Qadir Mollah as ‘judicial murder’. Mollah, known as the ‘Butcher of Mirpur’, and his Al Badr cohorts smashed to death a two year old on the floor, slit the throats of his pregnant mother and two sisters, and raped his two other sisters, one of whom died from her wounds. The one who survived testified against Mollah. 43 years later, Mollah was convicted and hanged for killing 344 civilians in 1971. A few days later, Pakistani politician Javed Hashmi (PTI) called Mollah as Shaheed-e-Pakistan. These are the kind of men that Pakistan’s leaders call heroes.

More than four decades after losing half of its country, Pakistan has still not come to terms with the fact that Bangladesh is systematically going ahead with bringing to trial the war crimes accused of 1971. And during that process, historical facts are coming to the fore once again. Pakistanis have been fed on a diet of lies about their history and their leaders are quite content to perpetuate that state of ignorance.

The denial runs deeper as evidenced from a report in Pakistani newspaper, The Nation (Jan 24, 2014) which denounces a Bollywood film to be released this month as an Indian conspiracy to defame Pakistan rather than an artistic interpretation by a private Indian film producer. The article says, “Based on anti-Pakistan propaganda, ‘The Bastard Child’, (now renamed ‘Children of War’) a Hindi language movie, has recently been released in India to tarnish the image of Pakistan and its armed forces around the world.”

“The movie, which has been made on the subject of 1970-1971 events in East Pakistan, depicts Pakistan Army in East Pakistan as an occupation army. It screens alleged atrocities committed by Pakistan Army personnel in East Pakistan, which ignited flames for its separation… Notwithstanding, peace endeavours initiated by government of Pakistan, India does not spare any opportunity to prick Pakistan. It quotes “sources” saying “This propaganda movie is an attempt to bring bad name to Pakistan.” If the YouTube trailers of the film provoked this extreme reaction, it is quite clear that the film will be banned in Pakistan, depriving yet another generation from knowing the truth about 1971.

First published in Mid-Day, India, January 3, 2014

Smita Prakash is Editor, News at Asian News International. You can follow her on twitter @smitaprakash

Bangladesh has little to celebrate after the most violent election day in its history

With 21 people dead, along with further human rights abuses and an absence of opposition, serious questions must now be asked of this government

AISHA GANI

My cousin Amna (not her real name), a student at Anwer Khan Modern Medical College in Dhaka, is currently resitting her crucial exams and missed all her classes in the past two weeks because of the recent instability in Bangladesh. "My friends are afraid and nobody wants to come into college," she told me. It was not safe for her to travel back to the capital, with violent clashes between protesters and police on the streets, strikes and road blockades, and buses being petrol-bombed. "Bangladesh is very dangerous at the moment. People didn't want to go out during election time. There is horror every day."

I think about when I visited Bangladesh, navigating the dusty alleyways with Amna, hailing a rickshaw and picking up hot parathas and halwa en route to Dhanmondi lake to watch the sun rise. It was Victory day in Bangladesh. But now there is nothing to celebrate after the most recent elections. The country is still being choked by a toxic political culture in which winner takes all, and where there is no room for reconciliation with the opposing side. Sheikh Hasina was sworn in as prime minister this weekend, with the backdrop of putting the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia, under house arrest and banning 21 political parties. The absence of opposition parties raises concerns about the credibility of the elections.

The Hasina regime's record of human rights abuses and the level of corruption is serious, and it is disconcerting that pro-government newspapers and elite commentators overlook this. Moreover, their support for the Shahbag movement, whose demands include hanging those accused at the domestic war crimes tribunal, banning opposition political parties and arresting editors who are critical of them, is deeply disturbing. Although the Bangladeshi novelist Tahmima Anam argued in the Guardian that Bangladesh doesn't have to go back to being a basket case, the only way to prevent this is to have a real democracy, stop the political point-scoring, stop seeking revenge, and focus on unity and working towards a more pluralist society.

This was the most violent election day in Bangladesh's history, with 21 people killed as they headed to the polls, and in the run-up to the elections there have been night raids on the homes of opposition supporters. Yet human rights abuses by the regime's security forces are nothing new. Last year, the offices of human rights activists were ransacked for reporting on abuses by the government's security forces against protesters, while activists Adilur Rahman Khan and Naseeruddin Elan of the Bangladeshi human rights group Odhikar were arrested and are now appearing before a cyber crimes tribunal. There have also been violent attacks on journalists, including the murder of a blogger. And it is the same government security forces that charged with batons and opened fire on protesters who were demanding compensation for the loss of their loved ones after the Rana Plaza factory tragedy, in which more than 1,100 people died.

Much of the current instability is happening because Hasina slashed open some old wounds of the nation: the prime minister had made a manifesto pledge to hold accused "war criminals and collaborators [of Pakistan]" on trial – despite a previous general amnesty in 1973 which had been granted by Hasina's father, Sheik Mujibur Rahman. It was an election winner for Hasina's Awami League party against the Bangladeshi National party (BNP), who had been successful in elections in 2001 when they made a partnership with Jamaat-e-Islami. In 2010, Hasina's government set up the "international" war crimes tribunal and most of those on trial are long-standing members of Jamaat-e-Islami. Last month, Abdul Quader Mollah was the first defendant to be hanged. This war crimes tribunal has been condemned as unjust by the international community, including the UN and Amnesty. It has been marred by scandals including the abduction of defence witnesses by police from the court, to the exposure of partiality and collusion between judges, prosecution and the state.

Are these shackles of war and political grudges what we want the next generation of Bangladeshis to inherit? Grave crimes were committed and have to be addressed. There has to be restorative justice for the victims of the war, and as I have argued elsewhere, there can be truth and reconciliation even after 40 years. But has justice been done with unfair trials, division and more spilt blood? Serious questions must be asked of the government; and with steps taken to eliminate the opposition, is Hasina's regime taking an even more authoritarian direction? There are suggestions that there was less than 10% voter turnout in the elections. The EU, US and Commonwealth nations did not send observers to monitor the polls, which were not deemed to be "transparent, inclusive and credible". While allies have not previously said much of consequence on the country's human rights record, and usually heap platitudes on Bangladesh's progress, the real test will be how they interact with this government in the future, and whether they will legitimise the corruption that they have just called out.

First published in The Guardian, 15 January 2014

Aisha Gani is a Guardian digital journalism trainee and is currently working on the G2 desk. You can follow her on Twitter - @aishagani

Bangladesh Must Never Forget Those Sacrifices

Photo: Sheikh Hasina has remained constant in her action against the right wing fundamentalists who, aided by the BNP, acting out of electoral compulsions, has encouraged nationwide violence

VIKRAM SOOD

It was on February 5, 2013 that the young in Dhaka came out to Shahbag Square to protest and demand capital punishment for the Butcher of Mirpur, Abdul Quader Mollah, along with others who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, for their war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The movement had quickly spread to the rest of the country and the Jamaat Islami reaction was immediate and has remained violent. Nevertheless, Sheikh Hasina has remained constant in her action against the right wing fundamentalists who, aided by the BNP, acting out of electoral compulsions and its own convictions, has encouraged nationwide violence.

Shahbag was about closure. It was a war against fundamentalism and was not about revenge. Many of the protestors were young boys and girls born after 1971 who gave the famous slogan ‘Joy Bangla’ a new relevance and a new meaning. It is in Bangladesh that they wish to remember the discrimination in all the 25 years preceding 1971 and the genocide in the nine months that preceded that December 16. It was too soon after independence to find out what happened during those horrible months as the new nation had to be built from the debris and the devastation that the West Pakistanis had left behind. Yet they needed to remember all that to build their future.

The then Karachi-based journalist, Anthony Mascarhenas, was the first in June 1971 to break the news internationally of the genocide in East Pakistan, leading the Pakistan Government to white wash the events in its white paper of August that year. The young nation needed more than anecdotal references.

The Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order soon after liberation and the 1973 War Crimes Tribunals Act were lost in the assassination of Bangabandhu and some members of his family. It took the Awami League twenty years to regain power in 1996 only to lose it to the right wing BNP supported by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that had supported the Pakistan Army and had opposed independence.

Attempts at discovering what happened in 1971 and to record Pakistani atrocities remained haphazard. There was no systematic fact finding and War and Secession — Pakistan, India and the creation of Bangladesh by Richard Sisson and Leo Rose in 1991 was more an account covering the military aspects of the war and did not cover the activites of the Pakistan Army before the war.

Robert Payne’s Massacre has several anecdotal references but his book was published soon after independence as was Mascarenhas’ book The Rape of Bangladesh, so could not give accurate estimates. Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will) refers to 400000 rapes by the Pakistan Army and its collaborators, of which nearly 80 per cent were Muslim women.

Centuries of Genocide (4th edition in 2013) edited by Samuel Totten and William S Parsons has a chapter — Genocide in Bangladesh by Rounaq Jahan that has detailed graphic descriptions of the killings and depredations. She also says 3 million were killed. Yet Sarmila Bose’s book Dead Reckoning has remained controversial as it sought to find proof for a predetermined finding that the Bengali claim was grossly exaggerated and accepts the Pakistan Army figure of 26,000 Bengalis killed. Bose is dismissive of Bengali claims about the extent of genocide.

It was left to Dr M A Hasan, a medical student in 1971 who had joined the Mukti Bahini resistance movement. He painstakingly researched the events of 1971 through his NGO, The War Crimes Fact Finding Commission established in 1999 produced an accurate report entitled War Crimes, Genocide and the Quest for Justice in 2008. This report should ideally be in research and history libraries given the meticulous details and perhaps not something the average reader would read. Fortunately, Dr Hasan has now published Beyond Denial — The Evidence of a Genocide for the average reader. Hasan’s study says that the figure of 3 million innocent civilians killed is the more likely figure. The book describes in considerable detail some truly blood curdling systematic massacres; only those with strong hearts should read these pages.

Bangladesh needs full closure of this painful aspect of her history and a move away from fundamentalism that threatens it today. Bangladesh has to see the fulfillment of its Shahbag moment. The recent hanging of Mollah, is a process in that closure. But when Pakistan’s National Assembly expressed concern at the hanging of Mollah and Interior Minister Nasir Ali Khan criticised this hanging, this only shows how dangerously delusional Pakistan’s leaders have become. No wonder this prompted Sheikh Hasina to comment that Pakistan had not accepted liberation of Bangladesh.

First published in Mid Day, Mumbai, India, December 30, 2013

Vikram Sood is a Vice President at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, and a former chief of Research and Analysis Wing

How not to do a war crimes tribunal: the case of Bangladesh

The promising start of the tribunals, once thought to bring closure to people, has devolved into power politics.

ZIA HASSAN

For many people who had lost their near and dear ones during the bloody birth of the nation, the scars were too deep to let go so easily. It was aggravated by the fact that the 195 Pakistani military officials primarily accused of genocide were never tried. It was further compounded by the fact that the key collaborators of the war crimes were eventually mainstreamed into national politics and even served as ministers during the regime of current opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

The issue of justice for 1971 has long been a contentious one in Bangladeshi politics. Many believed that Bangladesh needed a meaningful closure to the trauma of the past in order to move forward.

A war crimes tribunal to bring the collaborators to justice was thought to be one of the key steps in that direction. It was in the election manifesto of the ruling party - a promise that motivated a lot of young people to vote for them.

Hijacked revolution

However, two years into the process, many now believe the tribunal to be vulnerable to outside interventions in an attempt to convert the case into a political weapon for the ruling party. This, together with the resultant violence that ravaged the country, have now left a lot of people confused and wondering what they were fighting for in the first place.

At the same time, the controversies have also given rise to a group of hard core Bengali nationalists who are willing to turn a blind eye to the systematic corruption and manipulation of the election system to secure another term for The Awami League (AL). As they are aware, the tribunal might get dismantled and the accused freed if the opposition BNP and its ally Jamat-e-Islami ascend to power - a possibility they are not willing to accept. 

In such a situation, the lines between politics, judiciary, election and justice are increasingly getting blurred. The whole population now appears to be ideologically divided into two distinct camps - for and against the tribunal.

It all looked distinctly different back in February.

The urban youth gathered in Shahbag square to protest against the verdict awarded to Kader Mollah, one of the key accused. They thought the verdict - life imprisonment, which they considered to be too lenient - indicated that the government may be conducting secret negotiations with Jamat-e-Islami. It appeared, apart from a handful of hard core Jamat-e-Islami supporters, that there was a broad unanimity in Bangladesh about bringing the war criminals to justice.

The movement which clearly was anti-establishment in nature, very soon played into the hands of the political parties.

Though water bottles were hurled at government ministers who tried to gain entrance to the centre-stage in the first few days, the ruling party found a way to infiltrate the movement with the assistance of some faithful party cultural figureheads in no time and started dictating its agenda. The crowd started dispersing.

When the Awami captured Shahbag, BNP opposed it. Mahmudur Rahman, the firebrand editor of the national daily, The Amar Desh [Be], led the way to label the movement as one against Islam, organised by atheists.

Subsequent events led to the emergence of Hefajot-e-Islam, a religious group formed by madrassas scholars in protest against the defamation of the prophet - written by a slain blogger who was an activist in the Shahbag movement. 

Divided opinions

Bangladesh witnessed further bloodshed across the country in which more than 400 lives were lost and it swung from crisis to crisis leading up to this month when the tenure of the Awami government ended and it refused to hand over power to a caretaker government citing a constitutional requirement, bringing another set of violent conflicts with the opposition and its allies.

Last week, Kader Mollah was executed after his appeal was turned down by the country’s Supreme Court.

Jamat-e-Islami claims that there are a number of inconsistencies in the judgement of Kader Mollah and other trials. Few doubt the involvement of Jamat-e-Islam in the genocide that took place in 1971. However, many are now unwilling to side with the government in what they believe to be a systematic targeting of top tier leadership of Jamat-e-Islami in exclusion of some of the Awami leaders that have been accused of being collaborators as well.

Public opinion has also been influenced by the revelations of irregularities through the hacking of a Skype account of one of the judges and the eagerness of the Awami to divide the electorate into pro and anti-liberation forces based on their support of the Awami League. 

To many people, the timing of the execution and alacrity in its proceedings indicate the government’s willingness to use the tribunal for political gains. The exigency was interpreted as the government’s need to have at least one execution before the election.

The Awami league is preparing for an election which the chief opposition party deems too partisan to participate in 151 AL nominees have already been "elected" without a single vote being cast.

Meanwhile, a series of countrywide blockades imposed by the opposition is disrupting the country’s entire economy due to the limited flow of goods. About 150 lives have been lost in last two months in ensuing violence.

Support for Jamat-e-Islami still comes with a stigma in the country, especially in the urban middle class population. But, if you follow the comments section below articles of the leading media - you will find Jamat-e-Islami is making a stunning comeback by accumulating sympathy. The alleged irregularities of the trial and public perception of it seem to have turned the party into a victim, from a party which was always considered a pariah and one with blood in its hands.

Yet a large number of the population will object to this view. For them Jamat-e-Islami and its leaders are known war criminals who need to be punished at any cost. They have a valid argument which must be judged against the particular context of Bangladesh.

Procedural flaws

The country’s judiciary has been politicised since its inception. Jamat-e-Islami and its leadership have had ample chances to hide their criminal tracks, especially as they have been in power through an alliance. Lack of documentation makes it quite difficult to conclusively incriminate anyone after 42 years. Many of the witnesses have now passed away. But, the stories of the crimes have carried on for generations and many were reported in the media, years after the war. Hence, the trial has to depend on circumstantial evidence and sole witnesses or witnesses who were very young at the time the crimes took place.

Under such circumstances, some of the most ardent supporters of the tribunal might find it justifiable to bend the rules. It might appal a law student, but this is a country where most people give whole-hearted support to the extra-judicial killings of top criminals as they know the criminals would otherwise escape justice by securing bail from the court where it is very common for a case to be unresolved for 20 years.

Therefore, we see people who consider the atrocities too severe to be forgiven and want nothing but death penalty for the accused war criminals to redeem the collective national shame of letting them avoid punishment this long.

As mentioned above, a big part of the population seems to be disagreeing with this viewpoint. Not because they consider procedural flaws to be the ultimate sin for a Bangladeshi court, but because they are disgruntled about the government’s attempt to use the war crimes tribunal to cover up heavy corruption and the systematic looting of national wealth. In the meantime, supporters of Jamat-e-Islam maintain that their leaders are being tried only because of their support of Islamist politics.

The country appears to be deeply divided and this division has now transcended politics and descended into society, aided by the media.

The media, which mostly constitutes the culturally educated urbanites, are vociferously taking a side against the alleged war criminals. They are also conveniently ignoring the instances of shooting on the protesters by law enforcement agencies.They are choosing to ignore the multiple dynamics of the debate that is ravaging the country.   

Apart from a small number of indigenous peoples living in hill tracts, Bangladesh is a country of a single race, the Bengalis. The collective mind-set and cultural values have certain homogeneousness which has protected this society from any major conflicts, apart from the ones delivered by feudal party politics. But, that is now set to change.

Many people believed the war crimes tribunal will allow the country to get rid of the ghosts of the past. But it now appears the willingness to use the tribunal as a political tool has created a chasm among the population. The attempt at getting rid of the ghost may haunt the country for many years to come.

First published in AlJazeera, December 25, 2013

Zia Hassan is a political and cultural analyst. He writes in local and international blogs and social media outlets

Pakistan's State of Denial

TAHMIMA ANAM

It was a Pakistani journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas, who gave the world the first detailed account of Bangladesh’s war of independence. In April 1971, soon after the army of Pakistan started suppressing the secessionist movement in what was then still the eastern part of the country, it invited Mr. Mascarenhas to report on the conflict, believing he would buttress the false propaganda of a just war. Mr. Mascarenhas promptly moved his family, and then himself, to Britain knowing that soon he would no longer be able to live in Pakistan.

“For six days as I traveled with the officers of the 9th Division headquarters at Comilla I witnessed at close quarters the extent of the killing,” Mr. Mascarenhas wrote in a lengthy, damning report published under the headline “Genocide” in the June 13, 1971, edition of The Sunday Times.

“I saw Hindus, hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand after a cursory ‘short-arm inspection’ showed they were uncircumcised. I have heard the screams of men bludgeoned to death in the compound of the Circuit House (civil administrative headquarters) in Comilla. I have seen truckloads of other human targets and those who had the humanity to try to help them hauled off ‘for disposal’ under the cover of darkness and curfew.”

Four decades later, Mr. Mascarenhas’s government still insists on denying the past: the mass killing of civilians (perhaps as many as three million), the targeting of Hindus, the systematic rape of thousands. On Dec. 16, Pakistan’s National Assembly adopted a resolution expressing concern over the recent execution of Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s leading Islamic party, who was convicted by a Bangladeshi court of committing murder and rape while collaborating with the Pakistani Army during the 1971 war. Calling Mr. Mollah a Pakistani sympathizer — and the independence of Bangladesh “the fall of Dhaka” — a multiparty majority of the assembly complained that Mr. Mollah was sentenced because of his “loyalty to Pakistan” and asked the Bangladeshi government to drop all other cases against the Jamaat leadership.

There is no doubt the Pakistani Army committed war crimes in 1971. Yet in history books and schoolrooms throughout Pakistan, the army’s atrocities are glossed over.

This denial prevails despite an official study by the Pakistani Army. Just after the war, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto set up an independent judicial commission to investigate atrocities committed in East Pakistan in order to understand why the army had failed there. When the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report was published in 1974, it documented how, under the pretense of quashing a rebellion, the Pakistani Army had planned and carried out the execution of intellectuals, soldiers, officials, businessmen and industrialists, and had buried them in mass graves.

The commission recommended that the Pakistani government set up a special court to further investigate misconduct by the army. This never happened, and the report remained classified for nearly three decades. Five Pakistani heads of state have visited Bangladesh since 1971 without extending a formal apology. The closest any of them came to recognizing Pakistan’s wrongs was Pervez Musharraf, who wrote in 2002 in a visitors’ book at a war memorial near Dhaka, “Your brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pains of the events of 1971. The excesses committed during the unfortunate period are regrettable.”

Bangladesh’s own efforts to deal with its messy birth were unsuccessful — until 2008, when the Awami League was voted into power partly on a mandate to hold a war crimes trial that would bring to justice the people who collaborated with the Pakistani Army in 1971. (By then Bangladeshis had grown weary of successive governments’ turning a blind eye to crimes many of their own families had endured.) The International Crimes Tribunal was created in 2009; 12 men have been charged so far; three of them have been convicted, including Mr. Mollah.

From the outset, the court was dogged with criticism. It has been accused of skirting international procedural standards and of being politically motivated: Most of the accused are members of Jamaat-e-Islami. In December 2012, President Abdullah Gul of Turkey requested “clemency” for the defendants, on the grounds that they were “too old” to stand trial. On the eve of Mr. Mollah’s appeal, Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly warned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh that Mr. Mollah’s execution would create instability on the eve of the general election set for Jan. 5.

Whatever one thinks of these trials or the death penalty generally, the sentence against Mr. Mollah was handed down by an independent court in a sovereign country on the basis of extensive eyewitness testimony. And Mr. Mollah’s execution on Dec. 12 had widespread public support. Never mind Prime Minister Hasina’s flaws: At least she has had the political courage to take a stand against whitewashing the past, while the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia, has reinforced her ties with Jamaat by remaining silent on the matter.

But then, a few days after Mr. Mollah’s execution — precisely on the anniversary of Pakistani Army’s surrender to independent Bangladesh — the Pakistani National Assembly adopted its denialist resolution. Instead of supporting Bangladesh’s efforts to come to terms with its brutal birth, Pakistan is pouring salt into its wounds. Pakistan, it is high time you apologize.

First published in The New York Times, December 26, 2013

Tahmima Anam is a writer and anthropologist, and the author of the novel “A Golden Age.”

Noose tightens on Bangladesh opposition

Protesters burn effigy of cricketer turned politician Imran Khan in front of Pakistan embassy in Bangladesh capital

After the execution of a senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader, the religious party faces an uncertain future.

SALEEM SAMAD

Hours after Bangladesh executed Abdul Quader Molla, a top opposition leader, for his role in the 1971 civil war that culminated into Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan activists from his party, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), staged riots. Violence has continued in the country following the December 12 hanging, leading to dozens of deaths.

More than 100 JeI activists have been detained in a nation-wide crackdown.

Molla's execution has lead to heated debates about the role of political Islam in the country and the future for religious opposition parties.

"Bangladesh will be the first country to bury 'political Islam' which wrecked the traditional secular fabric of the society since independence in 1971," explains professor Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, who teaches Public Affairs in the Dhaka University.

'Surge and Decline'

JeI had opposed the break-up of Pakistan and fought alongside Pakistan's military against pro-Independence forces. It was banned from politics upon the formation of Bangladesh.

But a military coup in 1975 lifted the ban on JeI. During the 1980s, the religious party joined a multi-party coalition and later supported the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). In October 2001, it emerged as the country's third largest party, securing 17 seats in the 300-member parliament. Both the JeI and BNP led by Begum Khaleda Zia replaced the Awami League (AL), which had been in power since 1996.

In 2008, AL led by Sheikh Hasina came back to power even as JeI's popularity waned when it won a mere 5 seats in national elections. And in 2010 AL began war crimes trials for events surrounding the independence struggle under Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).

Molla became the first person convicted by the tribunal. He was initially sentenced to life in prison in February. Calling a life sentence as too lenient, thousands across Bangladesh demanded he be hanged. And in September, the Supreme Court overturned life in prison and replaced it with a death sentence.

With his hanging, some observers believe JeI's power also has been executed.

While war veterans from 1971 and thousands of pro-independence youths rejoiced after the hanging, the JeI's acting head Moqbul Ahmed warned "people would [want] revenge" on the party's website, which triggered a massive crackdown against JeI activists.

Ahmed has called on the international community to raise its voice against the "repression on the opposition".

"Since coming to power the government (of Awami League) has practiced unbridled corruption, nepotism and even torture upon members of the opposition. They are now making a last-ditch attempt to stay in power indefinitely by amending the constitution and destroying the state apparatus. They have abolished the caretaker system of government and have enacted a new system to hold elections under their own party government," the Jamaat chief said, something which its political partner BNP also backs.

Both the parties have in recent months launched blockades; often resulting in violence and killings, to press for their demands but the ruling AL so far seems unwilling to budge.

JeI says crackdown on its members and the hanging of its leader was "politically motivated".

But others feel the executions were fair, as Jamaat's paramilitary Al Badr had committed "heinous war abuses" for which they need to be punished.

According to M A Hasan, of the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee, an independent body investigating the 1971 massacres: "Al Badr had been engaged in forced abduction and execution of Bangla-speaking pro-independence nationalists and secularists to brutally muzzle the voices for freedom."

The war historian's documents claim that "local henchmen" allied with Pakistani soldiers were involved in "killing at least 3 million and sexual abusing 400,000 women during the nine months civil war."

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN rights experts have continued their criticism of the war crimes tribunals and the laws under which they operate.

However, Bangladeshi authorities have always argued that they met national standards and that justice is needed for war crimes committed during the bloody war of independence from Pakistan.

'Partner's silence'

The BNP, Jel's erstwhile political ally, has been conspicuously silent since Molla's execution.

It is currently pre-occupied in talks with the ruling AL over how to break the political deadlock.

"It seems BNP is more desperate for a political solution than stalemate and may have deliberately overlooked JeI's concerns," Ahmed explains.

The BNP has been holding series of blockades of the country's transport system since December in protest of holding what it says is "farcical" election in January.

A court has already declared the registration of the JeI as "illegal" to contest national polls.

" [The] BNP's strategic election partner has become a dead horse and a political burden for the opposition," says Nzmul Ahsan Kalimullah, a professor of public administration at the University of Dhaka. "It is time for BNP to shred JeI, which will bring an end to political Islam which has haunted the nation apparently for 30 years."

'Uncertain future'

JeI may not be a dead horse but even some party insiders believe it is facing a worst crisis in its 40-year-long political history in Bangladesh.

"It would be a Herculean task to survive against the ruling party which has an overwhelming majority in the government," says explains Salauddin Babar, executive editor of the pro-JeI newspaper, Dainik Naya Diganta, and a senior JeI member. "It will be an uphill battle to survive the current political crisis JeI faces."

Babar believes that the crackdown weakend the party's chain of command and Jel could crack under the pressure.

"The political future of the party has been challenged after a sustained crackdown on the leadership. Jamaat's future is uncertain," he says.

First published in Al Jazeera news portal, December 21, 2013

Saleem Samad is an award winning Bangladesh based investigative journalist and an Ashoka Fellow. Presently news correspondent for press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF). He is recipient of Hellman-Hammett Grants award by New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2005.