SALEEM SAMAD
Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus met with International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan QC at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.
Taking to Twitter (X), Karim Khan QC said, “Common visions to strengthen ICC cooperation ensure accountability for crimes committed against the Rohingya.”
ICC in The Hague (Den Haag) is hearing the war crimes and ethnic cleansing committed by Myanmar troops against the Rohingya Muslims after they were declared illegal migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and dubbed as Bengali (meaning they are not Myanmar nationals).
It is not known whether Yunus has discussed ICC’s support for strengthening the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal. The ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been implicated in ‘crimes against humanity’ for the deaths of more than a thousand students and protesters during the Monsoon Revolution in July and early August.
The Interim Government, led by micro-credit inventor Dr Yunus, told audiences in New York that he would like to see former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina be extradited and brought to justice “if she” has committed crimes.
“Why shouldn’t be? If she committed crimes, she should be extradited and brought to justice…She should be facing justice too,” he said while responding to a question at “The New York Times Climate Forward Event”.
Earlier, he reiterated to an Indian media that Delhi should deport Hasina to face the music of justice for the deaths of thousands of protesters in less than 35 days of the Monsoon Revolution.
The number of times Yunus mentions “extradition” of Hasina, South Block in New Delhi is having hiccups. The worrisome seasoned officials and politicians in Delhi have kept their lamps burning regarding the future status of Hasina living in exile at a Safe House at Ghaziabad Hindon Air Base near Delhi.
A high-profile defence correspondent in Delhi said she is in a safe house for security reasons. Indian Intel believes that she has external threats and is forced to live in seclusion.
She is living incommunicado at the air base and unable to meet her daughter Saima Wazed, who has been the South East Asian regional director for the World Health Organisation since 1 November 2023 and is based in New Delhi.
Saima, in her tweet, admitted that she wanted to hug her beloved mother but was unable to do so due to preoccupation and hectic conferences in the South East Asian region. Does anybody believe her excuse?
Similarly, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, despite his best intention to meet his beleaguered mother in Delhi, has not been given diplomatic clearance to arrive in Delhi.
None of the ruling BJP politicians or officials of the Indian government has paid courtesy calls to Hasina, except for Ajit Doval, National Security Advisor of India. He was at the air base when she arrived in Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to meet her. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, while briefing the all-party meeting, said, “We received a request for a short stay.”
Ousted Hasina has always given the impression that China, Russia and of course India are ‘all-weather friends’ of Bangladesh.
The three countries have always lent their shoulders to Hasina, despite appalling human rights records, fraudulent elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024, money laundering, bank loot, poor accountability of elected rogue politicians and politicisation of democratic institutions.
The time-tested friends unfortunately did not react to the autocratic regime. Delhi, Beijing and Moscow’s silence encouraged Hasina to become an iron lady – a Frankenstein. She has brutally cracked down on opposition, dissidents, critics, journalists and even netizens.
Now that her long stay in India is likely to dent its bilateral, regional and global relationship, Delhi has to find a reasonable argument for not extraditing Hasina to Bangladesh authorities for her trial.
Delhi knows very well that if Hasina faces a politically motivated trial for the deaths of students, the court will hand down the death penalty. The Interim Government will not take any risk in keeping her alive.
However, the trial is not expected soon. The Yunus administration will wait until United Nations Human Rights Commission Chief Volker Türk, who took responsibility for deploying an UN team of experts to probe into the killing of the protesters during the “student revolution”, gets the report from the team.
Bangladesh will have to wait for the UN fact-finding mission to submit its report to begin the much-talked-about trial.
It is very rare for China to give shelter to exiled leaders from other countries. Then it leaves with two other “all-weather friends” – India and Russia.
With Dr Yunus’s hectic parleys with world leaders at UNGA, India read the pulse that it would be difficult to provide a credible excuse not to extradite Hasina.
Thus the best alternative would be to send her to Russia, where she will be safe and secure, several officials of the Indian National Security Council (NSC), who are privy to the issue, have confided with this journalist.
Russia has a history of ignoring international calls for extradition. For India, it will be difficult to absorb diplomatic and international pressure. So the only country for Hasina to live happily ever after would be Russia.
Well, when did Hasina live in Russia? It would be extremely difficult to determine the time. However, the NSC officials guess that the balls will begin to roll when Bangladesh will officially seek her extradition.
A top official in the Chief Advisor’s Office, who declined to be quoted, said it would be too early to comment on what Bangladesh should do if Hasina is shifted to Russia.
First published in the Northeast News, Guwahati, India on 30 September 2024
Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad
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