Shahbagh Square: Bangladesh’s fourth awakening

The protests in Dhaka against attempts to subvert justice in the war crimes trials show that the new generation is alive to the horrific acts committed by anti-liberation forces

HAROON HABIB

THE YOUNGER generation of Bangladeshis has made history by not keeping silent when fundamentalist and communalist forces who had opposed the nation’s independence from Pakistan openly challenged the state. Since February 5, Dhaka’s Shahbagh Square has been the site of a mass protest in which young people have demanded capital punishment for all who committed crimes against humanity during the national liberation war in 1971. These young people have achieved what political parties locked in acrimonious feuding could not do.

Led through social networking

The new Gano Jagaran Mancha (Mass awakening platform) is almost a national reawakening; it could be the greatest social revolution Bangladesh has seen in four decades, and sends a clear signal to the Islamists, who seem determined to stage a comeback. At a rally on February 8, Bangladesh also saw the biggest mass mobilisation in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, boys and girls from all walks of life, carrying national flags, banners and placards, demanded the death sentence for all war criminals and showed their determination to resist the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Chhatra Shibir.

The movement had started on February 5, soon after a war crimes tribunal had sentenced Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah to life. The verdict shocked the nation; there had been widespread demands for the hanging of Mollah, who, in 1971, had led a local cohort of the Pakistan Army which killed several hundred people and carried out mass rape. Using social networks, young bloggers quickly occupied Shahbagh Square, and their peaceful sit-in became a people’s movement.

Counter-attacks

In the preceding months, the Jamaat-e-Islami had carried out terrorist attacks in an attempt to stop war crimes trials, on a scale which even suggested that the movement was challenging the Bangladeshi state, the independence of which it had violently opposed four decades earlier. With support from the main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), between November 2012 and January 2013, the Jamaat organised violent demonstrations against the war crimes tribunals, and sent hundreds of party cadres on hit-and-run attacks on the police. The new operatives are well trained, and their attacks revived memories of August 2005, when nearly simultaneous explosions occurred one morning in 63 of the country’s 64 districts.

Seven Jamaat leaders were in prison awaiting trial for crimes against humanity during the war of liberation, but the Jamaat warned of “civil war” if the trials were not cancelled and its leaders freed. The war crimes trials are a long-standing national demand; in the 2008 election, the Sheikh Hasina government was mandated to hold them, and Parliament has unanimously approved them.

Therefore, citizens irrespective of age and faith joined the Gano Jagaran Mancha in Shahbagh Square. “Hang all the war criminals” is not their only demand; they vow to boycott all businesses, banks, media outlets, and social and cultural entities connected to the Jamaat. “We pledge that we will continue our movement from Teknaf to Tetulia under the leadership of general people until highest punishment is given to Razakars-Al-Badrs who committed crimes against humanity like genocide and rape in 1971,” said the oath administered by Imran H. Sarkar, the young convener of the Bloggers and Online Activist Network.

Focus on media

The Mancha announced boycotting business and educational institutions run by “war criminals” including the Islami Bank and Ibn Sina trust, and sharply criticised some of the western media for “motivated coverage” of the war crimes trial. They added that they would maintain their demand that the Jamaat and Shibir be severely punished for sedition, and that they would use video and news pictures to identify members of those groups.

The current mass awakening could mean a new beginning in Bangladesh. It already constitutes a challenge to religious orthodoxy and extreme Islamism, and has reawakened secular nationalism of the kind that led the nation to rebel against religio-military subjugation by the then West Pakistan. The Opposition BNP under Khaleda Zia, a staunch ally of the Jamaat’s, has been taken aback by the movement’s success.

The young people who have reignited the flame of conviction did not march under any one political banner. They are united in their calls for justice against genocide and rape, and against fundamentalist resurgence. After they submitted to the Speaker of Parliament a list of demands including banning the Jamaat, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised in Parliament that her government would act on the oath thousands of protesters had taken. The cabinet promptly decided to move against the Quader Mollah verdict by amending the war crimes legislation, which had lacked provision for prosecution appeals.

Bangladesh’s history has always been made by the young, by students — in the language movement of 1952, the mass upsurge of 1969, and the armed struggle for national independence in 1971. There was an impression that the younger generation had forgotten the horrific acts committed by forces that were ranged against the country’s liberation, but the new generation has disproved that.

First appeared in The Hindu, Chennai, India, February 16, 2013

Haroon Habib, news correspondent of The Hindu is a Bangladesh liberation war veteran and a writer and columnist. Email: hh1971@gmail.com

War crimes in Bangladesh

Justice delayed: A first conviction for war crimes sparks controversy

MORE than 41 years after the deaths of as many as 3m people in Bangladesh’s war of secession from Pakistan, a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal has given its first verdict. On January 21st it sentenced Abul Kalam Azad to death in absentia for genocide and murder committed during the nine-month war in 1971. The verdict is being seen as a victory for Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, and her Awami League party, who have made the tribunal an important part of her term in office.

Bangladeshis have waited decades for justice and the aims of the tribunal are broadly popular, but critics say the process has been politicised to target allies of Sheikh Hasina’s main opponent, former prime minister Khaleda Zia, head of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). There have also been questions raised about its impartiality. In December The Economist reported on contacts by e-mail and Skype between the presiding judge in one of the tribunals and a lawyer in Belgium who was not an official part of the court. The judge eventually resigned and was replaced. The verdict on Mr Azad came from a second tribunal.

In the judgment Mr Azad is described as a former leader of the youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, a party in then East Pakistan and still Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic party today. Its youth wing was the main source of paramilitaries supporting Pakistan in its efforts to prevent East Pakistan’s independence. Its members are alleged to have abducted and murdered dozens of civilians. Mr Azad himself was accused of killing at least 12 Hindus and of rape. He then became a well-connected political figure in Bangladesh and a presenter of popular Islamic television programmes. He fled the country last year and is believed to be in Pakistan.

Mrs Zia has found it impossible to distance her party from Jamaat-e-Islami, an ally whose support the BNP needs if it is to win the election, likely to take place this year. Among the ten other senior figures to be tried are two leading party officials, both former ministers in Mrs Zia’s 2001-2006 government. It may be that almost the entire leadership of Jamaat will be hanged before the polls. So, too, may two members of Mrs Zia’s party, including one of her close advisers. Sheikh Hasina will hope that the taint of 1971 will make the BNP-Jamaat alliance so toxic to voters that she will be returned to power.

First published in The Economist its print edition, January 26, 2013

Bangladesh war crimes suspect escapes police dragnet

SALEEM SAMAD

BANGLADESH MOST-WANTED war crimes suspect escaped police dragnet and flees to India on his final destination to Pakistan.

Home minister Shahara Khatun on Tuesday told reporters that the authority will seek help from Interpol to arrest suspect Abul Kalam Azad aka 'Bachchu Razakar'.

Quoting close relatives of Azad, elite anti-crime forces Rapid Action Battalion on Monday at late night press meet told that he had left Dhaka on Mar. 30 and fled to India on Apr. 2.

The country’s International Crimes Tribunal issued arrest warrant for Azad on Apr. 2 for his alleged involvement with crimes against humanity committed in Faridpur, in the west of capital Dhaka during the bloody war of independence in 1971.

Meanwhile, elite police forces detained two sons and a brother-in-law of Azad for obstruction of justice and abetting the fugitive war crimes suspect to flee the country. They are being grilled by police.

The 64 year old Azad was described by war crimes investigators as henchman of marauding Pakistan army responsible for genocide of millions, sexual abuse of Hindu women and torching villages suspected for harboring guerillas.

Azad is accused for abduction, murder and missing of scores of pro-independence supporters. He was an accomplice of jailed Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed, leader of Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami also charged with crime against humanity.

Only recently, Azad was a popular TV host of Islamic program. A Muslim evangelist had often travelled abroad including United States advocating for converting a pro-secular Bangladesh into an Islamic state and implementation of Sharia laws, a strict Islamic code.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow in journalism, is a Bangladesh based award winning investigative reporter. He is student of Islamic militancy, forced migration, good governance, press freedom and elective democracy. He was twice detained and tortured. Once in 1982 and second in 2002. Later he was expelled in 2004 from Bangladesh for whistle-blowing of the arrival of Jihadists from international terror network. He recently returned home from Canada. His email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com