The Economist has a nice piece up about the literal and metaphoric trials that P.M. Sheikh Hasina will have to suffer through in the near term.
As the Economist reports:
“Officials say executions [of the convicted assassins of the founding leader of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman] by a firing squad will be carried out by January. Sheikh Mujib’s daughter, the prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has vowed to hunt down six absconding officers also convicted of the murder. The trial, which took 13 years, and was blocked from 2001-06 by the then ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), is only the first in a long list of highly sensitive court cases. This week the first group of 3,500 Bangladesh paramilitary troops went on trial over a mutiny in February, which left 57 army officers dead. Dozens will never face trial. At least 48 have died in custody.”
“The most contentious of all trials, however, are the proposed prosecutions of those accused of “war crimes” in the war of secession from Pakistan in 1971, during which an estimated 3m people were killed. No member of the former Pakistani military nor any Bengali collaborator has ever been convicted. War-crimes trials were among the main election promises of the ruling Awami League, which won a landslide last December.”
I’d argue the trial to watch is the one of the revolting members of the BDR. This trial will test the strenght of the relationship between the military and the Awami League government. Historically, the military has been closer to the BNP and has always been wary of the the AL. Consider that the founding leader of the BNP was Ziaur Rahman, the man who supposedly declared independence from Pakistan and who supporters claimwaited on the Awami League to decide whether to pursue independence militarily or through political channels.
Moreover, even as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman consolidated power in Bangladesh and concentrated the ruling party, Awami League into his own personal fiefdom, he sidelined the military by establishing his own paramilitary form, the Jatiyo Rakkhi Bahini. It is no coincidence that military officers who led the plot to assassinate Sheikh Mujib claimed that they were slaying a dictator, partly because Mujib effectively controlled the state security forces by command, not by writ. Indeed, Bangladesh has been ruled by the military for much of its post-independence history. The trial of the revolting BDR members will show whether Sheikh Hasina is amenable to maintaining the military’s self-regard. The consequences of the trial will show whether a stable civil-military relationship can be the basis for governance and security in Bangladesh.
