I’ll try to pull together some news and analysis in one post. It might strike, you, the reader, as odd that the days news gets separated into digestible chunks, when the foodstuff is run through and through with rough hewn complexity and inter-related dependence.
This has everything to do with the news business model, of course; representation of our perceived reality has nothing at all, to do with the stories newspapers would have us read. Instead, the stories we tell each other , the ones that stand for the things we know are digressive, organic, end on end constructions that hold up only with sprinklings of a miracle. So, from time to time, I’ll attempt the same sort of construct, though I fear I am hopelessly incompetent for the task.
First off, lets think about the Awami League’s charge that the BNP is working to save war criminals in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is of course referring to members of the Jamaat leadership who might stand on the docket when the War Crimes trial comes to pass. The BNP was in coalition with Jamaat and now happens to have embarked on a program of anti-AL protests and strikes. One might forgive the P.M. for thinking that those two facts are sufficient to support the assertion, viable evidence notwithstanding. Unfortunately these two facts do not support that assertion.
Yes, the BNP and Jamaat were in coalition. Indeed Jamaat fought to uphold native ties with Pakistan and some leaders of that party can be thought, legitimately, war criminals. People in Bangladesh must live with a large measure of ambivalence that those who committed great harm on its people, nevertheless were afforded an opportunity to lead the very people they had fought.
Nevertheless Sheikh Hasina’s claim that the BNP is conspiring to save those leaders– considered war criminals–is tantamount to a charge of treason. That most serious offense requires that a charge so brought be equally seriously examined. Threading two sets of facts together and passing them off, by the sleight of a shaky hand, as a terrible and absurdly untenable conclusion is no serious study of the politics of the day; it is a sign of motivated sophistry. The AL leadership might think this a boon sufficient to appeal to the people’s clamor for redress. But, of course, the people might be better off with political talk that bears some resemblance to policy moves that might improve and social welfare.
None of this pardons the acts of genocidal violence that members of Jamaat committed in collusion with the Pakistani military. Consider that within nine months 3 million people were killed by the military while at least 200,000 women were raped. The War crimes trial will surely demonstrate the ethical commit to human rights that is enshrined in the constitution. It will also establish the primacy of the rule of law in a land that has often turned errant. Still, were each one of these felicitous circumstances to come about, none would stand to support Sheikh Hasina’s over-wrought charge.
Political gamesmanship cannot provide sufficient grounds on which to parlay an allegation of treason. Partisan speeches are propaganda shared amongst the faithful: cheap talk, on the fly. Mutual advantage politics requires more honest stuff.
