It is instructive to think about the international political economic implications of the easily disparaged, late in coming War Crimes Trial in Bangladesh. The local media have for long written up tomes on the domestic fight in setting up that trial; less attention has been paid to the international dimensions of that fight.
A quick summary of the politics at hand is useful. Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 2008 partly due to her pledge that this time, finally, the collaborators would be punished under the rule of law. Now this pledge seems to be on the way to fulfillment, but domestic politics and international politics seems to have gotten in the way.
To a great extent this was expected. There is no politics without constraints that bind: budgets force an executive’s hands; international human rights laws stand against punitive measures designed to destroy one’s political enemies and on and on. So in like measure, the fact that Jamaat-e-Islami–one of groups ostensibly thought responsible for the 1971 massacres of a generation of intellectuals–had become a principal leader within Bangladeshi politics would have hampered any move to bring down that party. Though 40 years ago the current generation Jamaat leaders were leader-footsoldiers of the push in then-East Pakistan to maintain family ties with the Islamist Pakistani government and military, today they are frail old men who though spiteful nevertheless command the respect of generations of swarthy men and politically astute women.
The Economist published a very interesting article yesterday that provides new insights into the slow-moving convocation of the trial. Understanding the complex issues, perhaps, requires that I quote at length entire passages excerpted from the piece:
“The United Nations and Western governments are wary of lending support to a tribunal unless it conforms to international standards of due process. But without foreign funds and technical support, those standards are unlikely to be met. Technical disputes over the process, however, mask a more fundamental worry: that in hunting those with four-decade-old blood on their hands, Sheikh Hasina is conveniently hounding her enemies. If the trials confirm the conclusions of the 1995 inquiry, the outcome might conceivably be the execution of nearly all of Jamaat’s leaders.”
“Posing perhaps an even bigger obstacle than Western scruples is Saudi Arabia, which sells its oil to Bangladesh at subsidised prices and employs more than 2m of its citizens. It is concerned about plans to reinstate the country’s 1972 constitution, with four “pillars” that include secularism (the others are nationalism, socialism and democracy). Saudi Arabia recognised Bangladesh as an independent country a few months after the assassination in 1975 of the country’s first prime minister, Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That paved the way for a return of religion-based parties, banned by the 1972 constitution. So reinstating and enforcing that original constitution might amount to an outright ban on Jamaat, the standard-bearer in Bangladesh for a conservative strain of Islam, and a staunch Saudi ally.”
In the first instance the due diligence that is required of showing proof of complicity is mostly evanescent. At least some of the proof of conspiracies hatched and acts committed is hearsay now, 40 years out. Indeed the current Law Minister helped invoke the evidence that determined proof (of guilt) in informal discovery proceedings. This is surely a hurdle, a normative one, a strong one, that the government must clear to be truly, morally in the clear to set about prosecuting those now thought culpable of heinous crimes bordering on genocide.
Secondly, the Saudi government need not fear that Bangladesh will take up its shaken secular creed. The country is resolutely in the column of “Muslim countries”, so deemed, by the supposedly secular Awami League. Nevertheless, the “outright ban on Jamaat ” is not likely to come through because of the noted negative economic impact on remittances. There is a more important domestic political reason for such a fulsome ban on Jamaat: too many young, boisterous people count on Jamaat for their daily bread and beliefs. Criminalizing such a party would then invite political and civil unrest, street by street, village by village.
