The government has stumbled upon the opportunity to move against all its enemies on the religious right. International partners are asking the Awami League government to take its next steps carefully. The BNP is backing down from its high pitched rhetoric on the ruling party’s moves against the right. With that confluence of events, the AL can hardly be blamed for moving swiftly.
In the first, most troubling instance, the acting Chief of the banned militant organization, Jamaatul Mujahideen, Bangladesh claimed to have had a hit-list to assassinate 12 top leaders from the ruling party. Though the JMB has been nearly routed, nevertheless the plan might strike one as frightening in its cold-blooded efficiency (It is still suspect whether the JMB were capable of divining a strategy to successfully full off hits).
Though the JMB has been gutted, its hierarchy has remained intact, and has, in fact flourished. It is no small fortune that the post-holders within that hierarchy seem to be singularly incompetent. Imagine, if the leaders of the JMB had been competent: there’d have been no dodging that bullet.
Paralleling these developments the government has arrested at least 2 more leaders of Jamaat. Indeed, Jamaat’s woes have gotten more burdensome since the arrested and detained chief of the JMB has alleged ties between JMB and Jamaat. The humiliations have not ended with simple allegations: over face to face cross-examination between leaders of Jamaat and JMB, decades old conversations that support Jamaat’s complicity in the murders of young professionals and intellectuals in 1971 entered the public record.
During a face to face exchange between the leaders of JMB and Jamaat charges countered other charges and decades old relationships and secret conversations thrust out in the open, bare. (Apparently the leaders of the two organizations think this is a non-cooperative game they are playing.)
Still, the detained will see their day in court. Some, like Maulana Nizami, the Jamaat leader, will be pulled into the court room with charges of having insulted Muslims by blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad. Others will be paraded out as war criminals. Neither prospect seems promising.
Given the government relative position of strength it must therefore pay attention to not be called out for arranging a show trial for its political enemies.
Indeed the Associated Press reports that in a strong move designed to signal its leading power, the the government has barred at least 40 people from leaving the country; people it suspects of plotting and leading the murder of Bengalis in 1971. The bad news for Jamaat is that the majority of those so charged are members of Jamaat-e-Islami.
And that’s the problem. The much-talked-about War Crimes Trial is about to be inaugurated. The cause is just. The procedures are acceptably transparent, but the means of delivering that justice seem to be overwhelmingly political, not least because of the Trial is a fulfillment of an election pledge.
This was Alan Duncan’s cautionary note. Duncan, the United Kingdom’s Minister for International Development called on the Bangladeshi government to conduct the War Crimes Trial with transparency and through procedurally just steps. Pointing to the bitter opposition forces in and out of parliament, Duncan asked that democratic politics play out in parliament, the proper venue for such games. Violent street protests and judicial decisions designed to draw and quarter one’s enemies paints an altogether unimpressive picture of politics in Bangladesh, admonished Duncan.
Indeed, it seems the BNP is aware that it now finds itself in the cross-hairs: support its (former) allies and be branded treasonous or stand pat and be lose the Islamist vote bloc, through its alliance with Jamaat. The only strategy left standing for the BNP will be to argue that AL’s moves are proto-fascistic. This strategy will stand or fall when the rulings and judgments are delivered and people decide to take to the street or stay at home, in quiet observation of a most solemn occasion. There is yet some chance that public opinion will swing in a wave toward the AL if it delivers fair and socially attuned proceedings on the war crimes trial. In just that case, the BNP had best come up with a new winning plan to take down the Awami League.
