The crisis deepens in Bangladesh. The move by the International Crimes Tribunal, a body commandeered by anti-Awami League elements following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in August last year, to sentence the former head of government to death for alleged crimes against humanity pushes the country into a new state of uncertainty. The reasons are plain to see.
In the first place, the so-called trial of the former prime minister was conducted in her absence, with the interim regime and the prosecution making it obvious from the beginning that fairness could not be expected from the tribunal.
In the second place, a situation which has for the past fifteen months kept the nation’s media in a straitjacket, thereby preventing it from reporting or commenting on the nature of the proceedings, undermined the entire course of the trial.
In the third place, unabashed, derogatory comments by individuals associated with the prosecution in the run-up to the verdict to the effect that Sheikh Hasina deserved to be served with a sentence of death gave citizens the clear message that judgement had been prepared even before the proceedings got underway.
Things only got increasingly bizarre as the Yunus regime went into overdrive to convict the former prime minister.
The lawyer appointed by the regime to defend Sheikh Hasina was observed laughing as he spoke of his pain of not being able to successfully defend his client.
In the courtroom, packed with a partisan crowd, cheers and applause erupted when the verdict was announced.
The authorities went out on a limb to ensure that the decision of the tribunal would be telecast live on state-run Bangladesh Television. Overall, the trial and the proceedings of the case went against the principles of the rule of law.
First came the unverified accusations against the former prime minister. And then came the rushed judgement. Both lacked credibility.
The trial, indeed the questionable manner in which it was conducted, has aroused concerns among international organisations, especially human rights bodies, about the process employed by the tribunal against Sheikh Hasina.
Moreover, concerns have been coming in from various quarters about the death penalty clamped on her in light of a growing campaign against capital punishment being applied in trials related to alleged crimes committed.
That the trial was conducted in a vengeful manner, that no proper investigations were undertaken into the incidents which occurred between July and August and later in the country last year, that Sheikh Hasina was given no scope — in circumstances of mob rule — to mount her defence in court have predictably undermined the legality of the tribunal itself.
Citizens cognisant of due process have dismissed the judgement against the former prime minister as an exercise in futility. For observers of Bangladesh’s history, the judgement against Sheikh Hasina holds little relevance for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the Yunus regime is unable to have her extradited from India for the contentious sentence of death against her to be carried out.
Secondly, analysts take a leaf out of the pages of history to remind themselves, and of course the country, that such judgements or attempts to reach such judgements earlier have been of little consequence.
In the course of the Agartala Conspiracy Case trial in Dhaka in 1968, the dictatorial regime of Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan planned to have the proceedings lead to a verdict establishing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s guilt and so pave the way for his physical elimination.
A fast-growing mass upsurge in East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was at the time, forced the Ayub regime into withdrawing the case and freeing all the accused, including Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The move to have Mujib eliminated thus spectacularly backfired. Again, in 1971, as the War of Liberation went on in occupied Bangladesh, the Yahya Khan junta placed Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on trial before a military tribunal in (West) Pakistan, the charge against him being waging war against Pakistan.
Bangabandhu was sentenced to death, but once Pakistan collapsed in Bangladesh, he was freed and returned home to his liberated country in early January 1972.
The message is therefore loud and clear: the verdict against Sheikh Hasina means little, for it was delivered by a tribunal shaped whimsically and in a vengeful manner by a regime that lacks a constitutional basis in Bangladesh.
The Yunus regime will grumble, of course, that the Indian authorities have not been responsive to its demand that the former prime minister be extradited to Bangladesh. The bigger truth is that in recent weeks, Sheikh Hasina’s powerful influence on Bangladesh’s politics was reaffirmed through her interviews with leading media organisations in India and in the West.
That Bangladesh’s future depends on Sheikh Hasina’s strategy of retaking the country back from those who hold it in violation of constitutional norms has been made clear through her views as expressed in the interviews.
And now, with a questionable judgement delivered by a questionable tribunal against her, the former prime minister’s large presence in Bangladesh’s political landscape has once again been emphasised.
For Bangladesh in the coming months, the task will be one of ensuring that the damage caused to the country by mobs sustained by support from the Yunus outfit is rolled back through a restoration of government based on the foundational principles of the country as enshrined in the constitution.
On the other hand, the BNP is keen that elections take place in February next year. They are in a hurry for the voting takes place as a way of keeping the Awami League at bay.
For Sheikh Hasina and her party, politics now has taken a new direction, which is that the crucial issue for Bangladesh today is to create the conditions that will have Muhammad Yunus and his advisors relinquish power before free, fair and inclusive elections can be held.
Much will depend on the strategy the Awami League shapes in its programme of having the Yunus regime shown the door in the coming weeks and months.
For the international community, which has given no sign that it is happy with the way the Yunus regime rushed to judgement on Sheikh Hasina, the responsibility is clear: with Bangladesh being hollowed out in every sense of the term — history, politics, culture, economy, education, employment, rule of law — and with fascism let loose across the country, it is imperative that strong and decisive moves be made to help free the country from the grip of the anti-state elements who have systematically been hacking away at the roots of Bengali society.
Elections which hint at a lack of credibility can wait.
The more important objective today is for Bangladesh to be recovered by its people and for those who have been encouraging and presiding over its destruction since August 2024 to be brought to justice on the basis of the rule of law and legal standards upheld by the global community.
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The country has been pushed down the abyss. It needs to be pulled out of the depths it is in. The anarchy of the past fifteen months requires to be brought to an end by forces loyal to the ideas and ideals that led to the emergence of Bangladesh five decades-plus ago.
