DHAKA: In the run-up to the 2014 Bangladesh general elections, candidates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the opposition to the ruling Awami League, headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, were broadly trailing in opinion polls, foretelling an election rout.
At the same time as the boycott, the BNP’s foot soldiers and major funding source, Jamaat, which had been declared an illegal political party by Bangladesh’s High Court in 2013 because of its history of violence, organized massive nationwide strikes and a campaign of violence.
Jamaat members set fire to thousands of buildings, cars and businesses. They derailed trains. They killed 20 law enforcement officers and torched government buildings. They burned the homes of Awami League officials and firebombed polling places on election day.
During Jamaat’s reign of terror which ultimately killed more than 230 people and injured another 1,200 Jamaat frequently targeted non-Muslims and other minorities and vandalized more than 30 Hindu temples.
As recently as last fall, Bangladesh authorities arrested several Jamaat members before they could carry out an attack, and confiscated bombs and other explosives, machetes and jihadist books.
Law enforcement officers have naturally worked to halt the violence and use intelligence and pinpointed raids to stop attackers before they execute their plans. Any reasonable person would say that Sheikh Hasina’s government is cracking down on violence, protecting innocent citizens and maintaining rule of law. But in Cadman’s view, these actions have “shrunk the space for civil society.” Cadman should ask the families of the children killed by a 2015 Jamaat firebomb attack if prosecuting the perpetrators would endanger Bangladesh’s civil space.
Indeed, any “widespread criminality,” which Cadman accuses the government of perpetuating, has in fact been carried out by the BNP and Jamaat.
Bangladesh has been forefront in prosecuting crime. The country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which was set up to try the perpetrators of war crimes and genocide during Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Liberation from Pakistan, has succeeded in bringing to justice some of the worst offenders – most of whom had managed to escape justice for nearly five decades, living consequence-free lives in the open. These include monsters such as Mir Quasem Ali, leader of the notorious Al-Badr paramilitary death squad — which he modeled on Hitler’s SS — which operated during the 1971 war. He was convicted of the abduction and murder of several people and ran a gruesome torture center in a hotel in Chittagong. He received his deserved justice in 2016, when he was executed by hanging.
