DHAKA: When an ally in Bangladesh’s ruling coalition threatened this month to pull out of upcoming elections, elite troops broke open the gates of the party leader’s home, brushed aside his guards and hauled him away.
“It was horrible to see sir being dragged into a car in front of our very eyes, and yet we could do nothing,” said an official of Hossain Mohammad Ershad’s party. The official, who declined to be named for fear of arrest, was at the home of the one-time military ruler at the time of the raid.
The detention of Ershad, 83, was widely seen as an attempt by the ruling Awami League (AL) to prevent him from withdrawing his party from the Jan. 5 election, which would have further undermined the legitimacy of a ballot already being boycotted by its main rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
As it is, the BNP’s boycott means that more than half of the 300 parliament seats at stake will go uncontested, dimming hopes that an inclusive ballot could restore stability to this strife-plagued South Asian country.
The crisis has spilled onto the streets, where people are shot, beaten or burned to death daily in clashes between rival groups and police. More than 200 people have died in political violence this year, half of them since Nov. 25, when the Election Commission announced a date for the vote. Many say that emergency rule under the army looks increasingly likely.
Rolling general strikes staged by the opposition and blockades of roads, rail lines and waterways are also hurting the 22 billion dollars garment industry, which supplies some of the world’s top retailers, employs four million people and accounts for 80 per cent of the impoverished country’s export earnings.
Political unrest was chiefly to blame for a 40 percent drop in export orders in October from a year earlier, according to Riaz Bin Mahmud, vice-president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA)
The owner of a garment company that employs around 12,000 workers said the drop continued into last month, when he saw his orders fall by around 50 per cent from November 2012.
None of the factory owners Reuters interviewed for this story were willing to speak on the record about the impact of the unrest, concerned that there could be reprisals for appearing to criticise the political parties involved.
The collapse in April of a garment-factory complex in which more than 1,100 people died had already raised the alarm among Western brands. Now, the BGMEA says, some are turning to India, Vietnam and Indonesia even though their labour costs are higher.
“They (protesters) are not burning our vehicles, they are burning our economy,” said a local garments buyer for a major Western firm. “My appeal to the brands is: do not allow this country to become another Somalia.”
In the port city of Chittagong, even the weekly auction of tea — one of the biggest in the world — had to be called off this month because of the mounting political turmoil.
Making matters worse, activists from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, an Islamist ally of the BNP, have gone on the rampage as a tribunal pursues its leaders for atrocities committed during the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Last week Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah was hanged, the first war crimes execution in Bangladesh. He was accused of collaborating with Pakistani forces, who were eventually defeated with India’s help.
Protesters from Jamaat and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, attacked members of the ruling AL party in deadly reprisals after the execution, while hundreds of people staged vigils in the capital, Dhaka, to celebrate his death.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal has exposed divisions in society over what role Islam should play, and the strong public reaction to its verdicts have raised fears that young Jamaat members are being radicalised. (PTI)
8 Awami activists sentenced to death in B’desh for murder
Dhaka: Eight activists of the Awami League were sentenced to death and 13 others were given life terms today by a fast-track Bangladeshi court here for hacking to death a tailor during an opposition enforced blockade in 2012.
“They (the eight) will be hanged to death,” pronounced tribunal-4 judge ABM Nizamul Haque at the packed courtroom as six convicts appeared in the dock.
Two other death penalty convicts and 11 of the 13, who were awarded the life term, were tried in absentia as they were on the run to evade punishment. Under the Bangladeshi law, the High Court must review death penalties even if the convicts do not appeal against the lower court’s verdicts.
The Chhatra League activists hacked to death the 24-year-old tailor, Biswajit Das, on the street in Old Dhaka’s Bahadur Shah Park area on December 9 last year during the opposition enforced blockade. Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) is the student front of the Awami League. Sutrapur police filed a murder case in this regard on the same day.
On June 2, charges were framed against the 21 Chhatra League activists. The murder drew flack on the then ruling Awami League. Reacting to the verdict, Das’s brother said, “I am satisfied…we got justice.” (PTI)