09:18
Tieng Anh Vui
THE screws are tightening on Bangladesh’s main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami. The International Crimes Tribunal, a troubled domestic court, has convicted two more prominent opposition figures for their roles during the country’s bloody secession from Pakistan in 1971. Five have so far been jailed or told they will hang, with several more on trial. Though not banned yet, Jamaat is being gutted as a political force.
Prosecutors called Ghulam Azam, who long headed the pro-Pakistani Jamaat, the “torchlight” who guided massacres of intellectuals in Dhaka at the end of the conflict. Members of Jamaat’s student wing manned death squads committing appalling crimes alongside Pakistani soldiers. On July 15th tribunal judges convicted Mr Azam of genocide, war crimes and murder and sentenced him to 90 years. A death sentence was commuted, they said, because of his age (90) and ill health. His lawyer said he was guilty only of opposing independence.
Two days later the tribunal told another prominent Jamaat figure, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, that he faces the noose. Mr Mojaheed, who was minister of social welfare in the previous elected government from 2001 to 2006, was convicted of genocide and torture against Hindus during the 1971 conflict, in which anything from 300,000 to 3m people died and millions were displaced.
Neither conviction is a surprise, and massive anti-Jamaat protests in February called for nothing less. But the convictions may have been delayed because of street violence following earlier sentences for other Jamaat leaders. Well over 100 people have been killed in recent months as police have fought thugs from Jamaat and sympathetic Islamic groups. Despite a handful of protests and deaths so far this week, the tribunal judges, or their political masters, will hope for relative calm as Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, is under way.
More uncertain are broad political prospects before a general election in just six months. The main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), an ally of Jamaat, accuses the government of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, of preparing for unfair polls. The BNP has recently done well in a clutch of small mayoral elections. But it sees the flawed war-crimes tribunal as a scheme to crush legitimate opposition nationally by wiping out its minority partner. It also wants a caretaker government to oversee the voting, and threatens protests and strikes if that does not happen. The next six months will be no more peaceful than the last.
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