JOIN USBangladesh is in the grip of an unprecedented wave of violence and is undergoing a process of serious political churning. Over 60 people have lost their lives in the last four days. A number of people had also been killed in the weeks after the first verdict of an international crimes tribunal in January this year which sentenced a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami to death for crimes committed during the 1971 independence struggle of the country.
Violence of the last two days was also sparked by a judgment of the tribunal which awarded death sentence to another Jamaat leader. The Jamaat and its youth wing have taken to the streets against the judgment, with violent protests leading to clashes with the police and resulting casualties. Some Hindus and their homes have also been attacked in some places.
The Jamaat had supported Pakistan in 1971 and some of its leaders and functionaries were alleged to have committed atrocities, including killings, arson, rape and other crimes, along with Pakistani troops. These crimes have never been called to account and Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government set up a tribunal to try their perpetrators.
Though the government’s motive has sometimes been seen as more revenge than justice, the present situation has gone beyond war crimes and involved larger issues like religion, politics and nationhood. The protests of people who wanted death sentence for a Jamaat leader who had been awarded life sentence were spontaneous, with the daily gatherings in the Shahbad square in Dhaka evoking memories of the Tahrir protests in Egypt. The Shahbad protests were driven largely by social media campaigns.
The deeply polarised Bangladeshi society may be at a turning point now. Though Bangladesh was conceived as a secular nation, the original secular idea was later diluted and dumped, and it is recently that the Sheikh Hasina government has tried to anchor it to its old ideals. What the present turmoil shows is that the issues are far from settled.
More verdicts are due from the tribunal in the coming weeks and some of them are in cases involving top Jamaat leaders. So the turbulence is likely to continue. It may help the country to come to terms with its history and discover its national identity, though a high price may be paid in terms of human lives.