A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal has convicted and sentenced the assistant secretary-general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party to death for war crimes, raising fears of clashes between the police and supporters of the Islamist leader.

Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, 59, was found guilty on charges of genocide and torture of unarmed civilians during the 1971 war for independence from Pakistan, lawyers and tribunal officials said on Thursday.

Obaidul Hassan, the head of the three-judge tribunal, said the charges had been proved beyond doubt, and he was sentenced to death.

He had previously been acquitted for two of the seven original charges.

One of the charges that carried the death penalty was being a commander of a massacre of 120 people.

Defence lawyer Ehsan Siddiky said justice was denied to his client and promised to appeal.

Analyst David Bergman told Al Jazeera that there were cheers outside the court when the verdict was announced.

“The defence, however, is extremely critical of the judgement and cannot believe so much responsibility is being placed on a man who was just 19 at the time,” he said.

“They say the only crime he has committed is being a leader of the opposition. It is true that many of those facing the tribunal are from Jamaat-e-Islami, but they are known to have collaborated with the Pakistani army in 1971 and so they are an obvious target for prosecution.”

The Jamaat, a key part of an opposition coalition, had backed Pakistan during the independence war, but has denied its leaders were involved in war crimes.

Kamaruzzaman, who had pleaded not guilty through his lawyers, was accused of committing multiple abuses during the country’s liberation war.

“He was just a lad during the war. It’s a ridiculous suggestion that a 19-year-old could control the Pakistani army,” chief defence counsel Abdur Razzaq said.

Politicised court

He was found guilty of leading his followers to kill at least 183 people in his home district of Sherpur in northern Bangladesh.

The prosecution said he had formed the group Al-Badr to collaborate with the Pakistani army and led them to kill unarmed people and rape women.

Bangladesh says the war left three million people dead, 200,000 women raped and millions forced to flee to neighbouring India.

Previous convictions of other Jamaat leaders, including two that carried the death penalty, led to protests and violence throughout Bangladesh.

The supporters of the largest Islamic party in the country claim the tribunals are a politically-motivated attempt to persecute their leaders.

“The Jamaat-e-Islami will not be happy with this verdict, but it is unclear at this point whether there will be violence,” Bergman said.

“There has been constant criticism from the defence lawyers that they are dealing with a politicised court process and that they are being prosecuted because they are part of an alliance that is against the government.”

‘Village of widows’

The genocide charge against Kamaruzzaman stems from the killing of at least 120 unarmed Bangladeshi farmers in the remote northern village of Sohagpur, which has since become known as the “Village of the Widows”.

Three of the widows testified against Kamaruzzaman at his trial in which the prosecution detailed how the then 19-year-old led Pakistani troops to the village.

The tribunal was told the soldiers then marched the farmers to paddy fields, forced them to stand in a line and proceeded to gun them down en masse.

Mohammad Jalal Uddin, a farmer who lost seven members of his extended family in the killing, was delighted at the verdict.

“I lost my father, uncle and other relatives. Their crime was to have taken part in training to join the freedom fight,” said Uddin, who was a student at the time.

“We still have 37 widows in the village.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Protestors armed with bamboo sticks faced police in riot gear in Dhaka on May 4, 2013. Credit: Kajul Hazra/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, May 8 2013 (IPS)

Adding to a long list of domestic woes, including a factory collapse that left hundreds dead last month, Bangladesh is now grappling with a wave of violence that threatens to deepen the gulf between secular sections of society and religious fundamentalists.

Earlier this week at least 27 people were killed on the streets of the capital, Dhaka, as police clad in riot gear clashed with Islamic hard-liners calling for radical changes to the country’s constitution.

“We have not witnessed violence of this magnitude since the Liberation War in 1971." - Shyamal Dutta, editor of the leading Bengali newspaper ‘Bhorer Kagoj'
Sparked by a massive rally organised by the religious group Hifazat-e-Islam (Protectorate of Islam) on Sunday, May 4, the violence left hundreds injured with bullet wounds, fighting for their lives in hospitals across the city.

Chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), the nearly 100,000 demonstrators wielding bamboo sticks and banners demanded implementation of the Hifazat’s 13-point programme, which calls, among other things, for the execution of “atheists” or anyone accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammed.

Aware of the group’s plans, the government had requested Hifazat leaders to postpone their mass rally in light of the national tragedy that occurred on Apr. 24, when a building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar housing several factories collapsed, leaving over 800 dead.

Undeterred by a daily mounting death toll from the Rana Plaza catastrophe, the worst garment sector disaster in history, the group pushed ahead with what it called the “Dhaka Seize”, cutting off access to all six entry-points into the capital and occupying all the main thoroughfares.

Witnesses to the street battles, which carried on into Monday, say protestors vandalised buildings, torched scores of businesses and looted shops, all the while chanting anti-government slogans.

Shyamal Dutta, editor of the leading Bengali newspaper ‘Bhorer Kagoj’, described the violence as a veritable “war against the state”.

“We have not witnessed violence of this magnitude since the Liberation War in 1971,” he told IPS, referring to the bloody independence struggle that resulted in the secession of what was then East Pakistan from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, leaving at least three million dead, by the most conservative estimates.

Ever since the creation of Bangladesh as a sovereign state, this Muslim majority country of 160 million has been governed by a secular constitution.

Dutta believes Hifazat-e-Islam, an alliance of about 12 religious groups, is now seeking to dismantle the pluralism that has for years been enshrined in the constitution and “destroy the nation’s social, cultural and democratic values”.

Other demands on the group’s 13-point agenda include bans on anti-Islamic “propaganda” (in the form of social media) and the “intermingling” of men and women in public spaces, as well as mandatory religious education from primary to higher secondary levels.

Though the group claims to uphold the Islamic faith, many religious scholars like Moulana Ziaul Ahsan, president of the Bangladesh Sammilita Islamic Jote, have denounced their actions as “unconstitutional”.

Meeting violence with violence

Soon after the official rally ended late Sunday night, police tried to disperse the crowds, but activists hailing mostly from madrashas (religious schools) refused to clear the streets until the government agreed to implement a new anti-blasphemy law.

While many eyewitnesses say the protestors provoked police reprisals by throwing homemade explosives, bricks, stones and sticks, other sources claim the government must be held accountable for deploying the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police force and the paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) with instructions to “shoot to kill”.

“I have never seen such violence before,” Kajul Hazra, a photojournalist who has 22 years of experience working in Bangladesh, told IPS, adding that over 12,000 police were dispatched to quell the riot.

“The protestors used drums of petrol to torch trees cut from islands on the streets, broke window panes and set fire to parked vehicles, banks and offices…ambulance sirens, flames and tear gas smoke filled the air of Motijheel area (Dhaka’s commercial hub),” he recalled.

Police Spokesman Masudur Rahman told the press on Monday that his men were “forced” to use “rubber bullets, tear gas and sound grenades to control the violence.”

But human rights advocates say the decision to fire on unarmed protestors amounts to a violation of democratic principles.

“They (the police) fired on the demonstrators late at night, into the darkness, which was really cruel,” Farida Akhter, a leader of the United Women’s Forum, told IPS, adding that such actions “are those of a dictator government and completely unacceptable in a democratic society.”

A visibly shaken public sees the incident as a frightening reminder of the deep divisions in the political sphere.

According to Rokeya Prachy, a prominent social activist, Hifazat enjoys the support of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as well as the Jamat-e-Islami, whose leaders are currently being tried for war crimes allegedly committed on behalf of the West Pakistan military junta during the 1971 Liberation War against pro-independence activists.

In February and March, tens of thousands of civilians took to the streets when the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh failed to mete out the long-anticipated death penalty to former Jamat leader Abdul Quader Mollah.

Hifazat and its supporters have called attention to the discrepancies between the government’s acceptance of the anti-Jamat rallies earlier this year – popularly known as the ‘Shahbag protests’– and its violent response to this week’s Hifazat march.

Others say the different government tactics were based on the nature of each protest, with the demonstrations in Dhaka’s Shahbag Square being peaceful sit-ins, compared to the Hifazat’s vandalism and aggression.

“Why should the government’s actions (on Sunday and Monday) be termed undemocratic when security forces acted to protect the lives and properties of innocent people?” asked Abul Barkat, chairman of the economics department at the University of Dhaka, in an interview with IPS.

“I think the police were very careful in their operation to save lives,” he said.

Political parties, meanwhile, have fallen back on the usual blame game: at a press conference at the BNP’s Dhaka branch Monday, spokespeople for the opposition accused members of the ruling Awami League of instigating the violence, a claim the latter has stoutly denied, insisting that the BNP and its ally, the Jamat, were behind the chaos.

While political leaders pointed fingers, the violence quickly spread to the southern city of Khulna, to Sylhet in the north-east, Rajshahi in the north-west and to the southeastern port city of Chittagong, where a day-long clash with law enforcers left at least seven people including one police officer dead, with over 50 people still suffering from severe bullet wounds.

Young Bangladeshi women raise their fists at a protest in Shahbagh. Credit: Kajal Hazra/IPS

By Naimul Haq
DHAKA, Mar 21 2013 (IPS)

“This is a revolution,” declares Mamtaj Jahan Halima, a young law student from Bangladesh’s southwestern Khulna district. “People of all ages, irrespective of religion, caste and culture have united – we have not witnessed such a peaceful uprising since before independence.”

Surrounded by thousands of protestors at a massive rally in the capital, Dhaka — a common sight in Bangladesh these days — Halima has travelled over 300 kilometres to come here in the hopes of adding her voice to a growing call to ban radical Islamist groups, hang accused war criminals and install a secular government.

Though they did not live through the 1971 liberation war – as the independence movement is known here – the young university students coming out in droves evoke memories of a glorious past, when the people of what was then East Pakistan rose up to overthrow the occupying West Pakistan military junta and establish an independent Bangladesh.

“Hang the War Criminals”, say the placards bobbing above a sea of heads in Shahbagh Square, the neighbourhood in Dhaka that saw the first wave of protests on Feb. 5, shortly after the International Crimes Tribunal handed down a sentence of life imprisonment – rather than the much anticipated death penalty – to Abdul Quader Mollah, charged with crimes against humanity during the 1971 struggle.

While the immediate demand of the peaceful, non-partisan movement — which in the last two months has spread to other cities around the country — is punishment for “war criminals”, the core issue holding the students and activists together is the call for a secular democracy in Bangladesh and a ban on religious fundamentalist groups like Jamaat-e-Islami, and its students wing, Shibir.

The largest opposition Islamic party in the country, Jamaat’s current leaders today stand accused of atrocities committed on behalf of the Pakistan army against the pro-independence movement in 1971.

Chanting slogans and marching alongside thousands of fellow demonstrators at the Shahbagh junction, Chaity Mazumder, the daughter of a martyred freedom fighter, told IPS, “Thousands of freedom fighters sacrificed their lives to build a secular nation and we vow to achieve (their) goals.”

Like the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement before it, the Shahabag protests were sparked by a few hundred online activists urging people to take to the streets. Now, this new generation has declared it will wrest the country’s future from the hands of radical Islamists.

History of radicalisation

The Jamaat-e-Islami has long been enmeshed in Bangladesh’s political sphere. Following the assassination of the country’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, on Aug. 15, 1975, Jamaat leaders began to spread their influence.

Today the Jamaat is a key ally of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by Ziaur Rahman who opened the door to radical Islamists in a bid to secure his position in 1975.

Extremist groups found an ideal base among scores of impoverished people struggling to survive in the fledgling nation, and not long after terrorist outfits emerged as a means of subduing the population.

“It was General Zia who gave licence to such extremist groups to operate,” Shahriar Kabir, a noted writer and human rights activist here, told IPS. “In an ordinance in 1976 Zia legalised 66 such pro-Pakistan Islamist parties.”

A slew of terrorist attacks over three decades include the aborted attempt in August 2004 to assassinate Sheikh Hasina, then leader of the opposition and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh; the killing of former Finance Minister SAMS Kibria; the May 2004 failed grenade attack on former British High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury; as well as a series of bomb blasts in public places that have killed thousands of innocent people, according to government sources.

“We have had enough of Islamist militancy,” said Tabbassum Ara Begum, a 20-year-old college student from the southern Barisal district. “We were silent observers for 42 years. Now we have a platform of ordinary people with common interests — it is time to unite and eliminate these anti-liberation forces,” she said.

Imran H. Sarker, the chief coordinator of the movement, told IPS that up to now militancy overpowered ordinary people because the movement lacked cohesion.

But today “we are stronger than ever before. We have non-violent youth power and we will build a new Bangladesh”.

Indeed, the call for a “new Bangladesh” finds echo in the minds of youth around this country of 150 million where poverty is hovering at 35 percent, the cost of living has more than doubled since 2000, youth male unemployment is on the rise and nearly 50 percent of Bangladesh’s primary school students drop out before they complete fifth grade.

Dr. Khondoker Golam Moazzem, assistant director of Bangladesh’s leading private think tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), told IPS, “Despite notable developments in poverty eradication, over 40 million people still live below the poverty line.”

An economist by profession, Moazzem attributed poverty to low education levels here, as well as the primary factor driving scores of boys and girls into the informal labour market.

While poverty has long kept millions silent on the issue of politics, the Shahbagh protests are changing that trend.

According to Poonam Chakraborti, a protestor who teaches in a private school, “Ordinary people have joined us in frustration over decades of dirty politics in the name of democracy.”

Scores of other protestors told IPS they were fed up with a political system that allowed the opposition to boycott parliamentary sessions, set fire to public buildings and vehicles, and create a climate of anarchy. Others expressed dissatisfaction with a society divided between only two parties, the ruling Awami League and the opposition BNP.

“The people in the streets represent the voters who will decide tomorrow’s rulers of the nation,” Chakraborti told IPS. “So Shahbagh (represents) a crucial turning-point in the country’s political system.”

Conservative estimates put the number of people at some of the largest demonstrations in Dhaka at about 300,000, while others say protests have drawn upwards of a quarter of a million.

Though largely ignored by the Western media, the scale of the protests has forced the political establishment to sit up and pay attention.

As Jharna Rani Das, one of the participating online activists, pointed out to IPS, “Many ruling and opposition party politicians (including members of the Awami League and the Bangladesh Communist Party), worried by our sheer strength, have already expressed solidarity with us.”

“This is a clear indication of a weakening of the old order — the louder we chant, the greater the cracks on the political dynasty.”

(END)