Nirmal Rosario loves his Sunday walk to the Holy Rosary Church in Dhaka’s Tejgaon area. It takes him seven to eight minutes to reach the church from his home in Monipuri Para. But given the events that have been unfolding in the capital city since last Saturday, the 64-year-old president of the Bangladesh Christian Association, the largest organisation for the country’s seven-lakh-odd Christians, says it may not be safe to venture out on Dhaka streets anymore.
Rosario is not alone in feeling a sense of dread over the recent happenings in Dhaka and many parts of the country. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country’s principal opposition party, and its former ally, the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, have been holding parallel protests since 28 October. Their demand? Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and the installation of a caretaker government before elections next year. The protests, which were supposed to be ‘peaceful’, have led to violent clashes between members of BNP, Hasina’s Awami League, and the police, resulting in road blockages, arson, and killings.
The BNP and the Jamaat declared fresh ‘non-violent’ hartals against the unrest, which have also transformed into aggressive demonstrations. The Jamaat has gone a step ahead and vowed to enforce Sharia law to stop the mayhem. The party’s acting ameer Mujibur Rahman has said that no ‘man-made laws’ would be allowed to be in force in Bangladesh.
It is ironic that the acting ameer shares his name with Bangladesh’s founder, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had very different ideas for the country. Bangabandhu used to say that Bangladesh is neither for Hindus, nor for Muslims; the country belongs to all those who call it their own. When it came to power in 2001 and formed a coalition government with the BNP, the Jamaat unleashed hell on the country’s minority population. Renowned Bangladeshi human rights activist and writer Shahriyar Kabir has said on record that Bangladeshi minorities were heavily persecuted by BNP and Jamaat forces between 2001 and 2006.
On 1 August 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration, declaring it unfit to contest national elections. Ironically, some news outlets in Bangladesh report that US embassy officials have been holding talks with the Jamaat, even as America is tightening its screws on the Hasina government to conduct free and fair elections in the country.
Also read: Bloodshed in Bangladesh amid BNP’s anti-Hasina protest — ‘cops struck with machetes, protester dead’
The American stand
On 24 May, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a “new visa policy” with the potential to restrict visas for Bangladeshis found to undermine the democratic electoral process in their home country. The notification said that the restriction would apply to current and former Bangladeshi officials, members of pro-government and opposition political parties, and members of law enforcement, the judiciary and security services.
The US Secretary of State said that it is “everyone’s responsibility” to ensure free and fair elections in Bangladesh—from voters and political parties to the government, security forces, civil society, and the media.
While Blinken’s statement drew widespread criticism from the Bangladeshi government, civil society and media, there have been serious allegations against the Hasina government of rigging elections in 2014 and 2018. Enjoying uninterrupted power for about 15 years, Hasina has faced some other serious allegations, too. Al Jazeera, in its 30 July report, wrote that the PM “has been accused of authoritarianism and human rights abuses, as well as suppressing free speech and dissent.” Bangladesh’s security forces have been accused of detaining tens of thousands of opposition activists, killing hundreds in extrajudicial encounters and disappearing hundreds of leaders and supporters, the report further read.
While it can be debated whether America should interfere in Bangladesh’s electoral processes, some allegations against the Hasina government have been levelled by international human rights bodies as well as her own opposition parties and the media. What exposes America’s doublespeak, though, are its dalliances with Jamaat, which has a worse record of human rights violations.
A report in Somoy TV said that, on 16 October, Jamaat leader Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher met Matthew Bay, the first political secretary at the US embassy in Dhaka. Soon after the meeting, Jamaat’s Mujibur Rahman threatened law enforcers with retaliatory measures and asked the party cadre to occupy certain parts of the capital.
Therefore, the US stand on “free and fair elections” in Bangladesh remains suspect.
Also read: The safest place for Hindus in Bangladesh — Jagannath Hall, Dhaka University
Talk it out
It was way back in 1999 that the BNP had teamed up with the Jamaat to form a four-party alliance before the 2001 election. Since 2022, the BNP has distanced itself from the Jamaat and has cultivated a more secular, Centre-Right image as opposed to the latter’s hard Islamist one. The parallel hartals that these parties have been conducting of late have fuelled doubts about their split. Be that as it may, unlike the Jamaat, the BNP remains a recognised political party and, in the absence of any other potent political force in Bangladesh, remains the ruling Awami League’s biggest competitor.
It has been 17 years since the BNP was voted out of power. BNP chairperson and former prime minister of Bangladesh Khaleda Zia is suffering from ill health and has been convicted in a corruption case for siphoning money meant for orphans. Her son, Tarique Rahman, is the acting party chief but runs it remotely from London. He is a fugitive from law, after all, having been convicted of planning a failed assassination attempt on Hasina in the 2004 grenade attack case.
In the 2008 national elections, the BNP won 33 of the 299 parliamentary seats and lost to Hasina’s Awami League. The party boycotted the 2014 elections in which Hasina got another term. It participated in the 2018 polls but withdrew from the race midway, accusing the Awami League of manipulating the polls. For January 2024, it wants a caretaker government in place so that free and fair elections become a possibility.
Bangladesh has had three caretaker governments to manage elections and ensure a smooth takeover of power – in 1996, 2001 and 2006.
Political journalist Sahidul Hasan Khokon, who has been covering elections in Bangladesh for over 15 years, told me that the country’s last caretaker government had sent both Hasina and Zia to jail on charges of abusing power and illegally amassing wealth. They were released before the elections in December 2008. According to Khokon, the caretaker government experiment has not been conducive to Bangladesh’s electoral democracy.
In 2011, the Awami League government abolished the caretaker government system through the 15th amendment of the Bangladeshi constitution. Calling it a historic moment for democracy, Sheikh Hasina had told parliament: “We can’t allow unelected people to oversee national elections.”
Interestingly, Terry L Easley, who was part of a delegation of international election observers that visited Bangladesh in July this year, found the demand for the restoration of the caretaker government both “illegal and unconstitutional”.
“The US national also expressed that calls by some for a UN intervention to administer the upcoming national election [are] realistically not feasible. He reminded that the UN rarely conducts a national election and it is highly unlikely they would do so in Bangladesh,” The Daily Star reported on 20 August.
Free and fair elections can only be held if the Awami League and BNP discuss a proper solution. But, due to violent protests over the last few days, Hasina has ruled out the possibility of any talks with the BNP. The BNP’s idea of letting the streets decide the country’s fate is only leading to unnecessary bloodshed and taking it further away from a functioning democracy.
Deep Halder is a writer and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)