There is some mirth among Dhaka’s foreign policy wonks over the troubles that a Democrat Party senator is facing in America. Last Friday, New Jersey Democratic senator Robert Menedez was charged with corruption for the second time in 10 years. Menedez and his wife have been accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, CNN reported on 22 September. “Prosecutors allege that the bribes included gold, cash, home mortgage payments, compensation for a ‘low-or-no-show job’ and a luxury vehicle,” the report further read.
Menedez’s role in banning RAB
So why are Dhaka’s America watchers happy? Because Menedez and Republican Senator Todd Young had led eight of their Senate colleagues in asking for a ban on Bangladesh’s elite paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), in 2020. And on 10 December 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on RAB and seven of its serving and former officers due to “serious human rights violations”.
A report published by the American think tank Atlantic Council on 16 December 2021 said that within two years of its founding, international human rights organisations alleged that the RAB was engaged in unlawful killings and enforced disappearances. “Reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International published in December 2006 and 2009 documented allegations and underscored the impunity enjoyed by the force,” wrote Atlantic Council’s Ali Riaz.
This happened almost two years before 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 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. There were allegations of rigging in elections held in 2014 and 2018, which the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had denied,” The Hindu reported on 2 June 2023.
According to the report, actions that undermine the democratic election process include activities such as rigging, intimidating voters, preventing people from exercising their rights to freedom and peaceful assembly through the use of force, and implementing measures designed to bar political parties, voters, civil society, or the media from sharing their views.
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Dhaka won’t stand for US meddling
The Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government, however, promptly brazened it out and said it would not allow interference in the upcoming elections. In an interview with ThePrint on 3 August, Awami League’s International Affairs Secretary, Shammi Ahmed, said that the US is not the world’s guardian. “Saving the world is a Hollywood fantasy. Captain America is fiction. Reality is, we can manage our domestic affairs rather well without America lecturing us how to,” she said.
Some of the concerns raised by the American establishment may not have been misplaced. Bangladesh’s leading English-language news publication, The Daily Star, wrote on 7 May 2023 that Bangladesh has been struggling to uphold democratic values and human rights since 2014 – a challenge that has only intensified in recent times. “The two most recent elections, which were held under the Awami League government in 2014 and 2018, were heavily criticised by the international community, with widespread human rights violations occurring during this period. The regime has employed various means to suppress dissent, including the Digital Security Act,” the Daily Star report read.
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Is Washington truly concerned?
The US’ apparent concern about the state of Bangladesh’s democracy, though, is a classic case of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. If the country were indeed concerned about human rights violations in Bangladesh, then former US Secretary of State John Kerry would not have dialled Hasina on 11 December 2013 to stop the execution of war criminal and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah, as reported by The Daily Star on the same day. Kerry reportedly told Hasina that the Jamaat leader’s execution “might lead to events which could derail the parliamentary election”.
Batting for a Jamaat leader who has been found guilty of war crimes by citing his participation in parliamentary elections is akin to advocating for the electoral rights of a convicted Nazi in modern-day Germany. Mollah was found guilty of leading his men to thrash a two-year-old child to death and slit the throats of a pregnant woman and two minor girls during the war of 1971.
The Jamaat has been accused and found guilty of crimes against humanity, starting from the Liberation War of 1971 to much of the country’s independent history, and it has been barred from taking part in elections in Bangladesh. However, the US has often advocated for the group’s “constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly”. Protesting Washington’s stand on Jamaat, noted Bangladeshi human rights activist Sultana Kamal said that the group had collaborated with the Pakistan Army in 1971 to commit acts of genocide, abduction, rape and other kinds of violence, and it continues to wreak havoc in Bangladesh.
If you go back in history, the US administration had a rather dubious role to play in the very birth of Bangladesh. In his book The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, American journalist and academic Gary J. Bass analyses a US dissent memo from former American Consul General to Dhaka, Archer Blood. This memo pertained to American policy during the 1971 Bangladesh War. The book reveals former US President Richard Nixon’s support to the West Pakistan government, which was responsible for the brutal crackdown on East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)’s Bengali population.
That was 52 years ago. Today’s Bangladesh often highlights its foreign policy as being based on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historic maxim – “Friendship towards all, malice towards none”. As idealistic as that may sound, beneath fig-leaf democratic processes, the US’ foreign policy on Bangladesh does seem to harbour historic malice. When the World Bank withdrew from funding Bangladesh’s ambitious Bridge of Dreams or Amader Swapner Padda Setu project over rampant corruption in the country, and China stepped in to help construct it, the US surely was not amused. How it views the Modi-Hasina bonhomie is also up for debate.
Bangladesh may indeed need to take a hard look at its internal issues, but it is for the country to sort itself out. For now, it isn’t willing to take dictations from Washington or become a willing puppet. A quickly-changing, multipolar world does not need Captain America. It is a fantasy best suited to Marvel Studios.
Deep Halder is a writer and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)