Thank you that was very informative.
Now
I went through some pages but it seems that I still cant get a clear picture about BD political parties. I have read that Awami are bad? No offense intended. I also read about Jamat-Islam, sounds pretty good to me we like to be with Jamat
and I noticed the progress done by our muslim brothers in BD society very impressive. they deserve the lead.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Awami League is one of the oldest large political parties in Bangladesh that started during East Pakistan days in 1949, as an off shoot of Muslim League, which is even older party from British Raj days in early 1906. Awami League gave lead to the nationalist movement of Bengali population (Muslim and Hindu) of East Pakistan, against the unfair treatment of West Pakistani leadership. West Pakistani military and political leadership, instead of finding a political solution, made a false accusation against some leaders that they are Indian agents and started killing Bengali people in East Pakistan in 1971. So population of East Pakistan led by leaders of Awami League and other political parties, as well as Bengali members of Police and Armed forces, revolted and with Indian help won the war of liberation, which created Bangladesh.
Sheikh Mujib, the Awami League leader, who was in Pakistan in jail during this whole 9 month long war, came back and went on to establish a semi dictatorship with Indian help, during 1972-1975, killing 40,000 political opponents and killing about 1 million poor people in a famine in 1974. When he abolished all other political parties and established single party rule in 1975, there was an Army coup and his whole family was killed, except for his two daughters (Hasina, the current Prime Minister and her sister, Rehana) who were staying abroad at the time.
Then we had late Zia (husband of Khaleda Zia, the opposition leader) as our leader till 1981, when he was killed in another military coup. Zia established BNP party, which is now in opposition, led by Khaleda. In my opinion, he was one of the best leaders we had so far.
Ershad, a general, ruled Bangladesh for next 10 years. He established a new smaller party called Jatiyo party.
In 1991, there was a great street protest led by Khaleda (BNP), where Hasina (AL) also participated, and Ershad was successfully removed from power.
In 1991 Bangladesh had the first supposedly free and fair election. Khaleda Zia won this election.
In 1996, Hasina led AL agitated for a care taker govt. (CTG), so that Khaleda could not use her position to influence election result. Khaleda initially went with an election without AL participation, but within 3 months, she had to accept a CTG and a new election, where Hasina won and came to power.
In 2001, Khaleda came to power again when the election was held under a CTG.
In 2006, Hasina alleged that CTG itself was being politicized and is not neutral. During this turmoil in 2007 Army took over power under Gen. Moeen, officially under a CTG and kept power for 2 years. They tried to show that they are against corruption by both parties, but came down more hard on BNP than AL. In 2009 election under this CTG, AL led by Hasina came to power. Some allege that both India and the West were in support of this Army take over and eventual win of AL, because AL successfully painted BNP-Jamaat as Islamic extremist sympathizers.
This current AL govt. rule was plagued with corruption and scandals. They have lost a lot of public support due to that. To avoid a free and fair election where they would loose for sure, AL govt. changed the constitution to remove the CTG provision and passed it in parliament, as they have majority members in parliament.
Now to get some public support back and to attack Jamaat-e-Islami and weaken the BNP-Jamaat led alliance, they decided to go for a war crimes trial to punish mostly Jamaat leaders based on fabricated charges. There was a public movement called Shahbag movement, copying the Tahrir square movement, to support "Hanging of war criminals from 1971 war". But this movement was hijacked by AL, as it was initially organized by some atheist bloggers, many of whom are Hindu and have wide support from India.
One Jamaat leader, Molla, was given life imprisonment but another Delawar Hossain Sayeedi was given death sentence. Jamaat activists and party workers came out in protest, but AL govt. police (many former party workers) and party goons mercilessly killed 170 of them.
In the meantime, one atheist blogger was killed by some people angry with their attack on Islam. This news exposed to Bangladeshi public, the organizing role of atheists and anti-Islam groups in this Shahbag movement, which was aided and supported by the AL govt.
In this situation, Hefajat-e-Islam, a group that is mainly from different Madrasa students, teachers and other Islamic groups (Islamist or just plain religious people without political inclination), came out to protest anti-Islamic activity of Shahbag group. AL and their pro-AL and pro-India media, as well as reporters from this group, who are now employed by AP, AFP, CNN, BBC are trying to portray Bangladesh as the next Taliban infested extremist country.
Indian govt. as well as Indian posters here openly support the anti-Islam activity of AL and Hasina. Because Indians, since 1972 have used AL as their proxy agent to make Bangladesh a virtual vassal state of India, according to my own study on this subject, which of course Indians and AL supporters here (in PDF) vehemently oppose.
The biggest issue now is having a free and fair election in Jan. 2014 under a CTG. AL knows that it will loose the election if it is held under a CTG, so they are trying to stop this from happening. War crimes trial was used to gain public support using 1971 history against Jamaat, which was a small and minor political party at the time in Bangladesh that sided with Pakistan army. The real goal of AL was to harass and force Jamaat to leave the alliance led by BNP. But the atheist bloggers who led the Shahbag movement, painted AL as anti-Islam and the whole thing back fired against AL.
AL is hoping to conduct this election without a CTG. The repeat of 1996 will happen probably, if BNP-Jamaat led alliance boycott this election, where a new election under CTG will have to happen again. An army takeover is also possible if Hasina conducts a rigged election and the public do not accept this rigged election.
So this is the background and the current situation in brief. Hope this makes it clear. If not please ask questions. Pro-Bangladesh Bangladeshi's, please point out any mistakes in my summary and background of current situation in Bangladesh.
Note that, Indians and pro-India AL sympathizers here will present a different side to this story. But this is how I see it, from what I have seen and known so far.
so I edited it as there could be sth wrong I wasn't aware of in that post.
