The lynch-fever of Shahbag is losing mercury-mark
Sadeq Khan
In a joint press-briefing given by the Indian and Bangladeshi foreign ministers in Dhaka on February 17, playright-diplomat Salman Khurshid and physician-diplomat Dr. Dipu Moni made a common cause of saluting the energised crowd of young revellers in Shahbag road-junction. A leading Bengali newspaper of Kolkata, Ananda Bazar Patrika hailed “India’s salute” to Shahbag generation.
On February 18, leading English newspaper of Delhi, The Times of India reported:
“Bangladesh’s parliament, meeting demands of protesters thronging the capital, amended a law on Sunday allowing the state to appeal any verdict in war crimes trials it deems inadequate and out of step with public opinion.Tens of thousands of demonstrators jamming central Shahbag Square for the 13th day burst into cheers amid driving rain as the assembly approved the changes.
The protesters have been demanding the death penalty for war crimes after a tribunal this month sentenced a prominent Islamist to life in prison in connection with Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. “Lawyers said the amendment sets a timetable for the government to appeal against Mollah’s sentence and secure a retrial. The previous law did not allow state prosecutors to call for a retrial except in the case of acquittals. Adoption was quick — less than a week after the amendment was approved by the cabinet in the overwhelmingly Muslim country of 150 million.
Opposition benches were empty as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (the BNP) of former premier Begum Khaleda Zia and its allies have been boycotting sessions almost since her arch rival, Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League, took office in 2009. On Sunday (February 17), BNP leaders and activists held a rally outside the party’s central office in the capital. “The government is trying to use the protests over the war crime trials to divert attention from critical national issues such as our demand for election under a caretaker authority to ensure a clean and unbiased vote,” BNP’s acting Secretary-General, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, told the rally.
“Bangladesh has shut down a blog site after it was linked to the murder of a anti-Islamist blogger who helped organize protests against the leaders of the largest Islamic party, officials said on Sunday. Blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider, 35, was hacked to death near his home in Dhaka on Friday night.”
Thus “India’s salute” to Shahbag generation in Dhaka may not be finding space to reverberate in the Indian media very much. Indeed, as with cry for capital punishment for hated offences like rape in India itself, the cry for hanging of “crimes against humanity” in Shahbag is beginning to raise eye-brows amongst sober people in India like in the West. Western governments and human right activists have already made their reservations well-articulated in the media over the faulty process of trial and an earlier verdict of capital punishment accorded to an accused in absentia in the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh.
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