Does the current Government in Bangladesh lawfully threatens the impunity the armed forces armours itself in?
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Question asked by SALT: Does the current Government in Bangladesh lawfully threatens the impunity the armed forces armours itself in?
This country has been ruled many times over by the armed forces. In the process of ‘taking over’ and ‘ruling’ it had to resort to controversial
doings such as ‘killing’ beyond the text and punctuation of the law and above all the constitution of the land.
Best answer:
Answer by ~slsmhu
I’m from Bangladesh and I have seen the nightmarish events under the first democratically elected government of Bangladesh.
There were “Rakkhi Bahini” (RB) headed by one of the presidium members of the present Awami League (AL) as its Leader-in-Chief or such nomenclature. Thousands of the leftist students’ activists of Jatiyo Samajtantric Dal (JSD) were taken away by these special paramilitary forces and never found again. Present leftist political parties who formed Grand Electoral Alliance with the AL and came to power in the general elections of 29th December 2008 also knows how many of their activists and comrades were killed extra judiciously by the RB under the tutelage of the AL leadership immediately after our independence till 15th August 1975. The regime of AL was changed in 1975 as some junior level Army Officer (one of the remarkable names is Major Dalim) tried to settle some personal score that got botched up and ultimate massacre of Sk. Mujib and his entire family and close relatives on that day. You can see that it was height of ineptitude and nepotism shown by our first government under the leadership of President/Prime Minister Sk. Mujibur Rahman, who was personally very honest, dedicated and had love for the people without any sliver of doubt. But the people from AL who were surrounding him were too cunning to keep the great leader in dark about what discontentment were brewing inside the country.
The top-ranks of the Army in 1975 just took the chance to cooperate with junior officers’ attempt at the 11th hour since they also saw that the AL nominated 62 “Governors” who started moving out of Dhaka to be posted in all the 62 Districts and make Bangladesh similar to the Cuba. All the political parties were disbanded by the AL in 1975 and the parliamentary members voted unanimously to dissolve it and abrogated the Constitution of Bangladesh, which was framed by them, only to form and join one-party (BAKSAL), which was basically the old-AL in new bottle, that was taking roots in the soil of Bangladesh. Therefore, people were too suspicious about AL and Sk. Mujib’s motives and did not want Bangladesh to be another vassal (feudal tenant of land) state of either India or USSR, that was the major reason for people not shedding tears when the great leader of our cause, without whom we would still be ‘East Pakistan’, lost his life and indeed welcomed the military takeover at that time.
So the then Governments of Bangladesh under successive military rulers (Zia the benevolent and honest officer and Ershad the cunning and selfish officer who destroyed democracy) could sail easily and got themselves all the immunities that you are hinting in your Question. But in the process, the Army got the taste of power and they started discrediting the political leadership of the AL (being the sole player), among whom at least 50% were very clean and upright people. Since the avalanche started to roll down the mountain, the whole leadership of the AL was buried in the darkness of history for 21-years till 1996 when they could come to power through election after losing to the BNP in 1991 election.
I think what you may also be referring here is that of the Joint-operation conducted from time-to-time since 1974 where the Army with Police (recently RAB) would hunt down the criminals of the societies and in the process would ‘eliminate’ them by way of cross-fire during encounter where most of these ‘victims’ are known terrorists, extortionists, kidnappers, arms-dealers and what not. These killings are done extra judiciously and some human rights organisations local as well as foreign are decrying such brutal killings. But if you have lived in Bangladesh under the political leadership since 1991 then you would realise that why people in general are not giving a hoot to such allegations against law enforcing agencies. It is true that on or two out of 10 such killings may not be done with avowed policy to weed out the criminals, but those are too few to merit any immediate attention to stop these operations.
Sorry for the long response but I thought of making some of the basic differences as clear as possible for the benefit of the people who have interest in the affairs of our country, but are not getting the real pictures since both the leading parties (AL & BNP) are accused of distorting the history when they come to power.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
