New Age 15 February 2013
Editorial
Awami League’s inconsistency as regards ban on Jamaat
THE recent spate of violence and vandalism perpetrated by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, marked by clashes between its activists and the police in the capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country, is indicative of increasing desperation of the party primarily to protect some of its top leaders, now under trial for crimes against humanity perpetrated during the war of independence in 1971. Such desperation seems to have intensified in the face of the youth-led protests at Shahbagh, which began as a spontaneous reaction to what the protesters considered to be a lenient verdict against the Jamaat assistant secretary general Abdul Quader Molla by International Crimes Tribunal 2 on February 5 and has since transformed into a sustained movement for punishment of all war criminals commensurate with the crimes they perpetrated four decades ago. Moreover, the protests have been successful to rally increasing popular support for a ban on Jamaat, which actively opposed the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state.
While the protests pose an existential threat for Jamaat and its front organisations, including Islami Chhatra Shibir, which explains the increasingly militant actions of the latter, these have also left the Awami League-led political incumbents on a sticky turf. Given the public perception that the ‘lenient’ verdict against Quader Molla was the result of not only the ineptitude and lack of commitment on the part of the investigators and prosecutors but also political machinations by the incumbents towards a covert entente with Jamaat, the Awami League and the government that it leads seem to have started feeling the weight of public expectations of a ban on Jamaat and its politics. Against this backdrop, the incumbents seem to have made a dramatic shift in their position in respect of a ban on Jamaat.
Whereas the general secretary of the ruling Awami League and LGRD and cooperatives minister, Syed Ashraful Islam, categorically said on November 29, 2012 that the government had no plans to ban Jamaat, the jute and textile minister and AL presidium member, Abdul Latif Siddiqui, said on Tuesday that a bill seeking a ban on the religion-based party and its associate organisations would be placed in the ninth parliament. According to a report published in New Age on February 13, Latif Siddiqui said the bill was being drafted. The deputy leader of parliament Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, who was with the minister at the Central Shaheed Minar during the observance of the three-minute silence on Tuesday initiated by the Shahbagh protests, remarked that ban on Jamaat ‘has now become a national demand’ but said the issue was being discussed and ‘will take time.’
It is indeed welcome that the government seems to be actively considering imposition of a ban on Jamaat. However, why ‘it will take time’ is not clear. It is pertinent to recall here that the AL-led government banned Hizb ut-Tahrir on the ground of ‘anti-state, anti-government, anti-people and anti-democratic activities’ in October 2009 while the previous political government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance banned Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami, Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh and Shahadat-e Al Hikma and some ‘left extremist’ groups. Needless to say, on neither of the occasions, the government sought approval from parliament. It is thus intriguing why the incumbents have to wait for an act of parliament to ban Jamaat. After all, the recent spate of violence and vandalism by Jamaat and its associates is undoubtedly ‘anti-state, anti-government, anti-people and anti-democratic’. Besides, the war crimes tribunal has also held Jamaat responsible as a party for the war crimes perpetrated in 1971.
In such circumstances, the AL-led government’s plea for time in respect of imposing a ban on Jamaat could be construed as more of political expediency than legal compulsion and thus raise questions about its sincerity and seriousness. The onus obviously lies with the incumbents to dispel such doubts.
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