Bangladeshi International Crimes Tribunal Comes Up Wanting

Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal, set up in 2010 to investigate atrocities committed during the country's violent 1971 split from Pakistan, is igniting political and sectarian tensions that have resulted in over 75 deaths in the past month.

 

The bout of protests, which began peacefully, stem from a series of sentences handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) against a handful of leaders of the country's Jamaat-e-Islami party (Bangladesh's most important Islamist party) beginning in January. Elements of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) participated in the killing of up to 3 million Bangladeshis and the torture and rape of many hundreds of thousands more during the nine month war of separation from Pakistan (some place the toll closer to 300-500 thousand; Pakistanis argue the number is closer to 25-50,000). The Tribunal, a domestic court, despite its name, handed down its first sentence--death, in absentia--against former JI leader, Abul Kamal Azad.

Protesters demanding the death sentence
for Kader Mollah, February 2013 

Things became really heated though, when the ICT sentenced a second JI leader, Quader Mollah to life in prison for his role in the conflict on February 5th. In the following weeks, tens of thousands of Bangladeshis protested the finding, demanding a death sentence. On February 17, the Bangladeshi Parliament obliged, not only allowing the state to appeal the sentence in hopes of winning a harsher punishment for Mollah, but also paving the way for the ICT to try groups, not just individuals, in association with the atrocities of 1971--JI being the principle target.

The past week has seen the worst of the violence, following the February 28 sentence of another JI leader, vice-president Delwar Hossain Sayedee, to death for murder, religious persecution, and rape. JI called a two-day strike over the weekend in response to the killing by police of four partisan youths last week.

Set up by the ruling Awami League, who campaigned on the issue in 2009, the ICT has received strong criticism from legal and human rights observers, who say it has been used to attack the opposition JI and its allies in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. International observers, who initially backed the Tribunal, have backed such claims, and added their own complaints of harassment, intimidation, and illegal cooperation between judges, prosecutors, and the government.

 

Few international observers consider the trials clean and fair. Along with complaints of a tainted system, the Parliament's apparent eagerness to appease public opinion, and the recent wave of violence (mostly by the police, though not all) seem to support fears that the government is merely using the ICT to bludgeon the opposition. In total, nine JI leaders have been or are being tried, with decisions on the remaining six expected soon. Guilty verdicts, which are expected for each of the remaining individuals, could result in the entire leadership of the JI and several from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party being put to death by the end of the year.

 

Far from providing the catharsis that was expected at the outset, these tainted trials may be tearing Bangladesh apart.  

 

Things are expected to get worse, as several more senior JI figures are slated to receive their sentences over the coming weeks. As a supporter of efforts--especially by domestic, rather than international courts--to reckon with the sins of the past, I worry that a botched attempt at justice may weigh on similar efforts elsewhere in the world by providing a false example of the dangers of "looking back" or "digging into the past." This would be especially convenient for elements in countries currently seeking to achieve transitional justice, who argue that no good can come of prosecution for crimes of the past.