After war, justice may come late or not at all: the decision to try defendants without them being present suggests the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal is not confident of gaining an extradition order.
On the basis of a flawed trial bereft of substantial evidence, my father has now been sentenced to 90 years in prison. The Bangladeshi people must decide whether justice for crimes past is really being acheived for a better, more cohesive Bangladesh.
The bloggers of Shahbagh are facing a backlash – hunted by fundamentalists, denounced in mosques as atheists, arrested by the government. Those abroad are under threat. Meanwhile activists are still demanding justice and cyber movements are using their mobilising power to deal with disasters.
Secularism was one of the cornerstones of Bengali nationalism, but its spirit was enforced only by pen and paper. How can demands to ban religion from politics be satisfied?
"One must ask what is the point in a trial where the only acceptable result is execution": have politics irreversibly stolen fair and impartial justice from the victims of the 1971 War of Liberation?
The latest conviction and death sentence handed down by the ICT has already sparked further protests. As the state-sponsored clampdown on the press quickly grows to encompass anyone willing to speak out, what does this mean for demands for accountability?
The protests in Shahbagh errupted apparently spontaneously in response to the first verdict handed down by Bangladesh's domestic tribunal for war crimes committed during the war of independence in 1971. The primary demand? The death sentence.
As the world celebrates International Mother Language Day in memory of the Bangla Language Movement, Bangladeshis at Shabagh would do well to understand one of its forgotten language soldiers.
Protests at Shahbag that call for the death penalty for Abdul Quader Mollah have been hailed as a move beyond 'partisan politics' in the spirit of the Arab Spring. Clear government backing puts this, and the nature of the justice being meted out, in doubt.
The second verdict handed down by Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal is life imprisonment. Now a death sentence is being demanded in mass protests supported by the ruling regime, with calls for violence that extend into Bangladeshi society. Yet the guilty verdict itself may be a far cry from sound.
The Bangladeshi International War Crimes Tribunal quickly became a stage for political interference and intimidation. With elections approaching, escalating tactics threaten to condemn the entire pursuit for justice.
While criticism of the ICT is important, its chief critics have dehistoricized the context in which this trial is taking place, and expressed disdain in terms which position Bangladesh as the under-developed, untrustworthy ‘Other’.
