Mass murder, rights violations and divine justice

In an ironic twist of fate, Bangladesh's former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun appeared in court on (November 20) to respond to a long list of charges, including massacres, genocide and crimes against humanity until August 5, when former Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee to India.

Chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam, from Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal, said Al-Mamun and eight others men had committed crimes "that even devils dare not do".

The police chief's appearance at the court offered a stark reminder that the axe of accountability can fall on you any time - at times sooner than anticipated.

Al-Mamun and scores of other civil-military loyalists had unleashed a reign of terror on the "Students Against Discrimination" in July, dubbing them as anti-state , traitors and fanatics.

Hasina herself had publicly condemned the movement against a permanent 30 per cent quota for families and scions of "freedom fighters". Students also quoted her as saying "a Pakistan ghost possessed them and they needed to be sent to Pakistan."

At the heart of repression during and before Hasina's ignominious departure was the police and the notorious semi-military Rapid Action Battalion - both instrumental in muzzling and neutralising opposition parties and vocal critics of the government. Their common repressive tools involved criminal cases, harassment, illegal detentions, physical elimination, enforced disappearances and exclusion from government jobs.

Established in April 2004 during former prime minister Khaleda Zia's tenure, RAB is organised into 15 battalions with as many as 12,000 personnel across the country. Its officers are drawn from both the Bangladesh police and the country's armed forces. It has also been alleged that powerful businessmen or politicians sub-contract RAB for their interests. Under the Hasina government, RAB also became involved in enforced disappearances, particularly of individuals involved in opposition politics. RAB has also been involved in the enforcement of the Digital Security Act, a new law enacted in 2018 which has resulted in arrests of many who speak critically of the government.

While listening to countless anecdotes on governance under Hasina it was hard to resist drawing comparison to what Pakistan has gone through since March 2022, particularly the plight of the PTI and its chairman. Bangla National Party of Khaleda Zia has been suffering all these years as much as the opposition PTI here.

Conversations with charged students at the Dhaka University and several intellectuals, academics at a conference in Dhaka provided a glimpse of the unprecedented repression under Hasina. Intelligence and police were let loose on political opponents. Tens of thousands of cases were registered against non-compliant leaders, workers and their media supporters. Emasculated judiciary, conformist civil, military service and a pliant media were all out with a rant that was enveloped in national security interests - all tinged with self-serving religious rhetoric aimed at the opposition. Police recklessly hunted homes of target politicians, desecrating them at will, women and children in particular. Their businesses were ransacked and abductions for coercion into submission and blackmail were rampant. Tens of thousands of criminal cases, predominantly phony, were instituted against them as punitive measures. Critical voices were muzzled - whatever it took to do so.

Post August 5 public sentiment sounds so surreal; almost all guns directed at the "malign" Indian influence and unprecedented goodwill for Pakistan. It is no fiction but a recount of what young and old Bangladeshi students, intellectuals, activists and academics told me and the broader audience during and on the sidelines of an international conference titled 'Fractured World' under the Bay of Bengal Conversation programme by the Center for Governance Studies (CGS).

Go out and look for yourself the graffiti that currently adores the boundary walls of various campuses of the Dhaka University, said Dr Mohammad Yunus, the chief of the interim administration, to the conference participants. Even Yunus used the phrases such as "fascist, dictatorial and authoritarian" when speaking of the fallen Hasina regime. The youth have put us on the path to a New Bangladesh, he said.

And a visit out to the Dhaka university campuses turned out to be a blood warming, heart-wrenching experience. Sketches of Shaikh Hasina and her father Mujeebur Rahman - etched on the columns of the metro that cuts through the crowded city - with their faces painted in blood and iron teeth popping out to depict the repression that the society experienced under Hasina. Freedom fighters of yesteryears meanwhile despised as traitors and dictators in what should be eye-opening to many in the region.

It was indeed sad to see how Hasina - through her dictatorial regime - tarnished the image of her father who until August 5 was revered as the Father of the Nation.

Afia, a public administration final year student, and Tapos Vonju, for example spoke of "real freedom" ahead when recounting the bloody summer weeks.

The dilemma for most Bangladeshis, nevertheless, is a bitter inescapable reality; the mindset that ruled them in last two decades or so in particular. With most coveted posts within the governance and the security forces gifted away to "freedom fighters" and their families, Hasina made sure to stuff bureaucracy, academia, media ,business and industrial houses with Awami League ideology - if there were one. Corruption runs deep within governance structures. Consequences of a policy that prioritised loyalty over merit are omnipresent.

That fact that we all - including Aizaz Chaudhry and Sohail Mehmood, two former foreign secretaries - got a single-entry five-day visa for Dhaka also explains the mindset that lorded over Bangladesh all these years i.e. aversion to Pakistan and conscious efforts to keep Bangladesh away from it.

Cleansing corruption within governance and purging the socio-political life off the Awami League mindset represents a monumental challenge to the administration. Expectations are high and time is apparently limited to deal with and fix complex socio-economic challenges flowing from decades of autocratic rule.