adminThousands of extra police and border guards have been deployed in Dhaka and other major cities and towns of Bangladesh in advance of a general strike called to protest against the executions of two opposition politicians for war crimes. HRW questions fairness of Bangladesh trials. The security measures that have been taken following the hanging of Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury yesterday — for war crimes committed during the 1971 independence conflict with Pakistan — could cause fresh unrest.
Security was especially tight in the hometowns of the two executed men whose funerals were held yesterday morning. Supporters of the ruling Awami League greeted the executions — carried out at Dhaka’s Central Prison shortly before 1am yesterday — by holding street parties and distributing sweets to children.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) accused Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, of presiding over a politically motivated killing which was carried only hours after its leader, Khaleda Zia, returned from a lengthy stay in London.
Bangladesh has been plagued by political violence for much of the last three years since a domestic tribunal began delivering its verdicts on opposition figures accused of orchestrating massacres during the 1971 war.
A total of 18 people have been convicted, but only two had been sent to the gallows until yesterday. While the other three were members of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, Chowdhury, 66, was a senior figure in the BNP. Chowdhury was convicted of atrocities including genocide during the 1971 war when the then East Pakistan split from West Pakistan.
He served six terms as a member of parliament and was one of Zia’s top aides. Mujahid, 67, was sentenced for war crimes including killing top intellectuals. Jamaat’s official number two, he was convicted of heading the al-Badr armed group during the war.
Jamaat, which was banned from contesting the 2014 general elections, said the executions were part of a strategy “aimed at eliminating” its leadership. “We’ve stepped up security across the country to prevent any violence, including on the roads along which the bodies were taken,” Munstashirul Islam, police spokesman, said. — Al Jazeera
Online Reporter