Is a war crimes tribunal being used to settle political scores? If so, it may unleash social chaos, reports Sebastian Strangio.

Published in The Diplomat, July 22, 2010

DHAKA – BANGLADESH’S Liberation War Museum sits on a quiet street in central Dhaka, shaded by trees and fronted by an austere barbed wire fence. The small building commemorates the country’s 1971 liberation struggle, a fierce war of independence from Pakistan that cost an estimated 3 million lives. An eternal flame in the museum’s courtyard marks it out as a site of martyrdom—a reminder of the bloody star under which the country was born. Almost fittingly, dozens of small Bangladeshi flags are intertwined on the rusting barbs of the museum’s front fence.

Last week, Bangladesh’s government arrested two leading politicians from the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on charges of committing mass murder during the liberation struggle. The arrests, which followed the detention of the party’s president, Motiur Rahman Nizami, and other top Jamaat officials in late June, mark the first stage of a tribunal established in March to address war crimes committed during the 1971 conflict.

A nationalist mural in Motijheel, the commercial heart of Dhaka. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

But even though the tribunal has no scheduled start date, it has already whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos and compromising Dhaka’s relationship with Muslim allies in the Middle East.

The tribunal comes after nearly four decades of inaction in Bangladesh. The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when Pakistan attempted to prevent the secession of its eastern wing, included the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals and the rape of by some estimates 200,000 women. Although the process of putting collaborators on trial began after the defeat of the Pakistani army on December 16, 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Ahmed Ziauddin, an advisor to Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar, says that for the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

‘The current process is, if you like, unfinished business that started in 1972,’ he says.

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Often derided as a basket case, Bangladesh might just have a thing or two to show the world about tackling climate change.

By Sebastian Strangio

Published in The Diplomat, May 28, 2010

FROM the port of Sadarghat, the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka unfolds itself in an inclement palette of greys and browns. The Buriganga River, stretching out in each direction like a puddle of mercury, is dotted with hundreds of river craft, some dredging trash from the riverbed, others weighed down with passengers and piles of vegetables. Moored nearby, bleeding rust, sits the country’s fleet of ‘rockets’—colonial-era paddle steamers fitted with belching diesel engines that ply Bangladesh’s extensive network of waterways. The road running along the riverbank, the old Buckman Bund of the British colonial era, is today a bottlenecked mass of overladen trucks and tinkling rickshaws.

A magnet for rural migrants, low-lying Dhaka—already one of the most densely populated megacities on earth—is likely to come under increasing strain as the country comes face-to-face with the effects of global climate change. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says Bangladesh is likely to face cyclones, drought and flood events of increasing frequency and intensity as global warming sets in. In its 2005 report, the IPCC also estimated that a one metre rise in sea-levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater and cut its food production by 30 percent by 2050. Much of Dhaka, which lies in a flood plain protected only by giant embankments along the Buriganga could be engulfed by even a ‘slight rise’ in sea level, according to another report by UN Habitat. It described the megacity—largely unplanned and lacking basic infrastructure—as a ‘recipe for disaster.’

In May last year, Cyclone Aila lashed the southern part of the country, breaching giant embankments and flooding large tracts of low-lying farmland with salt water. Of the 900,000 families affected by the storm, about 100,000 people are still living in makeshift camps on top of the flood embankments—the only place beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Luigi Peter Ragno, a project manager at the International Organisation for Migration who is working with communities affected by Aila, says an expected spike in extreme weather events due to global warming will likely accelerate the age-old flow of rural poor to the cities.

‘Looking at the future, you can see that environmental degradation can have a cascade effect into the cities and the urban areas,’ he says. ‘Everybody will be affected.’ As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests told a conference in Dhaka last month, ‘For the north, [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.’

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