Social networking media sites including Facebook, Twitter and blogs are now flooded with reaction and observations over the stay of execution of convicted war criminal Abdul Quader Molla.
Quader Mollah was granted a stay of execution yesterday by a chamber judge.
The account holders of those social media sites expressed their dissatisfaction over the international organisations’ intervention “mainly to halt Quader Molla’s death penalty”.
Prominent rights activists of Bangladesh Khushi Kabir in her Facebook status writes: “Bangladesh won its Independence at a great cost……..we have our own battles to fight and our own histories to be righted. We won our independence without any support or help from these very Nations or Institutions ……. who are expressing their concerns so righteously now. Where were their voices then? May I ask? We will have to bring to justice those who were responsible for the genocide. We owe it to our martyrs, the women who were raped, the people who lost their lives and homes.”
She further pointed out that none of these organisations – the UN, EU, UK – expressed their concerns when the US government executed Tim McVeigh for the Oklahoma bombings, when it killed Bin Laden in an independent and sovereign country, when it executed Saddam Hossain, when it invaded Iraq despite the UN resolution against an attack and when it razed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to the ground preceded by the Korean War.
A Facebook profile holder Imran Hossain Piplu in his status said in case of the execution of Saddam Hussain the UN said: “We have to understand this is their national system. It is their national norms. All might not like this but we live in the same world. We try to work at the national level first and foremost and we cannot always expect it to be perfect…”
The spirit of his status is that if the UN has no say while Saddam was executed then why it has so much to say about the execution of Quader Molla.
Parvez Alam, another Facebook account holder said: “People from western countries who halted the execution of Quader Molla their argument is that they do not support death penalty in any circumstances. They have the right to take stance they like but it does not necessarily mean the verdict cannot be executed here. There are lots of countries around the world where death penalty is still in place including Bangladesh. Why have they taken so much interest in this particular case of Quader Molla?”
While the Facebook is seen as a platform of the pro-liberation people Twitter is mostly used by pro- Jamaat people in Bangladesh.
A twitter account Save Bangladesh terms the death penalty of Quader Molla a “Judicial murder”.
Abbas Faiz from Amnesty International in his twitter post sharing the organisation’s press release called for a halt to the execution: “Stop calls for executions! Do not execute!”