Mahmudur Rahman is widely known as a courageous and patriotic journalist who was imprisoned on the pretext of fictitious charges by Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian regime. The case against Rahman was part of a politically motivated repressive agenda in which countless innocent people were wrongfully jailed and persecuted simply because they were critical of the regime. There are over several hundred thousand such cases of false and fabricated charges. Professor Muhammad Yunus himself was a victim of this repressive agenda.
Mahmudur Rahman’s crime was that he was a courageous journalist who exposed the truth before the nation. Among other issues, he accused India of trying to make Bangladesh a vassal state. Despite arrests, remands, torture, and imprisonment, he did not back down from his pursuit of informing the public and exposing the truth.
When he recently returned from exile, thousands of people at the airport gave him a hero's welcome. Then he surrendered himself to the court, asking for bail. Instead, the court put him behind bars on the pretext of law, reminiscent of the repressive modus operandi of the Hasina regime. Recently, Rahman got bail, though the case still hangs on his shoulder as per the law.
What law? The law that imprisoned Professor Yunus, the then opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia, and many critics? In contrast, Professor Yunus’s cases were summarily cancelled after he returned from abroad in early August. There was nothing wrong about it. All political prisoners -- there are too many, on the pretext of crimes, all politically motivated -- should have been freed, and their false and fabricated cases summarily cancelled after the interim government came into power. This could have been a monumental step to establish justice, the cause for which more than a thousand people sacrificed their lives during the July uprising.
That would have been a symbol of victory for the collective spirit of the people of Bangladesh.
Interestingly, the present government took an oath to protect the Constitution, which helped create one of the most authoritarianregimes of our times. The Constitution consists of ridiculous and ludicrous terms proclaimed as part of the “basic structure” -- the unchangeable part that defines the fundamental rule of the republic. The Constitution also banned a referendum, the ultimate expression of the people's collective will. If the ultimate mechanism of establishing the will of the people is forbidden, how sound and valid is the Constitution really?
The Fourth Amendment to the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh, enacted in 1975, enabled Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to form a one-party system, BaKSAL, that created opportunities for military dictators and authoritarian rule to destroy democracy and good governance right from the beginning. Then, using the two-third majority in the 2008 election, Sheikh Hasina’s regime utilized the Constitution via amendments to establish her own authoritariangovernment, the same way Adolph Hitler used the overwhelming support of the Nazi party to change democracy into a horrible autocracy, perpetrating crimes such as the Holocaust.
There is an immoral equivalence between these two tyrannies six decades apart. Both regimes came to power via democratic processes; however, both abused their power to turn their respective constitutions into toolkits to perpetrate crimes against humanity. After WWII, if the Nazi constitution was done away with, why not ours now?
What is noticeable is that Professor Yunus’ court cases were conveniently removed, but sadly enough, not of countless others who had been charged and imprisoned on false and fabricated charges, including that of Begum Khaleda Zia and Mahmudur Rahman.
There appear to be too many ethical contradictions and double standards of this government which must be addressed.
Though not elected, this government undoubtedly came to power by a historic mandate from the nationwide uprising that demanded a radical change so that the past repressive and immoral modus operandi could not repeat itself. That is the directive of the nation. With this popular mandate, this interim government could and should do anything and everything that is morally right and good for the country, including rewriting the Constitution.
About 175 years ago, Henry David Thoreau clarified a higher principle than complying with an unjust law. Laws are man-made, and a man is fallible. If a law fails to uphold the dictates of conscience, citizens should reject and disobey it. There is no blind following. The purpose of the law is to uphold justice. If it fails in its purpose, people should reject and protest against the law to change it.
Thoreau’s timeless ideas, elaborated in his famous essay, “Civil disobedience,” in 1849, influenced the thinking and actions of leaders and thinkers like Abraham Lincoln, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and many more to undertake movements to change their respective unjust laws.
Countless Americans then and now are influenced by Thoreau’s moral clarity. Thoreau vehemently criticized the US policy of slavery and the aggression against Mexico. In 1860, only 11 years later, the US entered the Civil War when the Southern Confederate states refused to end slavery. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery. Such is the force of a morally correct idea that inspires and motivates countless people to undertake movements to help create a better world.
Our recent nationwide uprising that ousted the repressive government on August 5 was driven by the same spirit that wrong and unjust laws that were discriminatory must be changed.
Ruby Amatulla is Executive Director of Muslims for Peace, Justice and Progressive and Women for Good Governance.