Capital punishment as beheading or death by hanging, in the 21st century, is an unkind form of punishment. In the new millennium, the taking of lives of some Razakars (the state accused 1971 war criminals) should close and a general pardon after trials should be pursued.
This is also for reasons that the Awami League government and their ICT (the war tribunal) has irretrievably divided the country, made politics violent, and turned Jamaat-e-Islami into a rising political power. Political Islam by Jamaat could well dominate our politics and our society for years to come, unless liberal and plural democracy, limited government, and a free economy, coupled with a tolerant political setting that upholds property rights and individual rights as liberty, are noticeably in place for all Bangladeshi individuals to recognise, value, and experience.
These essentials of a modern, secular, and liberal society must be completed by our secular political parties like the AL or the BNP before the political Islamists succeed to govern the country. The political Islamists would never back liberal secularism, which is obviously not their vote bank, and if modern democracy is truly in place, the upsurge of Islamic parties that is visible now will begin to lose ground.
The secular parties are on the wane and their blind belief that hanging the Razakars would resuscitate their worth is a misguided conception. While conferring on current affairs in Bangladesh a knowledgeable friend in the USA notes how he “despises the ICT for being a panel of persecution rather than prosecution. He wants to see justice rather than vengeance.”
The current government’s attack on Razakars in the name of law has ruined the liberal, secular, and democratic aspirations of the people. The hanging is demanded by well-known groups but at the cost of the AL, who should ideally uphold the rights of all, including the rights of the “defeated forces.” Those who demand hanging should form their own political party and then independently chase their cruel agenda, but only after the secular democrats introduce independent and fair trial courts.
In the 1980s this AL had partnered a political movement with Jamaat and the BNP for liberal and secular democracy but it never happened, nor was it ever put to practice. All political parties have failed to provide Rule of Law, which should have been the fundamental goal of all elected governments, but such an important aspect of our lives has been thrown into the gutter.
Today, in the new millennium, we for one refuse to live under Sharia law unless it is by individual choice and not by state compulsion that Jamaat could impose on the basis of their majority in the house. But, certainly democracy is not “majority rule” but a rule that maintains and defends the rights of the minority – the individual being the tiniest minority.
Jamaat cannot impose their laws that curb or reduce minority rights and liberty by sheer majority vote or will. The AL or BNP cannot either, in a true democracy. We seek modern civil laws that protect individual choice and freedom that our conjured democratic parties are impotent to institute.
We urge the AL government to vacate state persecution of “defeated forces” – as it labels the Razakars – and in its place inaugurate a state of Rule of Law that is fundamental for liberal, plural, and secular democracy that nurture individual autonomy.