Nearly 80% of the people in the country want the war crimes trials to continue, the results of an opinion poll suggest.
However, the same opinion poll – conducted by Bangla Tribune marking two years of the current government – also puts the war crimes trials as the sixth most important issue facing the country right. Only 8.6% people placed it as the government’s topmost priority.
Slightly over 20% of the respondents said the trials should not continue.
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Breaking down the data by division, it was seen that there is significantly lower support for the trials only in the division of Khulna.
As a division, Khulna – which hosts one of the country’s biggest Jamaat strongholds in Satkhira district – is the least in favour of the trials.
But even in Khulna division over 64% want the trials to continue.
Respondents were more evenly divided on the question of banning the politics of Jamaat-e-Islami, many of whose top leaders are either undergoing trial for their 1971 crimes or have been executed after guilty verdict.
Overall, 54.3% respondents of the survey are in favour of banning Jamaat from politics, while 44.6% are against such a ban.
If we break down the responses by division, only Khulna and Sylhet divisions do not want to see Jamaat banned from politics, with 61% in Syhet and 57% in Khulna opposing a ban.
All the other divisions registered a comfortable majority in favour of banning Jamaat from politics.
