The Magnificence of Bangladesh’s Shahbag Movement

BY SAAD ADNAN KHAN

The non-violent Shahbag movement, a mass awakening of civil society initiated by the ‘Blogger and Online Activists Network,’ is significant for several reasons. The movement started as a vehement rejection of the International Crime Tribunal’s (ICT) verdict to condemn Abdul Quader Mollah, Assistant General Secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami, to life in prison. Protestors wanted Mollah, who killed hundreds of people and raped a young girl, to be put to death. However, the Shahbag movement has transcended its initial spark and spread to other aspects of society.

The protest is also against Razakars (derived form the Urdu word for ‘volunteers’). The Razakars collaborated with Pakistani Army in Operation Searchlight, a planned military operation carried out the night of March 25, 1971, when the Pakistan Army systematically murdered and raped its way through Bangladesh’s cities and towns. The Razakars, came to power through a twist of political fate and formed Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamist wing of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the opposition political party in Bangladesh. It is no secret that Jamaat-e-Islami was always against the very idea of a sovereign Bangladesh. In January of this year, Abul Kalam Azad, a former senior member of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, who is currently in hiding in Pakistan, was given the death sentence for crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War. Thus, when life imprisonment was given to Mollah, the verdict came as a shock.

Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winning Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam in the Guardian writes, “Since Bangladesh’s independence, the state had done little to bring people such as Mollah to justice. The erasure of the war began in 1972 with the granting of amnesty to the Pakistani army officers who led the killings. During the decades of political turmoil that followed in Bangladesh, the war, and its crimes, were buried, while one regime after another contributed to the rehabilitation of the Jamaat party. Internationally, charges of genocide were never formally brought to the United Nations. The world quickly forgot the Bangladesh war. The International Crimes Tribunal was set up in 2010. Since then, the court has been gathering evidence and hearing testimonies against the accused.”

The demands of the protestors at Shahbag are many: capital punishment for Mollah and other Razakars, banning of the political party Jamaat-e-Islami (its very existence goes against the secular constitution of Bangladesh), and banning of Jamaat-owned institutions to uproot their ideology. The idea of capital punishment has been questioned by many, but once we put things into context and review the unimaginable crimes done by the Razakars, the protestors’ slogan, “Fashi chai, fashi chai”—or “We want the criminals to be hanged”—does not seem unreasonable. To understand Shahbag, one has to get rid of other standards, and one must understand the realities of Shahbag and the history and politics of Bangladesh.

What is important about Shahbag is the way that its methods are being carried out. Shahbag has protested through songs, poems, slogans, national moments of silence, and candle vigils. The strategies of the Jamaat-E-Islami and Shibir activists, on the other hand, have been only violent (and justified with religious motives): threats of civil war, the calling of hartals (shutdowns/strikes), and nation-wide rampages. Jamaat activists have been using social media to spread propaganda against the Shahbag protestors, portraying them as a crowd of atheists who are bad-mouthing Islam at Shahbag. A news report of The Daily Star newspaper states, ‘With its back against the wall, Jamaat-e-Islami has resorted to a smear campaign against the Shabag youths, branding them as atheists, anti-Islamic and anti-social elements with the help of a few radical Islamist groups both in and outside the BNP-led 18-party alliance.’

Protestors have continuously poured out tweets and statuses to prove what has been really going on. The Facebook group ‘Shahbag e Cyber Juddho’ (Cyber war in Shahbag) has been putting statuses and updates. Shahbag is not anti-Islamic. It is anti-fundamentalist, anti-bigotry, and pro-secularism. Protestors who have been part of the movement from day one, who have been writing, tweeting, facebooking, and giving interviews on television, have more than enough evidence to prove so. Another Facebook page, ‘Station 71.13,’ posts news and images of the Shahbag Movement and the Liberation War of Bangladesh to a global audience.
On February, 15, blogger activist Ahmed Rajib Haider was brutally murdered. A disheartening event for the protestors nonetheless strengthened the round-the-clock Shahbag protest. The protestors vowed not to end the movement until their demands are met.

Few of the achievements of the movement so far have been the changes in the ICT Act 1973 (to make provisions for appeal on behalf of the defense), passing of a new bill that will allow the State to appeal against the life sentence of Mollah and the ready rejection by the civil society of hartals called by Jamaat. Hartals have always been economically crippling for Bangladesh.
Right after the 17th day (February 22, 2013), of the non-violent Shahbag movement in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Chhatro Shibir (the student wing of Jamaat) activists went on a nation-wide fierce rampage. The Jamaat and Shibir activists tore the national flag of Bangladesh, burned prayer mats in mosques, vandalized replicas of Shaheed Minar (an important national monument), damaged police cars and public vehicles, attacked journalists and labeled the non-violent protestors of Shahbag as atheists. The non-violent protestors of the Shahbag movement, the ordinary citizenry, had decided to continue the movement in different parts of the country after the 17th day, but intense violence brought the protesters back with much vigor, fury, and determination.

On February 28, after the death penalty was given to war criminal Delawar Hossain Sayedee, top Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Jamaat and shibir activists took their violence a notch higher—they burned 6 Hindu and 1 Buddhist temples, torched Hindu communities in different parts of the country, hurled bombs and cocktails in different neighborhoods, and attacked law enforcers that led to the death of at least 40 people or more,, including 4 policemen, in a single day.

Shahbag protestors gave the government an ultimatum to bring war crimes charges against Jamaat-e-Islami and initiate the legal process by March 26 (Independence Day of Bangladesh) to ban the party. Important questions are being raised: how will Shahbag change the political makeup of Bangladesh, especially given the election is drawing nearer? Will Jamaat go underground and become more dangerous after it is banned?

There is no denying that this movement has brought and united the Bangaladesh people who, for too long, were torn apart, frustrated, and cowed by political violence not only of Jamaat and Shibir, but also of the BNP and Awami League, the ruling party. Shahbag is a different imagination, an imagination beyond partisan politics. Shahbag is a space to harvest hope.
The Shahbag protest will never be over. There will be a new way of writing, thinking, and singing, which will shape our new reality. Shahbag gave us the scope to reclaim our shame and the trauma of our history, and turn it into rage, and not silence. Shahbag has given the people integrity—integrity that they have gained, and that they will continue to gain into the future.