Courtesy: DAWN.com
DHAKA: The question of capital punishment stirs strong feelings and so it should. Every death brings bereavement. People unrelated to the crime – wives, children, siblings, husbands, parents – suffer as deep a loss as the people who lost loved ones because of it.
It can never be a wonderful thing to end a life, and as someone recently pointed out to me, to assume to possess the moral authority to do so is assuming quite a lot. At the very least, no death should ever be celebrated. The impassioned and festive calls by little children for Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) leader ‘Koshai’ Kader Mollah to be sent to the gallows for his crimes against humanity during the 1971 war of independence are certainly revolting, but perhaps that presents a limited view of what’s really going on all of a sudden in Bangladesh.
And what’s really happening is astounding. Thousands of people have gathered peacefully for days and nights in a country known for violent demonstrations; demanding that their judiciary deliver justice even when a combined assault by Jamaat and its student wing Shibir looms large and in some ways, has already begun.
The protests are decidedly non-partisan and have resisted every attempt by leading parties to use their movement, including the ruling Awami League which initiated the war crimes tribunal and whose tacit patronage they receive in the form of police protection, public toilets and parliamentary speeches.
Suprised to note that OIC memebers are trying to intervene in Bangladesh politics but they would never let Bangladesh to weigh in their internal matters. The so-called Muslim countries are far from humanity and human rights and have the audacity to try to impose their twisted views on their less fortunate brothers. It’s time to practice what they preach.
Categories: Asia, Bangladesh, Human Rights, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Social Justice, Women's right