Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 18/Nov 09:36

Sentenced to death

AS MANY as 1,400 people were killed violently during an official state crackdown on student-led protests in Bangladesh between July 1-August 15, 2024. According to a UN fact-finding report published on February 12, as much as 13 per cent of the victims were children. Thousands of others were maimed. At least 11,700 were arbitrarily detained. To suppress dissent, authorities engaged in a wave of extrajudicial killings, torture, and surveillance. Journalists were slaughtered. Medical staff treating victims were intimidated. Women and girls were subjected to sexual and gender-based violence. All of it was at the behest of the iron-fisted regime of Sheikh Hasina, who on November 17 was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. It’s a powerful warning to leaders. Exiled in India ever since she fled her official residence in Dhaka last year, Hasina, 78, may never face the sentence. There is little sign she will be extradited; Bangladesh’s requests have been ignored by New Delhi. The South Asian country’s International Crimes Tribunal was forced to rule in absentia, and she has exploited that fact and deemed the ruling a “farce.” “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal,” she claimed on Monday, adding, with a typical politician’s spiel, “I am very proud of my government’s record on human rights and development.” But expecting the judicial determination, her lawyers lodged a pre-emptive complaint with the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges, arguing the trial was “political retribution.” The exiled politician today cries foul and implies she is the casualty of victor’s justice. But controversial as the body is, the tribunal’s findings are largely corroborated by the UN’s report, which detailed how the former prime minister, who was also defence minister, directed and oversaw a series of massive operations in which security and intelligence forces rained bullets on people who disagreed with her. “The brutal response was a calculated and well-co-ordinated strategy by the former government to hold on to power in the face of mass opposition,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk earlier this year. Hasina, hitherto the world’s longest-serving female head of state, openly used pejorative terms to describe the protesters and, at one point, “privately told senior officials that students would learn that they were protesting in vain.” International bodies like the ICC, the ICJ, the ECHR and the UN might these days be stymied by geopolitics and by populist leaders’ wilful dismantling of the rules-based order. But the symbolic lesson supplied by this week’s ruling is that politicians, no matter where, might one day face the music for cynically jettisoning due process and fundamental rights in service of political self-interest. The post Sentenced to death appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.