PM rejects accusation of authoritarian rule
Interview with The Guardian
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has dismissed accusations that democracy and rule of law are being undermined by her increasingly authoritarian behaviour and by widespread human rights abuses by the police and security forces, according to leading British daily The Guardian. In a wide-ranging interview in Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina, the countrys long-serving head of government, rejected claims that extra-judicial killings, numerous so-called enforced disappearances, mass arrests of opposition activists and Islamists, and new restrictions on media and internet freedoms were turning the worlds third largest Muslim nation into a repressive, de facto one-party state.
My job is to assist the common people, Hasina said. I do politics for the people, not for me ... People are enjoying democracy now. What people want is their basic needs. So Im trying to help people ensure their basic need, that means food security, healthcare, education, and job opportunity and a better life, she told the daily.
By 2021 Bangladesh will be a middle-income country and by 2041 Bangladesh will be a developed country ... All the democratic institutions are working and people are satisfied and people are enjoying it. So the way you say I am dominating, I am not dominating. I am serving people.
Hasina, in power since 2009, is credited internationally with helping Bangladesh achieve key UN anti-poverty and development goals and appears to enjoy a high level of domestic support. She flatly rejected claims that the security services, particularly the feared, paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) implicated in numerous so-called crossfire killings, were beyond constitutional or parliamentary control. On the issue of press freedom, Hasina said her ruling Awami League (AL) government had allowed an unprecedented expansion in privately-controlled television channels, newspapers and online media since the 1990s.
Who brought the change? It is me. I opened it up, she said. Now we have 41 private television channels [and] altogether nearly 700 newspapers all over the country. So theyre writing and theyre totally free. And NGOs are also working according to the rules and law they have.
Hasina said the biggest opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), from whom she took over power in 2008, had shot itself in the foot by boycotting last years national polls, which the AL and its minor party allies subsequently won by default. The BNP and its controversial Islamist party ally, J amaat- e -Islami (JEI), have since launched sometimes violent demonstrations and nationwide strikes to try to force new elections under the supervision of a caretaker government, so far to no avail. The BNP is led by Hasinas long-time nemesis, Begum Khaleda Zia, widow of Ziaur Rahman, the military leader who ousted Hasinas father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in a coup in 1975. Mujib was murdered along with many other members of the family. Bad blood has simmered ever since.
Hasina said she had telephoned Khaleda before the 2014 elections, offering her ministries in an interim, joint administration as a way of overcoming BNP suspicions that the poll might be rigged. Khaleda refused, in furious tones, if Hasina is to be believed.
[Khaleda] made a political mistake not to participate in the election, Hasina said, accusing her opponent of supporting terrorism and launching killing sprees across Bangladesh. Hasina, who has escaped several assassination attempts since entering politics, is accused of using public fears about terrorism to smear political opponents and justify harsh action against them. Critics say that despite her strong stance, she has failed to curb an ongoing, nationwide Islamist revival linked to similar movements in Pakistan and the Middle East and is losing the battle of ideas with militant Islam, said the Guardian report.
Arrests of political activists for public order offences are reported almost every day. Last week 13 Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, including two former MPs, were remanded in custody after bomb-making equipment was allegedly found in a flat in Dhaka. The BNP and JEI say such cases are groundless and typically amount to deliberate harassment the report added. The opposition parties also claim the government is exploiting the countrys International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) investigating mass killings at the time of Bangladeshs 1971 war of liberation from Pakistan, and the 1975 assassinations, to settle old scores. JEI backed Pakistan against the independence fighters led by Hasinas murdered father. Several JEI leaders have been sentenced to death or long prison terms since the ICT process was launched by Hasina government in 2009. Internationally, Hasina seems to have the tacit support of the US and Britain, which recognise the importance of a rising power with an important textile industry. Both governments condemned the conduct of the 2014 election and demanded new polls. Both have since dropped public criticism. They just seem to be hoping there will be a better election in 2019, a western official commented. Hasinas importance as a partner for the west in fighting Islamist extremism trumped their concerns about the democratic deficit, the official said.
