LONDON, Jan 12 (IPS) – Bangladesh simply held an election. However it was removed from an train in democracy.
Sheikh Hasina gained her fourth consecutive time period, and fifth total, as prime minister within the basic election held on 7 January. The outcome was by no means doubtful, with the principle opposition social gathering, the Bangladesh Nationwide Social gathering (BNP), boycotting the vote over the ruling Awami League’s refusal to let a caretaker authorities oversee the election. This observe, abolished by the Awami League authorities in 2011, was, the BNP asserted, the one means to make sure a free and truthful vote.
The BNP’s boycott was removed from the one subject. A blatant marketing campaign of pre-election intimidation noticed authorities critics, activists and protesters subjected to threats, violence and arrests.
On the authorities’s urging, courtroom circumstances towards opposition members have been accelerated in order that they’d be locked away earlier than the election, leading to a reported 800-plus convictions between September and December 2023. It’s alleged that torture and ill-treatment have been used towards opposition activists to pressure confessions. There have been reviews of deaths in police custody.
Police banned protests, and when a uncommon mass opposition protest went forward on 28 October police used rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades. Following the protest, hundreds extra opposition supporters have been detained on fabricated expenses. In addition to violence from the infamous Fast Motion Battalion (RAB) – an elite unit infamous for extreme and deadly pressure – and different parts of the police pressure, opposition supporters confronted assaults by Awami League supporters. Journalists have additionally been smeared, attacked and harassed, together with when masking protests.
??Bangladesh: @CIVICUSalliance and different rights teams condemn the disproportionate use of pressure by police across the opposition rally in Dhaka.
We name on the authorities to finish the crackdown on protests & guarantee perpetrators are held accountable https://t.co/1FZfgcdJzRpic.twitter.com/ouhNHBdVZ6
— CIVICUS (@CIVICUSalliance) November 1, 2023
As a direct results of the ruling social gathering’s pre-election crackdown, in December 2023 Bangladesh’s civic area ranking was downgraded to closed by the CIVICUS Monitor, the collaborative analysis venture that tracks the well being of civic area in each nation. This locations Bangladesh among the many world’s worst human rights offenders, together with China, Iran and Russia.
Civil society’s considerations have been echoed in November 2023 by UN human rights consultants who expressed alarm at political violence, arrests, mass detention, judicial harassment, extreme pressure and internet restrictions.
All-out assault
Such is the severity of the closure of Bangladesh’s civic area that lots of the strongest dissenting voices now come from these in exile. However even talking out from exterior Bangladesh doesn’t guarantee security. As a means of placing stress on exiled activists, the authorities are harassing their households.
Activists aren’t protected even on the UN. A civil society dialogue within the wings of the UN Human Rights Council in November was disrupted by authorities supporters, with Adilur Rahman Khan, a pacesetter of the Bangladeshi human rights organisation Odhikar, subjected to verbal assaults.
Khan is presently on bail whereas interesting towards a two-year jail sentence imposed on him and one other Odhikar chief in retaliation for his or her work to doc extrajudicial killings. Following the session in Geneva, Khan was additional vilified in on-line information websites and accused of presenting false data.
Others are coming below assault. Hasina and her authorities have made a lot of their financial file, with Bangladesh now one of many world’s largest garment producers. However that success is basically primarily based on low wages. Like many nations, Bangladesh is presently experiencing excessive inflation, and garment employees’ current efforts to enhance their state of affairs have been met with repression.
Staff protested in October and November 2023 after a government-appointed panel raised the minimal wage for garment sector employees to a far decrease stage than they’d demanded. Up to 25,000 people took half in protests, forcing not less than 100 factories to shut. They have been met with police violence. A minimum of two individuals have been killed and plenty of extra have been injured.
Seemingly nobody is protected. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who based the Grameen Financial institution that has enabled thousands and thousands to entry small loans, was not too long ago convicted of labour legislation offences in a trial his supporters denounced as politically motivated. Yunus has lengthy been a goal for criticism and threats from the ruling social gathering.
Democracy in title solely
The standard of Bangladesh’s elections has dramatically declined because the Awami League returned to energy within the final fairly free and truthful election in 2008. Every election since has been characterised by severe irregularities and pre-voting crackdowns because the incumbents have carried out all the pieces they might to carry onto energy.
However this time, whereas the Awami League victory was as large as ever, turnout was down. It was virtually half its 2018 stage, at solely 41.8 per cent, and even that determine could also be inflated. The lack of participation mirrored a widespread understanding that the Awami League’s victory was a foregone conclusion: many Awami League supporters didn’t really feel they wanted to vote, and plenty of opposition backers had nobody to vote for.
Individuals knew that many supposedly unbiased candidates have been in actuality Awami League supporters working as a pseudo-opposition to supply some look of electoral competitors. The social gathering that got here second can also be allied with the ruling social gathering. All electoral credibility and legitimacy at the moment are strained previous breaking level.
The federal government has confronted predictably no stress to abide by democratic guidelines from key allies akin to China and India, though the once-supportive US authorities has shifted its place lately, imposing sanctions on some RAB leaders and threatening to withhold visas for Bangladeshis deemed to have undermined the electoral course of.
If the financial state of affairs deteriorates additional, discontent is certain to develop, and with different areas blocked, protests and their violent repression will certainly observe. Worldwide companions should urge the Bangladeshi authorities to discover a approach to keep away from this. Extra violence and intensifying authoritarianism can’t be the best way ahead. As a substitute Bangladesh must be urged to begin the journey again in the direction of democracy.
Andrew Firmin CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and author for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
