Remarks
by Selig S. Harrison at a Forum on “The Bangladesh Elections: Promoting
Democracy and Protecting Rights in a Muslim-Majority Country,” sponsored
by the United States Commission on Religious Freedom, Washington, October
17, 2006.
I first started going to Bangladesh as a journalist in 1951, when it
was still East Pakistan, and I’ve been going there ever since.
I used to think I knew something about it. When Islamic extremism developed
in Pakistan, I was confident that it would not spread to Bangladesh.
I assumed that the Sufi type of Islam that has existed for so long in
Bengal was incompatible with the fundamentalist ideologies that were
being spread in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the help of oil money
from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. But I underestimated three
factors.
First, I underestimated what all that oil money could do to build
organizational networks where there are millions of unemployed searching
for meaning in their lives.
Second, I underestimated what unprincipled opportunists in the Bangladesh
political arena and in the bureaucracy and the police would do to profit
from alliances with the rising Islamic groups.
And third, I underestimated what Pakistan would and could do to help
build up the Islamic extremist groups as part of its strategy of using
Bangladesh to harass India.
So now we do have Islamic extremism in Bangladesh. For the past five
years we have had a government in Bangladesh openly and unashamedly
allied with the Jamaat Islami in a coalition that has pulled its punches
in combating Islamic extremism and has now attempted to rig the elections
to be held on January 24. A caretaker government will take over on October
27. It is supposed to be neutral, but will it be?
The outgoing BNP government changed the constitution to install its
own choice as head of the caretaker government and it has made a farce
of the election commission that will run the elections. The election
commission has refused to publish the voter list as in the past, but
they have announced how many voters there will be, and it’s astonishing.
The number they have announced is 93 million. This exceeds by 13 million
the number of people in the country over the age of 18, based on the
number of 13 year olds recorded in the last census in 2001, and the
number of people who have died since then. This is according to the
Bangladesh bureau of statistics. Thirteen million --- that’s a
lot of ballot stuffing even by the standards of West Texas and Cook
County in earlier years. The Supreme Court ruled that the list has to
be amended but this has so far been ignored.
The United States government has not said a word that I’ve heard
about this but the national democratic institute mission headed by former
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has spoken out clearly. Here’s
what the report of the mission says:
“A voters list containing two thirds of the population strains
credibility. The delegation was deeply concerned to hear from a broad
cross-section of parties, civil society, media and independent observers
of a widespread lack of confidence in the election commission and, specifically
in the chief election commissioner… the delegation has identified
a perception of incompetence and bias as a serious problem that requires
being addressed…in the absence of a strong, corrective and urgent
response, confidence in the chief election commissioner will continue
to deteriorate to the point that he should not continue his duties.”
One of the members of the NDI delegation was Mike Moore, formerly Prime
Minister of New Zealand and former head of the World Trade Organization.
Mike Moore said in Dacca that “alarm bells are ringing here and
there is the possibility of things going very wrong during the elections.
If things do go badly, there are people in other parliaments who will
take appropriate action. Sanctions, tariffs, garment exports. It’s
a political world. Confidence has to be built so there is no reason
for the Awami league to boycott the election.”
That’s tough talk. I wish we would hear that kind of talk from
U.S. officials. The U.S. ambassador on July 13 called Bangladesh “an
exceptional moderate Muslim state.”
It’s true that on September 16 the ambassador did try to get talks
on election reforms going between the Awami league and the BNP-Jamaat
coalition. But she did it in a partisan way. She urged the Awami league
to join in talks with the BNP and the Jamaat Islami. As you know, the
Awami league has objected to sitting down with the Jamaat and wants
the talks confined to the BNP. The ambassador seemed to be endorsing
the BNP position on the terms for the talks by addressing her appeal
only to the Awami league. She has offered to mediate between the two
parties, but now her objectivity has been called into question.
More active U.S. intervention to save the situation is urgently needed.
The U.S. should press for the resignation of the Election Commissioner
and for a new head of the caretaker government who will be neutral.
It should press for placing the Ministry of Defense under the caretaker
government to assure the impartiality of the armed forces during the
elections. It should press for safeguards to make certain that the police
play an impartial role.
It is increasingly clear that some units of the police in Bangladesh
are being politicized by the Jamaat so they can be used for partisan
purposes during the election. The normal training period for the police
is 18 months, but we learn of a crash course of six months to train
special police units for the elections. In the past few weeks, police
personnel have been involved in attacks on Awami league leaders on four
occasions to break up election rallies. Saber Choudhary, a top Awami
league leader, was knocked unconscious, and Mohammed Nasim, a former
Minister, ended up with two broken bones in his left arm.
Journalists in Bangladesh cannot write freely about the Jamaat without
facing death threats or assassination attempts. The U.S.-based committee
to protect journalists has published extensive dossiers documenting
68 death threats and dozens of bombing attacks that have injured at
least eight journalists. “We are alarmed by the growing pattern
of intimidation of journalists by Islamic groups in Bangladesh,”
the committee said recently. “as a result of its alliance with
the Jamaat Islamiyah, the government appears to lack the ability or
will to protect journalists from this new and grave threat.”
In conclusion, it’s important to place the rise of Islamic extremist
groups in Bangladesh in a larger regional context. It’s not just
a threat to Bangladesh and especially, to the minorities in Bangladesh.
It’s also important to recognize that Pakistan works with the
Jamaat and its affiliated groups to harass India which has a 2,500 mile
border with Bangladesh. Until recently this was focused mainly on supporting
tribal separatist groups inside India but in the past few years there
has been increasing evidence that Islamic extremists inside India have
connections orchestrated by Pakistan to groups in Bangladesh and Nepal.
So what we are talking about today is part of a subcontinental South
Asia problem which is, in turn, part of our global challenge in combating
terrorism.
