Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud
What this latest interview has shown is that even 18 months after the uprising that unseated them from power, the party has not changed one iota. The party remains exactly as it was prior to August 5, 2024, save for the fact that it is no longer in power.
The recent interview given by the son of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Sajeeb Wazed Joy to Sreenivasan Jain on al-Jazeera was notable for two statements, one that was a falsehood and one that revealed an unintentional truth.
Let us start with the falsehood first.
“If my mother had been willing to kill protesters, she would still be in power.”
We know this is not true. The former prime minister was perfectly willing to kill protesters, evidenced by the fact that hundreds were shot dead by her security forces and party cadres in the three weeks of protest.
In fact, it was the army’s refusal to fire on protesters, reportedly taken on August 4 and communicated that night to the then prime minister that set the stage for her ouster.
It was not that she was not willing to kill protesters, it was that the army refused to follow her orders to do so.
In the three weeks prior to August 5 Hasina had no compunction about unleashing both the full force of her police and armed party cadres including its student wing in her efforts to quell the protests. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured or maimed during this time.
It was only when it became apparent that the combined forces of the police and armed party cadres could not shoot their way to control and that the army would not do so, that Hasina called it quits.
The second statement was even more revealing:
“If we had the ability to conduct killings in Bangladesh right now, do you think this regime would still be standing?”
Pressed by the interviewer, Joy inadvertently said the quiet part out aloud. There is no need to explicate his statement: it speaks for itself.
Taken together, these two statements show that nothing has fundamentally changed, and suggest that the repressive measures taken against the party are understandable and perhaps to a quite considerable extent justified.
In the first instance, there is no real acknowledgement of the magnitude of the atrocity committed by the Sheikh Hasina government in July and August of 2024, let alone contrition or apology.
This, more than anything else, is what the Bangladeshi people want to see from the Awami League and what they must see if there is to be any realistic hope for reconciliation that will allow the nation to move forward.
Reconciliation is squarely in the national interest. We must once again stand together as a people and a nation and put the horrors of 2024 behind us.
The Awami League continues to represent millions of Bangladeshis and at some point the political vacuum that currently exists in the center-left space that they once occupied needs to be filled.
But, presuming that the son of the ousted PM speaks for the party, it is clear that the AL is very far from meeting even the bare minimum conditions necessary for workable reconciliation: acknowledgement, contrition, and remorse.
The party falls at the first hurdle, and as long as that remains the case, it is hard to see how they can be reintegrated into the political mainstream, to the detriment of us all.
The second statement mentioned in this editorial is even more damning as it shows that the interim government’s characterization of the Awami League as less of a political party and more of a criminal enterprise, fully ready and willing, even eager, to commit violence to further its goals, is right on the money.
There can be little doubt that if they were given the opportunity that the AL would be perfectly willing to shoot their way back to power, and it is chilling to contemplate the measures they would take if they were to succeed.
The lesson they have learned from the uprising is that they were not brutal enough and that they have been punished for their restraint. They won't make the same mistake again.
This comes as little surprise to the close observer. Violence -- from extra-judicial killings to disappearances to naysayers being beaten to death for a Facebook post to the horrific killings of 2024 -- have long been an integral part of the AL's statecraft.
What this latest interview has shown is that even 18 months after the uprising that unseated them from power, the party has not changed one iota.
The party remains exactly as it was prior to August 5, 2024, save for the fact that it is no longer in power.
They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.
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