Jamat Unleashed Unprecedented Violence

Source: Daily Star, 04 Mar 2013

19 more killed

Jamaat-Shibir unleashes another wave of terror in 5 districts during first day of hartal

Star Report

Stick-wielding Jamaat-Shibir men run riot, vandalising different business centres at an intersection in Bogra town yesterday.Photo: STAR

It was all lies -- outright and outrageous -- but it worked. Jamaat's propaganda machine used a photoshopped image of Delawar Hossain Sayedee's face on the moon yesterday to entice people to unleash a second wave of terror that left at least 19 people, including a policeman, dead in five districts.

Bogra witnessed the worst, as Jamaat-Shibir men assembled locals through repeated announcements over loudspeakers that "Sayedee's face was seen on the moon and it's your holy duty to save him; otherwise, we all will go to hell”. Around 4 in the morning, they launched into attacks on police in different upazilas.

At least nine people were killed in Bogra, six in Joypurhat, two in Rajshahi, one in Satkhira and a policeman in Jhenidah in a deadly spate of violence throughout the day.

Three women were among the dead in Bogra, as Jamaat men used women and children as a human shield during the attacks on law enforcers.

The situation worsened to such an extent that the local administration had to seek the army's help to protect the Shahjahanpur Police Station in Bogra.

At least 63 people have died since Jamaat-Shibir activists went on the rampage on Thursday after a war crimes tribunal sentenced Sayedee to death.

Yesterday was the first day of Jamaat's two-day hartal to protest Thursday's police action.

Meanwhile, Border Guard Bangladesh personnel were deployed in the capital around 8:00pm to ward off violence.

In Bogra, activists of Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir tricked hundreds of villagers into taking to the streets in the early morning, and launching attacks on law enforcers.

They clashed with law enforcers, attacked a police station and six outposts, vandalised and torched different offices. At least four people, including three women, died in Shahjahanpur upazila, three in Bogra Sadar and two in Shibganj upazila.

The violence that began around 4:00am came to a halt after four hours following news of troops deployment. However, army personnel were called back around 6:00pm.

People in different upazilas said they heard announcements over loudspeakers in the early hours on Sunday that Sayedee's image was seen on the moon.

Moved by the announcements, hundreds of people, mostly from Shahjahanpur, Kahalu, Shibganj and Dupchanchia upazilas, came out of their houses and started marching towards Bogra Sadar upazila headquarters, protesting the death penalty to Sayedee.

A few thousand people attacked Shahjahanpur Police Station near the Bogra Cantonment, around 6:00am.

"They beat up policemen indiscriminately in a surprise attack,” Mahmudul Alam, officer-in-charge of the police station, told The Daily Star.

Police opened fire to bring the situation under control, said Bogra Superintendent of Police Mozammel Haq.

Four people died there.

Atiar Rahman, an inspector of the police station, identified the four as Arjinba Begum, 45, Monjila Begum, 48, Achhia Begum, 45, and Abdur Rahman, 60.

The protesters set fire to the house of Momtaz Uddin, president of district AL unit, in the town.

The vandalism continued for nearly 50 minutes. Three more persons died in clashes in Bogra Sadar.

Their identities could not be known.

Section 144 was imposed in Bogra municipality from 7:00am to contain violence, and it would remain in force until further orders, said Arifuzzaman, nezarat deputy collector in Bogra.

In a statement, Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) condemned attacks on the house of FBCCI director Momtaz Uddin, business establishments and the office of Rajshahi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Joypurhat witnessed a spate of violence, as pro-hartal activists clashed with police in Panchbibi and Sadar upazila. At least six persons were killed and 30 others were hit by bullets during the clashes.

The dead are Nasir Uddin, 18, of Bashkur village, Hasib Uddin, 50, of Baramanik, Forman Ali, 30 of Rasulpur, Abdul Hakim, 32, of Salaipur, Mojidul Islam, 35, of Kashra village, and Abdul Bari, 24, of Rahmatpur village.

Five of them were killed in Panchbibi and the other in Joypurhat sadar, said sources.

Jamaat-Shibir activists swooped on police in front of Joypurhat Palli Bidyut Samity office around 11:00am, prompting police to fire shots. One person was killed on the spot.

Another group of Jamaat men gathered at Panchbibi Bazar to lay siege to the Panchbibi Police Station. As they marched towards the police station, BGB and police personnel fired shots, leaving two persons dead.

Three of the injured later died at Panchbibi Health Complex.

Md Hamidul Islam, superintendent of police in Joypurhat, confirmed that three persons died in the clashes.

However, Fazlur Rahman, Jamaat ameer in Joypurhat, said six persons were killed during the clashes in Panchbibi and Joypurhat.

Section 144 was imposed in Panchbibi and Joypurhat sadar following the clashes.

OTHER DISTRICTS 
Jamaat men launched attacks on law enforcers at Godagari upazila in Rajshahi, leaving at least two persons dead and 30 people injured.

The dead are Rafiqul Islam, 12, of Godagari municipality, and Mojahid Hossain, 45, activist of Jamaat municipality unit and Imam of Mohishalbari mosque, said Wahidul Islam, officer-in-charge of Godagari Police Station.

Section 144 was slapped in the municipality for an indefinite period after the clash, said Godagari Upazila Nirbahi Officer Tuhinur Alam.

Witnesses said the clash erupted when more than 500 Jamaat-Shibir men barricaded the Chapainawabganj-Rajshahi highway with logs, and burnt tyres around 9:00am.

Another group of pickets chased law enforcers at the cinema hall intersection, damaged vehicles and threw brickbats at police.

At one stage, the pickets fired shots and threw cocktails at the law enforcers.

In retaliation, police and BGB personnel fired over 100 rounds of rubber bullets to disperse the attackers, said OC Wahidul.

Pro-hartal activists also put up barricades on Chapainawabganj-Rajshahi road at Abhoyer intersection, on Rajshahi-Naogaon road in Mohonpur upazila and Rajshahi-Natore road at Kharkhari around 9:00am.

In Jhenidah, Jamaat-Shibir men hacked to death a policeman and gouged out his eye at Sanatanpur police camp in Harinakundo upazila.

They attacked the police camp, forcing the on-duty policemen to retreat to the headquarters. They soon caught up with the policemen and hacked them indiscriminately.

The Jamaat activists hacked Constable Omar Faruque to death and gouged out his eye.

Several seriously injured policemen were admitted to the hospital.

Nearly 3,000 Jamaat-Shibir and BNP activists also brought out a procession in Harinakundo upazila.

Jamaat men vandalised establishments in the upazila and set fire to government offices. Police lobbed teargas canisters and fired rubber bullets to disperse them.

At least one person was killed and seven others, including three BGB members, were injured in a clash between BGB personnel and Jamaat activists at Raichhpur in Sadar thana, two kilometres away from Satkhira town.

Lt Col Abu Basir of BGB in Satkhira said Jamaat men attacked two BGB vans near the border around 12:00pm, prompting the BGB personnel to fire shots.

A Jamaat supporter was killed and three BGB members were injured in the incident.

A clash between Jamaat men and Awami League activists ensued at Nalta, when ruling party men tried to prevent Jamaat-Shibir activists from carrying out vandalism.

In Chittagong, clashes and gunfights between Jamaat men and Rab personnel left at least 14 people injured at Shekher Khil in Banskhali upazila.

Vehicular movement on Chittagong-Cox's Bazar highway remained suspended, as Jamaat-Shibir men barricaded the highway with logs.

Meanwhile, pro-hartal activists in Pabna put up barricades on the Dhaka-Pabna and Pabna-Kushtia highways after Fajr prayers. They also attacked the house of an AL union unit president and five shops at Ataikula.

Jamaat-Shibir men also felled hundreds of roadside trees and blocked the Cox's Bazar-Teknaf-Arakan road since Saturday night. They also swooped on law enforcers at Ukhia upazila in Cox's Bazar, leaving at least five policemen injured.

What's happening in Bangladesh?

Courtesy of: Station 71.13

Saiydee sentenced to death

Death Sentence Given to Bangladesh Islamist Sparks Fatal Clashes

Source: Bloomberg News
Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal sentenced a senior member of the country’s biggest Islamic party to death, sparking fatal violence nationwide.

A panel of judges yesterday found Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delwar Hossain Sayedee guilty of committing crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s independence struggle in 1971, Syed Haider Ali, a prosecutor, said in comments on live television.

The tribunal’s first verdict since protesters began occupying a Dhaka square to demand capital punishment for the guilty was followed by clashes between activists of Jamaat and security forces, which the Daily Star newspaper reported left as many as 13 people dead, three of them policemen.

The International Crimes Tribunal’s rulings have reopened wounds from the war more than four decades ago that led to the founding of Bangladesh. Thousands of protesters demanding the most severe punishments for those convicted have occupied Shahbag square in central Dhaka since judges sentenced another Jamaat leader to life in prison on Feb. 5.

Sayedee, 73, who was in court when the verdict was delivered, faced 19 charges including the murder of civilians, collaborating with the Pakistani army to kill and torture unarmed people, torching homes and carrying out atrocities against the Hindu community, according to a court document detailing the indictment. Eight charges were proved beyond reasonable doubt, Ali said.

“It’s a victory day, it’s a day of joy. Through this verdict, the nation is seeing the resurgence of liberation war spirits,” Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters at the tribunal premises in Dhaka amid heightened security.

Fight Continues

Sayedee was sentenced to death on two specific charges of killing unarmed people in the southern district of Pirojpur, Alam said.

The judges -- led by Justice A.T.M. Fazle Kabir -- said in their summary of the verdict that international law imposed no statute of limitations on war crimes.

Demonstrators led by Imran Sarkar, convener of a group known as the Bloggers and Online Activists Network, called for the death penalty for Sayedee as they poured into the capital’s financial district of Motijheel Feb. 27.

“We won’t give up the fight until we get justice,” Sarkar said in a statement to the media. The protesters later relocated to Shahbag, the rallying point for anti-Jamaat activists. Jamaat called for a national strike, demanding Sayedee be freed.

Dhaka Rallies

At the end of British colonial rule in 1947, East and West Pakistan were separated by 2,000 kilometers (1,241 miles) of Indian territory. Pakistani troops in 1971 attempted to quell a nationalist uprising in the east that was triggered by the jailing of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had led his Awami League to victory in elections. The war ended nine months later with the creation of Bangladesh after Indian forces helped defeat Pakistan’s army.

As crowds swelled in Shahbag, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed Feb. 17 empowered the tribunal to punish any organization whose members carried out crimes during the independence fight. The move sparked reports the government was preparing to ban Jamaat, an extremist group which sided with Pakistan during the war and whose members account for nine of the dozen people facing the tribunal.

Previously judges could only put individuals on trial. In another change, prosecutors can now appeal any of the panel’s verdicts.

Historic Wrong

In a sign of the widespread anger the alleged mass murders, rapes and abductions four decades ago can still provoke, the Dhaka protest site has drawn bloggers, writers, singers, teachers, students, and the country’s cricket team. Police say the gathering has at times swelled to 100,000 people.

While the prime minister says the tribunal is about righting an historic wrong, opponents have called the trials politically motivated. Jamaat is an ally of Hasina’s main rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and won nearly 5 percent of votes cast in the nation’s parliamentary election in 2008, according to the Bangladesh Election Commission.

The Shahbag protests began after the tribunal Feb. 5 gave a jail term to Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Mollah.

The protesters defend their call for the death penalty for the guilty by saying that people like Mollah would be freed from jail if Jamaat once again has a role in government.

Sayedee was involved in the abduction, confinement and rape of women, including Hindus, in Pirojpur, according to the court document. He also forced some Hindus to convert to Islam, an act the court considers a crime against humanity.

Exposting Jamati Lies

Jamat is putting out propaganda items through websites and facebooks to hide its past.  If you would like to read this investigative presentation in Bengali, please click here:

Al-Jazeera on Shahbag Movement

The Stream - Bangladesh's rising voices is presented by Al Jazeera's English Channel featuring Shahbag Movement . It shows how the young generation has pioneered this momentous event through virtual advocacy. Watch this 35 minute long video presented on 19 February 2013:

What is Jamat-i Islam?

Courtesy of: Rajakartoon at FACEBOOK

Bangladesh is Rising!

Yes, how can you deny this spontaneous crowd crying for justice? History has witnessed our resiliency, it's back again. The young generation has rekindled the spirit of 1971 to bring war criminals to justice.

Bangladesh's Tahrir Square: Blogger's Death Ignites More Protests

By: Eko Armunanto 

Source: digitaljournal

Bangladeshi activists attended a rally to demand the execution of Jemaah Islamiah leader Abdul Quader Mollah and others convicted of war crimes involving the nation's independence war in 1971 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Rajib Haider, the initiator of the movement who wrote a blog devoted to them, was attacked outside his home Friday night after returning from that rally in Shahbag Square. Haider's family said he was stabbed to death for standing up to Islamists and drawing people to the protests. Police said they had detained five suspects.

Some expatriate Bangladeshis have flown home to support the call for the death penalty. Children have been filmed with the slogan "We want death by hanging" painted across their cheeks and torsos. Jon Boone's report for The Guardian said the rally was involving hundreds of thousands who has been camped on the streets for 10 days demanding the execution of war criminals. It described the movement as Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. "On Saturday, an even larger crowd thronged the square to attend funeral prayers for Haider, many vowing to avenge his death or breaking down in tears as his coffin passed", Anis Ahmed told CNN.

Abdul Quader Mollah was found guilty this month of crimes including massacres, torture and rapes during Bangladesh's bloody war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, another eight members of Mollah's Jemaah Islamiah party are also on trial, as are two members of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, including a former government minister. The estimation was that anywhere between 300,000 and 3 million people were killed by the Pakistani army and their allied local militias. Bangladesh formed the eastern part of Pakistan until it gained independence in 1971.

Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was elected Prime Minister on a platform of making the prosecution of war crimes a priority of her government - Bangladeshis were angered that Quader Mollah was only given a life sentence. Public fury grew further when Mollah, nicknamed the "Butcher of Mirpur" for his crimes, flashed a "V" for victory sign when he came out of the courtroom. Jemaah Islamiah said the war-crimes trials were being carried out with ill political motive as it begun after more than 40 years of independence, while demonstrators vowed to continue protesting at Shahbagh and asked the government to ban Jemaah Islamiah, which sided with Pakistan and opposed the 1971 founding of Bangladesh.

The agonies of Bangladesh come to London

Source: The Guardian
By: Nick Cohen

The Shahbag junction in Dhaka has become Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. Hundreds of thousands of young protesters are occupying it and raging against radical Islamists. Even sympathetic politicians cannot control the movement. The protesters damn them as appeasers, who have compromised with unconscionable men.

Theirs is a grassroots uprising for the most essential and neglected values of our age: secularism, the protection of minorities from persecution and the removal of theocratic thugs from the private lives and public arguments of 21st-century citizens

Naturally, the western media show little interest in covering the protest. The indifference is all the more telling because the Shahbag movement is a response to a crime westerners once deplored, but have almost forgotten.

The young in Dhaka have revolted over the war crimes trials of members of Jamaat-e-Islami. That useful leftwing term "clerical fascist" might have been invented to describe what they did. In 1971, the oppressed "eastern wing" of Pakistan rose against its masters to form Bangladesh. The Pakistani army responded with a campaign of mass murder and mass rape, which shocked a 20th century that thought it had seen it all. George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, the Bonos of their day, organised benefit concerts at Madison Square Garden. The murder of Hindus and Christians, the flight of refugees and the chance to weaken Pakistan pushed Indira Gandhi into one of the finest actions of her murky career. She sent the Indian army to liberate the tortured land.

The Pakistani occupiers were helped at every stage by Islamist activists. Jamaat took its inspiration from Abul Ala Maududi who has as good a claim as anyone to be the founder of political Islam. Maududi wanted a global war to establish a caliphate. The break-up of Muslim Pakistan impeded the prospect of a world revolution. To prevent this reverse, his followers formed death squads to slaughter the intellectuals, engineers, administrators and teachers who could make an independent Bangladesh work. The outcome of a belated trial of handful of Jamaat war criminals has set Bangladesh on fire.

As with popular revolts throughout history, Bangladeshi liberals are in two minds about the Shahbag demonstrations. On the one hand, they cannot fail to admire the determination of the young to state loudly and clearly that "religion-based politics had poisoned society", as Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune put it. On the other, the demonstrators are saying with equal force that they want the death penalty, that most anti-liberal of punishments, applied to the war criminals without mercy.

Do I hear you say that Bangladesh is far away and the genocide was long ago?

Not so far away. Not so long ago. And the agonies of Bangladeshi liberals are nothing in comparison to the contradictions of their British counterparts.

The conflict between the Shahbag and Jamaat has already reachedLondon. On 9 February, local supporters of the uprising demonstrated in Altab Ali Park, a rare patch of green space off the Whitechapel Road in London's East End. They were met by Jamaatis. "They attacked our men with stones," one of the protest's organisers told me. "There were old people and women and children there, but they still attacked us."

The redoubtable organiser is undeterred. She and her fellow activists are going back to the park tomorrow for another demonstration. Her friends are worried, however. They asked me not to name her after unknown assailants murdered Ahmed Rajib Haider Shuvo, one of the leaders of the Dhaka rallies, on Friday.

Whitechapel was where socialists and Jews confronted the British Union of Fascists in clashes that leftists mythologise as a grand moment of anti-Nazi solidarity. While they still talk about the Battle of Cable Street and remember 1936, it is far from clear to me where today's British left stands in relation to modern struggles against ultra-reactionaries.

Liberal muliticulturalism contains the seeds of its own negation. It can either be liberal or multicultural but it can't be both. Multiculturalism has not meant a defence of all people's rights to practise their religions and speak their minds without suffering racial or sectarian hatred. As events have turned out, it has led to official society picking the pushiest group of "community leaders" and honouring them.

In the case of British Islam, the anointed group was Jamaat-e-Islami, even though its British members included men accused of war crimes in Bangladesh. It was as if the establishment had decided that Opus Dei represented British Catholicism or Shiv Sena represented British Hinduism or the most bigoted form of orthodoxy represented British Judaism. The scoundrel left led the way down this murky alley, as it leads the way into so many dark places. Ken Livingstone and George Galloway have backed the Jamaat-dominated East London mosque, and Islamic Forum Europe, the Jamaat front organisation that now controls local politics in Tower Hamlets.

But to concentrate on the dregs of the Labour movement is to miss the point. Whitehall has been as keen on dealing with the allies of war criminals. Many East Enders have noticed that the Metropolitan Police seems less than anxious to follow up reports of menacing "Muslim patrols" or threats to drinkers at gay bars.

The moderate Muslims at the Quilliam Foundation told me that the status Britain had given to Jamaat helped push British Bangladeshis away from social democratic politics and towards radical Islam.

The British-Asian feminist Gita Sahgal launched the Centre for Secular Space last week to combat such indulgence of theocratic obscurantism. She told me that Jamaat perverts traditional faith and she should know. Not only did she name alleged Jamaat war criminals living in Britain for Channel 4 in the 1990s, she is also Jawaharlal Nehru's great niece and a distant relative of the Indira Gandhi who sent the army into Bangladesh. I admire Sahgal and Quilliam hugely, but they are mistrusted, even hated by orthodox leftwingers. The feeling is reciprocated in spades and perhaps you can see why.

Many do not want to talk about Bangladesh massacres that moved liberal opinion to outrage in the 1970s, just as many did not want to talk about Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds in the run-up to the second Iraq war. These are politically inconvenient genocides they would rather forget.

The most bracing effect of the demonstrations in Dhaka and London is that the terror is not being forgotten and liberals are being forced to pick sides. Let us hope that they stop picking the wrong one.

Ban Jamat Shibir

Bangladeshi terrorist outfit Jamat-e Islam and its student front Islami Chatra Shibir should be banned immediately.  They killed a leading volunteer of Shabag Movement.  Government has already shut down jamati website Sonar Bangla that incited this killing. Read from Daily Star (16 Feb) depicting how brutally he was killed by Jamati goons:

A blogger and activist of Shahbagh movement was found stabbed dead last night, hours after the organisers decided to discontinue from today the 24-hour blockade.

The killing prompted the organisers to abandon a plan to demonstrate in front of National Museum from 3:00pm to 10:00pm every day.

The victim, Ahmed Rajib Haidar, lived with his brother Newaz Mortoza Haidar at Palash Nagar in the capital's Mirpur area. Police found the body, bearing several stabs, near his house.

Outraged, the Shahbagh protesters demanded immediate arrest of the killers and banning pro-Jamaat blog Sonarbangla that had been carrying out propaganda against Rajib over the last few days.

They also called upon the nation to resist the countrywide hartal called by Jamaat for Monday.

The protesters have also observed one-minute silence last night and they will wear black badges this morning to mourn for Rajib.

Victory is Ours!

AFP Reports on 14 February, 2013

When Ranajit Rinku heard the "Butcher of Mirpur" had been jailed for life for mass murder during Bangladesh's liberation war, he couldn't believe a man with so much blood on his hands could escape the gallows.

Like most Bangladeshis, Rinku had been taught that the nine-month conflict was one of the deadliest in history, with an estimated three million people killed by the Pakistani military and their local militia allies.

After Bangladesh's domestic war crimes tribunal ruled on February 5 that Abdul Quader Molla, a top official in the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, was responsible for more than 350 killings in a Dhaka suburb, opposition parties decried the verdict as a travesty of justice designed to settle scores.

But Rinku focused his outrage on what he saw as the leniency of the sentence -- no matter that the 31-year-old was not even born when the war broke out in March, 1971.

So he decided to head to an intersection in downtown Dhaka where hundreds of thousands of his fellow Bangladeshis have been staging round-the-clock protests with the single demand: that Molla and his fellow defendants be hanged.

"I have slept only 20 hours in the last eight days. We won't stop protesting unless all the collaborators are hanged," Rinku said.

The parents of Rinku, a member of Bangladesh's minority Hindu community, had to flee their village in northern Rangpur district in 1971 after it was attacked by a militia allied to the Pakistani army.

"So many people died at the hands of these killers yet there was no justice for the last 42 years. Our leaders have compromised with these killers and rehabilitated them. It's our last chance to wipe out this shame," he said.

Similar reactions have been seen throughout Bangladesh after the court started delivering their verdicts on 12 alleged war criminals last month.

The protests in Dhaka have drawn poets, academics, singers, journalists, war veterans and even members of the national cricket team.

The demonstrators have renamed Shahbag intersection New Generation Roundabout, comparing it to Tahrir Square, the cradle of Egypt's 2011 revolution.

The legacy of the nine-month war has defined much of Bangladesh's post-independence politics but successive governments including the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman failed to bring the war criminals to book.

Sheikh Mujib, the father of current premier Sheikh Hasina, briefly outlawed Jamaat in the 1970s.

But after his assassination in 1975, the ban was lifted by a military regime led by the husband of Hasina's main rival Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

The scale of the carnage is the subject of huge dispute.

The government says three million were killed but independent estimates put the figure much lower, between 300,000 and 500,000.

Many Bangladeshis believe the current Jamaat leadership was behind the pro-Pakistani militias responsible for the killings of professors, doctors and journalists.

Both Jamaat and BNP say the charges are bogus while international rights groups have found gaping holes in the war crimes laws and the proceedings.

The International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic set-up with no international oversight, has also been dogged by controversy ever since its creation in 2010.

Leaked internet calls point to collusion between a presiding judge, the prosecution and government. A key defence witness was allegedly abducted by plainclothed police outside the court.

But protesters dismiss such criticism.

"Young people have had enough of these conspiracies," said Imran Sarker, a protest organiser. "They have finally taken control to oversee the end of these collaborators."

Critics regard the demonstrations as having been orchestrated by the government to mask its shortcomings, including a series of high-profile graft scandals, ahead of elections due next January.

But Shahdeen Malik, a Dhaka-based commentator, said it was a mistake to underestimate the pent-up anger of a younger generation.

"I don't think the government has a role here. There are people of every hue and colour in the protests, including even BNP supporters," he told AFP.

"They have all become united under one issue: stern punishment for war criminals," he added, comparing the protests to recent mass protests in India after a deadly gang-rape.

Massive protest movement emerges against Islamists in Bangladesh

By Joseph Zeitlyn, Contributor / February 13, 2013

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

A protest that has at times swelled into the hundreds of thousands entered its ninth day today in Bangladesh’s capital, touched off by the outcome of a war crimes trial that has awoken an astonishing struggle over this country's identity and the role that religion plays in its fractious politics.

“God is Great,” cried out Abdul Qader Mollah, as he was sentenced to life behind bars on Feb. 5 in Bangladesh’s controversial war crimes tribunal. Known as the "butcher of Mirpur," Mr. Mollah was convicted of heinous crimes committed in 1971 during the country’s blood-soaked independence struggle from Pakistan. He has also been one of the leaders of the largest Islamist party here, the Jamaat-e-Islami. 

After the sentencing, protesters gathered in downtown Dhaka, crying foul that Mollah had not received the death sentence. This soon galvanized a vibrant protest movement against the ongoing influence of conservative, politicized Islam in one of the world's most populous Muslim nations.

“The current movement is aimed very explicitly at the Jamaat's role in 1971,” says Zafar Sobhan, editor of the Dhaka Tribune. But “it was clear that the future that the youths protesting ... envision is one without Islamist politics, returning to Bangladesh's secular roots, and recognition that religion-based politics had poisoned the society.

“They don't want to see the Jamaati-style Islamism either gain further currency in the society or more power politically,” he says.

Crowds continued to grow all week after the verdict. Soon a junction previously known simply as Shahbagh had become "Shahbagh Square," in reference to Tahrir. The calls of the protest morphed from macabre lynched effigies to calls for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) to be banned and associated businesses boycotted.

“Us pushing for the death sentence is the tip of the iceberg; this is a way to begin to unravel religion from politics,” says founding protester and blogger Asif Moihuddin, who was recently stabbed by Islamist thugs because of the content of his blog.

The 1971 independence struggle pitted indigenous Bengali identity against those wishing to remain a part of Pakistan, a country founded with an Islamic identity.

 JI represents two things in Bangladesh, says Mr. Sobhan. “The first is their Islamist political philosophy. The second is their role, both as a party and individually, as collaborators with the Pakistan Army in 1971,” and as such, the current protests have drawn on a potent secular patriotism.

The protests “are not an antireligious movement; we are not against Islam,” says Mr. Moihuddin. “We are against intimidation in the name of Islam and religion interfering in politics.”

For their part, the JI have called the protests “fascist in nature,” in a recent press release.

"Of late we have learnt that the demonstrators are planning to attack commercial and philanthropic organizations having distant relationships with Jamaat,” says JI spokesman Abdur Razzaq. He also worries that "the judges of the tribunal will be intimidated" by the protest.

As for calls to disband his party, Mr. Razzaq sees politics at play: "This idea was first floated by a partner of the ruling coalition with communist/socialist leanings."

But there are some indications that the protesters are attempting to avoid co-option from political parties. Last Wednesday, a ruling party politician was pelted with bottles when he attempted to address the crowd. “I don't want the politicians here, they are poison,” says protester Sadab Hossein.

“This verdict gave us an opportunity to hold both the government and JI accountable to the people on an issue we can assemble round,” says Moihuddin. “If we don’t stop them now, who’s to say where it ends.”

He insists he will continue to protest at Shahbagh, despite receiving death threats.

There are already indications that the ongoing disruption could touch off violence. Counter-riots from JI's student wing, known as Shibir, have broken out, with live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, and running battles with police in other parts of the city.