General elections are going to be held in Bangladesh on January 7, the results of which are already looking inevitable.
After major opposition parties boycotted the elections and jailed several of their leaders, the ruling Awami League is gearing up to contest and win re-election for a fourth consecutive parliamentary term.
The largest of these opposition parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies say they are confident that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will not allow free and fair elections.
The BNP demanded that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign and allow elections to be held under a neutral interim government, but she rejected the demand.
Senior BNP leader Abdul Moin Khan told the BBC that ‘democracy is dead in Bangladesh. What we are going to see in January are fake elections.
He expressed his concerns regarding the elections to be held in the country in the coming days and said that the style of running the government of the current Prime Minister of the country, Sheikh Hasina, is seen to be rapidly moving towards dictatorial thinking over the past years.
Critics question why the international community is not doing more to hold her administration accountable, but Sheikh Hasina’s government vehemently denies allegations that her style of functioning is undemocratic.
Bangladesh’s current law minister Aneesul Haque told the BBC that elections are determined by public participation. Apart from BNP, many other political parties are also participating in these elections.
Economic development in Bangladesh
Under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina, the Muslim-majority country, which was once among the world’s poorest countries, has achieved reliable economic success since 2009 and has emerged as a stable economy.
However, it is now also said and believed that it is now one of the fastest growing economies in the region, even Bangladesh has now overtaken its larger neighbor India.
Its per capita income tripled in the last decade and the World Bank estimates that more than 25 million people were lifted out of poverty in the last 20 years.
Using the country’s own funds, loans and development aid, Hasina Wajid’s government has launched major infrastructure projects, including the $2.9 billion Padma Bridge. This bridge alone is expected to increase the GDP by 1.23%.
But in the face of the pandemic, even in Bangladesh, the government is facing difficulties due to rising prices of essential commodities. It is estimated that the inflation rate in November last year (2023) was around 9.5%.
Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves have fallen from a record $48 billion in August 2021 to about $20 billion, insufficient to cover three months of imports. Bangladesh’s foreign debt has also doubled since 2016.
Critics allege that Hasina Wajid’s government has taken repressive and dictatorial measures against her political opponents, critics and the media.
In August, more than 170 global figures, including former US President Barack Obama, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and You-Too singer Bono, wrote an open letter to Hasina Wajid, in which they condemned Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’s ‘constant legal proceedings’. I was stressed to refrain from involvement and harassment.
And in recent months, several senior BNP leaders have been arrested along with thousands of supporters following anti-government protests.
Abdul Moein Khan, one of the few senior BNP leaders who has not been arrested, has alleged that more than 20,000 party supporters were arrested on ‘false and fabricated charges’. While cases have also been filed against lakhs of party workers.
However, Sheikh Hasina Wajid’s government strongly denies these allegations.
Referring to the number of his supporters detained by the BNP, the Law Minister said, “I have investigated these allegations and it has come to our attention that these allegations made by the opposition The number is less than half. Some of these incidents are related to the violent incidents during the 2001 and 2014 elections.
However, statistics show that politically motivated arrests, disappearances, murders and other abuses increased during Hasina Wajid’s tenure. Human Rights Watch recently described the arrests of opposition supporters as a “violent authoritarian crackdown” by the government.
This is a remarkable change for a leader who once fought for true democracy in the country.
In the 1980s, Sheikh Hasina joined hands with other opposition leaders, including her bitter rival Begum Khaleda Zia, to protest on the streets in favor of democracy during the regime of General Hussain Muhammad Irshad.
Hasina Wajid, the eldest daughter of the country’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, came to power for the first time in the 1996 multi-party elections. He then faced defeat in the 2001 elections to Khaleda Zia-led BNP.
Locally, these two women are described as ‘Rival Begums’. It is important to clarify here that ‘Begum’ refers to a Muslim woman of high rank.
Begum Zia is now under detention on corruption charges and is facing multiple medical complications and the party is facing difficulties due to lack of dynamic leadership of BNP.
This was further compounded by the systematic arrest and punishment of opposition leaders and supporters. Many believe that the Awami League deliberately adopted such a strategy to cripple or paralyze the BNP before the elections.
Like Syed Mian, many BNP supporters have gone into hiding to avoid persecution. The 28-year-old, whose name we have changed to protect his identity, spent a month in jail in September for taking part in a political protest.
Syed Mian is said to be currently living in a tent at an undisclosed location along with three of his party colleagues. All of them are wanted for violence and other crimes accused of inciting people to violence during a rally.
Syed Mian said that more than a month has passed since we were in hiding and we keep changing our places for fear of arrest. All the allegations against us and all the cases against us are false and baseless.
The current deteriorating human rights situation in Bangladesh has raised concerns among international institutions.
Rory Mungovin, head of Asia-Pacific at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, told that ‘the cases and prosecutions of opposition political parties and their leaders in Bangladesh Looking at the allegations, it is not difficult to guess where the situation is going in the country.
He further says that ‘after seeing the situation in Bangladesh, it seems that this is not a crackdown against any violent incident but a systematic attempt to put pressure on the opposition.’
In November, a group of UN special representatives also expressed concern over the situation. He had said that “weaponizing the judicial system to attack journalists, human rights activists and civil society leaders undermines the independence of the judiciary and is tantamount to abolishing basic human rights.”
But Law Minister Haq says that the government has nothing to do with the courts, the judiciary is completely independent in the country.
It’s not just the staggering number of arrests and convictions that worries human rights groups. He also says that he has documented hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by security forces since 2009.
The government vehemently denies claims that it is behind such abuses, but also severely restricts visits by foreign journalists who seek to investigate such allegations. Most local journalists have stopped looking into such cases out of fear for their safety and do not even report facts about these operations anymore.
The number of extrajudicial killings has dropped significantly since 2021, when the US imposed sanctions on a notorious paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion, and seven of its current and former officers.
But the limited sanctions imposed by the United States have not improved the overall human rights situation in Bangladesh. This is why some politicians are calling for tougher action from Western countries.
Diplomatic balancing act
Karen Melchior, a member of the European Parliament, has said that the European Commission should be held accountable for the current democratic situation in Bangladesh, and should consider withdrawing tariff-free access to Bangladeshi products after all. ‘
Bangladesh is the second largest country in the world after China, which has a name in textile exports worldwide. Last year, Bangladesh exported readymade garments worth more than 45 billion dollars to Europe and America.
Many are beginning to question why the West, which has so much economic influence, is allowing Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to systematically dismantle democratic institutions. And why are no measures being taken to stop them from doing so?
The biggest challenge for Bangladesh at the moment is India, which is being ignored in many respects, the same neighboring country which, despite all this, is facilitating access to its seven northeastern states through Bangladesh. Efforts are being made.
India is also concerned about the 20 km long ‘Chicken’s Neck’ land corridor between Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan that connects its northeastern states with the rest of India. Officials in Delhi fear that it could be strategically vulnerable in any possible confrontation with India’s rival, China.
Soon after coming to power in the year 2009, Hasina Wajid also won the support of Delhi by taking action against the ethnic rebel groups in the northeastern regions of India.
There are also concerns that putting too much pressure on Bangladesh could prove dangerous for India, as doing so could turn Dhaka towards China instead of Delhi.
Beijing is already looking to expand its influence in Bangladesh as it battles with India for regional supremacy.