Category — Bangladesh Politics

Earlier today I decided to surf thru Sajeeb Wajed’s blog. He is the son of one of the ex-prime ministers of Bangladesh, who is currently in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges. Several of his posts mention human rights violations in Bangladesh under the current government.

So a little background here - Sajeeb’s mother, Sheikh Hasina was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1996 to 2001. During that time, the law and order situation in Bangladesh was one of the worst in recent times. It was also a time when Bangladesh started being ranked as one of the top ten most corrupt nations in the world by Transparency International. During PM Hasina’s tenure, it was suggested to her to set up an Anti Corruption Council. She brushed off the suggestion by saying that the “government had no plan to set up an independent anti-corruption commission at the moment, but it would consider it in future.”

In 1998 Bangladesh has suffered floods that affected 10 million people. Prime Minister Hasina decided that the best use of Bangladesh’s precious foreign reserves was to spend $900 million dollars to buy 4 Russian fighter jets. Interestingly, PM Hasina is in prison at the moment for improprieties in awarding that $900 milllion dollar contract. It is horrifying that at a time of such disaster the government had misplaced priorities.

So finally we have a government that in 9 short months has accomplished such spectacular reforms such as separating the judiciary from the executive; investigating and prosecuting immense corruption by politicians and businessman; has begun improving power generation; has begun reforming the government civil service; has initiated laws requiring election candidates to disclose their qualifications, etc. These are just a few of the good works that the current caretaker government has initiated. And in light of such achievements; it is quite disingenious for the corrupt politicians to cry about “human rights” violations. No human rights are being violated - the corrupt politicians are quite simply facing the consequences of their actions.