THE SHAM TRIAL OF SHEIKH HASINA

What began as a UN fact-finding mission now stands accused of enabling authoritarian rule and a politically motivated judicial witch hunt in Bangladesh

- BY MOHAMMAD ALI ARAFAT

The road to ruin is paved with good intentions. This could accurately describe the factfinding report on Bangladesh by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, upon which Sheikh Hasina is now on trial. A deeply flawed report, this has set a political narrative that has enabled Bangladesh's illegitimate interim government to run roughshod over Bangladesh and its institutions.

According to Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal”. Yet, in Bangladesh, today, the reality could not be further from this. The trial of Sheikh Hasina at Bangladesh's domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) is no ordinary one, and few would claim she has been entitled to a fair and public hearing.

Just last month, the UN Human Rights chief Volker Türk went so far as to urge “full respect for the most scrupulous standards of due process and fair trial, as guaranteed in international law”. What we are witnessing in Bangladesh is the rise of sham legal proceedings administered by kangaroo courts for political reasons.

The ICT Bangladesh is not the “independent and impartial tribunal” that the UN has enshrined in international law and is a betrayal of Article 10. This is a compromised tribunal, staffed by a woefully inexperienced and partial judiciary. It has been established at the behest of an unelected regime that holds neither the legal nor the moral authority to prosecute a democratically elected government. At the most basic level, fundamental principles of due process and fairness have been ignored. From the start of proceedings, it has been clear that this trial against Sheikh Hasina was never about justice.