Firefighters yesterday resumed their search of the headquarters compound of Bangladesh’s border guards after uncovering the grisly results of the force’s two-day mutiny — dozens of senior officers massacred, their bodies hurriedly dumped into shallow graves and sewers.
Nine more bodies were dug up in two mass graves, according to firefighter Sheikh Mohammad Shahjalal, bringing the official death toll to 75. Among the dead was Major General Shakil Ahmed, the commander of the guards.
Dozens more officers were missing.
“We think there are more bodies,” Shahjalal said.
While newly elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ended the revolt in two days, persuading the mutinous guards to surrender through promises of amnesty coupled with threats of military force, the insurrection raised new questions about stability in this poor South Asian nation.
She said on Friday that there would be no amnesty for the killers.
And Dhaka’s largest newspaper, the Daily Star, lauded Hasina in an editorial for “sagacious handling of the situation which resulted in the prevention of a further bloodbath.”
But the bloodshed underlined the fragile relationship between Bangladesh’s civilian leaders and the military, which has stepped in previously to quell what the generals considered dangerous political instability. The country only returned to democracy in January, two years after the army ousted the previous government amid rioting over disputed election results.
Hasina has a bitter history with the military. She is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s independence leader and its first head of state — from 1971 until a 1975 military coup killed him, Hasina’s mother and three brothers.
The government instructed senior military officials to take steps to mollify soldiers angry at the country’s army chief for prohibiting them from launching an assault on the border guards.
The rebellion in the Bangladesh Rifles border force paralyzed the capital and unsettled this nation of 150 million people.
“It’s a setback for Sheikh Hasina’s new government. It’s now a test for her how she handles the military,” political analyst Ataur Rahman said. “This tragic event will force her to divert her attention from consolidating democracy and boosting the economy to tackling the challenges of national security.”
The army chief, General Moeen Ahmed, met with Hasina at her home in Dhaka late on Friday, apparently to discuss the situation.
“It’s a national crisis,” Ahmed told reporters. “The military will stand by the government.”
His statement followed another by Lieutenant General Mohammad Abdul Mubin, principal staff officer of the military, late on Friday that the government would include representatives from the military on a committee investigating the mutiny so that the army’s concerns are not excluded from the process. A special tribunal will try those responsible for the massacre.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for calm and the resolution of the situation without further violence.
US deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Ban on Friday condemned brutal acts of violence and extended his deepest sympathy to the victims, to their families and to the people and the government of Bangladesh.
Late on Friday, the US and the UK extended their support to the efforts of Hasina to handle the crisis.
Following the border guards’ surrender on Thursday, search teams moved into the sprawling Bangladesh Rifles compound that houses the guards and many of their families. They found the gruesome evidence of the killings the guards had tried to conceal.
One corner of the compound, nestled under the shade of coconut palms, held two mass graves where slain officers had been put into shallow holes and covered with mounds of dirt. Firefighters used crowbars to pry off manhole covers and recover more corpses stuffed into sewers.
“We are digging out dozens of decomposing bodies dumped into mass graves,” army Brigadier General Abu Naim Shahidullah told the private NTV network.
After meeting with relatives of the dead officers, Hasina promised that amnesty would not apply to those responsible for the killings.
“No one has the right to kill anyone,” she said.
Security forces, who set up roadblocks across the country, arrested hundreds of border guards who tried to flee under cover of darkness, many of them wearing civilian clothes. It remained unclear whether the amnesty would apply to those guards who tried to flee.
The insurrection erupted from the guards’ longtime frustrations that their pay hasn’t kept pace with soldiers in the army — anger aggravated by the rise in food prices that has accompanied the global economic crisis. The guards earn about US$100 a month.
The guards also didn’t like the practice of appointing army officers to head the Bangladesh Rifles. Border guards also do not participate in UN peacekeeping missions, which bring additional pay.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS