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.
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