Resolution paves approach for the nation’s largest Muslim get together to take part within the subsequent common election, anticipated by June subsequent yr.
Bangladesh has restored the registration of the nation’s largest Muslim get together, greater than a decade after it was banned by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s authorities.
Sunday’s Supreme Courtroom determination means the Jamaat-e-Islami get together can now be formally listed with the Election Fee, paving the best way for its participation within the subsequent common election, which the interim government has promised to carry by June subsequent yr.
Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer Shishir Monir stated the ruling would permit a “democratic, inclusive and multiparty system” within the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million folks.
“We hope that Bangladeshis, no matter their ethnicity or spiritual id, will vote for Jamaat and that the parliament can be vibrant with constructive debates,” Monir advised journalists.
The get together had appealed for a evaluation of a 2013 high court order cancelling its registration after Hasina’s authorities was ousted in August by a student-led nationwide rebellion.
Hasina, 77, fled to India and is now being tried in absentia over her crackdown final yr, described by prosecutors as a “systematic attack” on protesters, which in keeping with the United Nations, killed as much as 1,400 folks.
Key chief freed
The Supreme Courtroom determination on Jamaat-e-Islami got here after it overturned a conviction towards ATM Azharul Islam, one of many get together’s key leaders, on Tuesday.
Islam was sentenced to dying in 2014 for rape, homicide and genocide throughout Bangladesh’s 1971 warfare of independence from Pakistan. Jamaat-e-Islami supported Pakistan through the warfare, a task that also sparks anger amongst many Bangladeshis at present.
“We, as people or as a celebration, will not be past making errors,” Jamaat-e-Islami chief Shafiqur Rahman stated after Islam’s conviction was overturned with out specifying what he was referring to.
“We search your pardon if we now have executed something unsuitable,” he stated.
The get together’s members had been rivals of Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of the Awami League, who would turn out to be Bangladesh’s founding president.
Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami throughout her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.
In Could, Bangladesh’s interim authorities, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, banned the Awami League, pending the end result of authorized proceedings over its crackdown on final yr’s mass protests.