Bangladesh: BNP cautions Yunus not to antagonise army

Former premier Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Wednesday cautioned interim government chief Muhammad Yunus against antagonising the army over the issue of the trial of military officers in a civil tribunal. Salahuddin Ahmed, the party’s standing committee member, told Yunus during an emergency meeting with political parties that “we (BNP) want you to maintain a good relation with the armed forces”.
“The state (Bangladesh) must remain in a balanced position,” he added.“We don’t want to draw any risk as we will not be able to afford it,” Ahmed said, ahead of the planned general election in February next year. The BNP leader told Yunus that his party’s support to his administration was a “conditional” one and it was “not limitless”.
Earlier in the evening, Yunus hurriedly called the emergency meeting with political parties amid discord among them over the implementation of a declaration dubbed as the July Charter, that his government drafted proposing a series of reforms in different sectors. Ahmed said the “fallen autocrats” and their accomplices, an oblique reference to deposed premier Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime, could take advantage of the discords between the armed forces and the interim government. “So, we must not emerge as counter revolutionaries and take decisions considering the reality,” he said.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) last week issued arrest warrants against 16 serving army officers and 14 others, including Hasina, for their alleged role in “enforced disappearances or abduction and torture of political dissidents” during the past regime.The army said they took into “military custody” 15 of the 16 officers soon after the ICT-BD issued arrest warrants but declined to have received any copy of any warrant amid anxious speculations over their trial in a civil court under the ICT-BD Act instead of a court-marshal under the Army Act.