… shouting for silence in a library. Well, that does not quite have the ring of the original slogan popularised during the Vietnam war protests in the U.S., but we have to keep UV family-friendly! It does vaguely capture the sentiment of the original: namely that you cannot hope to achieve a goal through means that are fundamentally contrary with that goal itself. This is exactly what a lot of us are protesting in Bangladesh.

Last week’s arrest of Sheikh Hasina has led to a familiar debate between those who want due process and the rule of law to reign supreme and those who feel that exceptions to these must be made for her and other politicians currently behind bars, especially since they themselves may not have respected the rule of law and the right of others to due process when they were in power. I count myself among the former, and my reasons are those that I put forward above: namely, you cannot hope to establish a “corruption-free Bangladesh” (ostensibly the loudest, if not the most important, goal of this current CTG) by means that breed further corruption - such as lack of due process, unequal application of the law, and subversions of the law itself.

My stance is not mere idealism: I’m not so besotted by the concepts or catchy phrases of “due process” and “rule of law” that I’ve forgotten that our legal system is far from ideal. My stance is based on pragmatic considerations. If we take the argument of those who say that these leaders must be tried under “exceptional circumstances” because of their previous neglect of the law, where does that leave the people who are trying them? Who is to stop future regimes, maybe another 15 years down the line, to come by and say, “You did not follow due process, tried others under “exceptional circumstances” and so you yourself must be tried thus.” And so on and so forth. A bad dynamic is thus perpetuated and someone needs to break free of it if our legal system is to recover.

The “exceptional circumstances” argument usually has two strands. The flouting of their rights and the law is justified because they are (a) leaders and (b) previously flouted the law themselves. (a) is destructive to the foundations of a legal system because it implies that all people are not equal under the law (please note that this is about conviction, not punishment). People who applaud Sheikh Hasina’s arrest as an instance of the law being equal for all should recall that that also means that the law cannot be harsher on her than on others. (b) simply puts us back in the jungle, where revenge reign supreme. And revenge is not justice.

A disclaimer: analogies between international politics and domestic politics usually fall apart if stretched too far. So please refrain from comments with examples of “just wars”, such as WWII, or something similar, and focus on the meat of the arguments presented here. Wars themselves belong to the anarchic international sphere and not to the domestic sphere where laws and institutions should ideally reign supreme. If they don’t, we call it “corruption”.