Experts Oppose Anti-Terror Ordinance

Many legal experts in Bangladesh are opposed to the anti-terror ordinance fearing that it will be used vindictively and victimize innocent people. Ashutosh Sarkar writes in the Daily Star.

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Legal experts and human rights activists have strongly opposed the recently approved Anti-Terrorism Ordinance 2008 that provides death sentence as the maximum punishment or life imprisonment for an offender, their patrons and shelter providers.

They expressed concern that the law may be exercised with a vindictive motive to politically harass and victimise innocent people.

Protesting the death penalty provision, they said human rights activists in Bangladesh as elsewhere in the world do not support any provision for the capital punishment.

The president promulgated the Anti-Terrorism Ordinance 2008 on June 11, providing death penalty for offences like terror financing and staging murder to create panic and jeopardise the country's sovereignty.

Criminal law expert and human rights activist Dr Shahdeen Malik told The Daily Star that there was no need at all for making a law like this.

"The more criminal laws a society has, the more barbaric it becomes. In the last few decades, we have enacted more criminal laws than were necessary and another criminal law will not serve any purpose except for giving the law enforcement agencies another weapon to misuse and abuse and harass citizens," he said.

"There are a number of laws with provisions of death sentence for almost 100 criminal offences and one does not know how large is the number of offences for which life imprisonment has been provided," he added.

"In such a state of affairs, yet another very harsh criminal law will only be abused. The last model of the United States of America in terrorism related matters should be noted in this context. In the name of fighting terrorism, the USA has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and at home. It is better not to do what the US does," Malik said.

Human rights activist barrister Sara Hossain said it should be reconsidered if there was any necessity of enacting another law like the Anti-Terrorism Ordinance 2008 since similar laws enacted earlier could not play any good role in combating terrorism.

"We have seen that every elected government in our country enacted similar laws with a view to combating terrorism. The much-talked-about Anti-Terrorism Act and Public Safety Act enacted by the BNP and Awami League governments could not play any effective role in uprooting terrorism. The High Court has even declared the Public Safety Act illegal and unconstitutional," Sara said.

She said the definition of terrorism included in the ordinance is very wide and anybody can be implicated under this law, which leaves the chance for misusing the law and victimise innocent people.

Mentioning that human rights workers do not support any provision for death penalty, she said, "There was no discussion and exchange of views with the human rights groups before approving the ordinance."

Supreme Court lawyer and President of Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh advocate Manzill Murshed said if the government passes the anti-terrorism act to punish offenders who could be punished under the existing laws, this might fail the very purpose of justice.

"There is possibility that the authorities concerned will 'select' cases for filing those under this law and the law may also be exercised out of political motivation," he said.

Manzill Murshed also said the provision of death penalty is against human rights and rights activists do not support this provision.

"The existing criminal laws such as the Arms Act and the Explosives Act are enough to properly punish criminal offenders," he added.