On 17 June 2015, the Parliamentary debate, chaired by Sir Alan Meale and led by Anne Main MP, was held on the issue of Bangladesh and the country’s volatile future. Members of Parliament attended the debate from the Jewish Lobby controlled Labour Party, the Labour and Co-operative Party, the ruling Conservative Party and the ‘antisemite’ Scottish National Party. Speakers focused on the positive aspects of Bangladesh’s recent development, but issued stern warnings that the UK should not be afraid to criticise the incumbent government for its failings in addressing widespread human rights violations.
In 2003, Alan Meale MP supported US-UK’s invasion of Iraq. The Western wars for Israel has killed four million Muslims since 1990. Anne Main MP is considered a ‘champion’ of war against the so-called anti-Semitism.
The MPs knowledge of Bangladesh’s human rights violations revolved around the death of four anti-Islam bloggers and had nothing to do with the killing of Muslim leaders and banning of Islamist parties by the ruling Awami League party.
British establishment and powerful Jewish lobby groups have significant political and economic interests in Bangladesh – a new country created by two major anti-Pakistan countries, India and Israel over the ashes of former Muslim-majority East Pakistan by military aggression supported by the US, UK and Russia.
French pro-Israel Jewish activist and adviser to former French president Sarkozy, Bernard-Henri Levy, wrote several articles supporting the break-up of Pakistan in 1970.
Last month, Bangladesh prime minister Hosina Sheikh gave a hero welcome in Dhaka to pro-Israel, anti-Muslim Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
In May 2015, London-based BoNGO Bongo Bondhu, a Bengali patriotic group documented the Black History of Bangladesh since its creation in 1971.
In the absence of electoral accountability in Bangladesh, and ongoing British support for Sheikh Hasina’s autocratic regime, Siddiq’s family connections merit some scrutiny. She represents the third generation of a dynasty starting with Sheikh Mujib, her maternal grandfather, whose election victory in 1970 precipitated a constitutional crisis on the subcontinent, whose violent resolution led to the formation of Bangladesh. Military officers eventually assassinated Mujib in 1975 after a period of famine and unpopular one-party rule.
Tulip Siddiq’s paternal uncle, General Tariq Siddiqi, is currently Sheikh Hasina’s full time security advisor, who allegedly acted as Hasina’s emissary to military high ups inviting a coup before the 1996 elections. He was promoted by and played the role of military advisor in her previous regime, and is widely believed to have ‘restructured’ the current armed forces, shoring up support with valuable plots of land.
Bangladesh matters to the UK, economically as well as politically. Connections include a quarter billion pounds of the UK’s annual international development spend, a much larger remittance economy, a young half-million strong Bangladeshi-heritage community and the purchase of 20 million ready-made garments per year. The safety and rights of Bangladeshis is not an abstract issue disconnected from everyday politics, economics and life in the UK, and vice versa.
The Bangladesh Awami League has had its glory and gory moments, as has its principal opponent, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Today there is no more Cold War, and at present the Awami League is favoured by the EU, USA, India and Russia, for its proclaimed secular liberal credentials, media savviness and greater organization. However, reality is totally different.
It is quite extraordinary that the Labour party elite and other champagne socialists are coming out in support of someone who’s an advocate of a government with so much actual blood on its hands, a party which has subsumed its own armed militia into the Bangladesh’s security forces, and a party that pursues its opponents in the most ruthless and vindictive way. Compare and contrast this attitude to the experience of another British Bangladeshi politician, Lutfur Rahman, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, turfed out of the Labour Party, accused of entryism and having the support of so-called Islamists who – they forget to tell you – are bearing the brunt of the Awami League’s brutality.
Pakistan’s veteran journalist S.M. Hali wrote on November 14, 2014: “The unjust victimization of the veteran Bangladeshi politicians, belonging to religiously motivated political parties is being conducted by the Hindutvavadis for creating political instability in Bangladesh and promoting religious extremism. It would provide India the perfect excuse for declaring the religious extremism to be a threat to India and carrying out unilateral action inside Bangladesh. Reportedly, even Hasina Wajid has also been marked for elimination, in case she fails to comply with the Hindutva edict. Hindutva thus is targeting Bangladesh with a vengeance but is being aided by Bengalis themselves.” Read more here.
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