Christopher Burke
The news from Bangladesh is stark and historic. Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death by a domestic tribunal for “crimes against humanity.” The charges relate not to the ghosts of the 1971 war, but to the brutal crackdown on the student-led popular uprising that ultimately ended her long and often autocratic rule in the summer of 2024. The verdict is a profound, contradictory moment. A victory for the victims of state-sanctioned violence, it affirms that modern political leaders are not beyond the law. However, the legitimacy of the verdict is undermined by procedural flaws forcing a deeper examination of questions haunting transitional regimes. When does national justice become an unquestionable international precedent and when is it a political weapon of the next regime?
The conviction of Sheikh Hasina marks the latest challenge to the concept of sovereign immunity-an increasingly antiquated idea that a Head of State cannot be prosecuted for their actions. The trend was cemented in the late 1990s. The indictment of the sitting President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević shattered the notion that leaders are untouchable while in office. This was reinforced by the subsequent convictions of Liberia’s Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Chad’s Hissène Habré by the Extraordinary African Chambers. Habré’s 2016 conviction for crimes against humanity by a hybrid court in Senegal was a major milestone–African justice for an African dictator.
Hasina’s case adds a unique layer. Unlike Taylor and Habré who were tried for atrocities committed decades ago, Hasina was convicted by a domestic court, the International Crimes Tribunal, for ordering the deadly repression of a political movement in a struggle for self-preservation that ended her regime. Ironically, Hasina’s government revived the tribunal in March 2010 to try alleged crimes from the 1971 war. The verdict sends a chillingly relevant message to leaders everywhere. The risk of domestic legal reckoning for crushing dissent is real and immediate. The shield of political office is no longer effective protection from charges of using state power to commit atrocities.
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