BD court bans religion in politics

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has reinstated a ban on religious political parties in the latest blow to religious hardliners in the impoverished South Asian country, a minister said Thursday.

In a detailed, 184-page verdict released late Wednesday, the Supreme Court scrapped the bulk of the 1979 fifth amendment, including provisions that had allowed religious political parties to flourish and legalised military rule.

“Secularism will again be the cornerstone of our constitution,” law minister Shafiq Ahmed told AFP on Thursday.

Religious parties, which were banned in the original 1971 constitution but legalised by the 1979 amendments, are now banned again, said Ahmed.

“Islamic parties cannot use religion in politics any more,” he said.

In the verdict, which was issued in January but became trapped in an appeals process until Wednesday, the Supreme Court also declared the 1975-1990 military rule illegal, and recommended punishing military dictators, Ahmed said.

“This means that, in theory, any Bangladeshi citizen could initiate a lawsuit against a former military dictator,” he said, adding that the repeal of the amendment would also limit the possibility of a future military coup.

“It is a landmark verdict,” Supreme Court lawyer Shahdeen Malik, who is also dean of law at the private BRAC university told AFP, adding that lawmakers would now have to clarify how the verdict would be applied by law.

Since the Awami League’s landslide election win over the Islamist-allied Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 2008, the government has cracked down on Islamic groups and parties.

“We are now studying this verdict,” BNP spokesman, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, who is also secretary general of the party, told AFP.

The government outlawed one Islamic party in October last year, accusing it of destabilising the country.

Four other Islamist organisations, including the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh, were earlier banned after they carried out a series of nationwide bombings that left 28 people dead in 2005. - AFP