TIME Monday, Jun. 15, 1981
Life in all parts of beloved Bangladesh has returned to normal," Dacca's state radio announced triumphantly last week. For 48 hours Bangladesh had teetered toward civil war, following a coup attempt in the southeastern port of Chittagong in which President Ziaur Rahman, 45, was gunned down by an assault force of mutinous troops. Major General Abul Manzur, 40, who led the putsch against his longtime rival, had hoped for help from the military across the country. Instead, army units stormed the rebellious military garrison in Chittagong. While trying to flee to Burma, Manzur was captured and summarily shot by "angry soldiers," as Dacca radio explained. Government troops discovered Zia's body in a shallow grave 22 miles from the official guesthouse where he had been assassinated. During a state funeral in Dacca last Tuesday, a million Bangladeshi jostled and shoved to catch a glimpse of the cortege bearing Zia's simple wooden coffin.
The assassination of the popular leader, who had retired from the military in 1977 in order to take office as President and lead Bangladesh back to civilian rule, left a power vacuum in the poverty-stricken country that acting President Abdus Sattar, 75, a mild-mannered moderate, was not likely to fill for long.
The nation's constitution calls for elections within six months, but with Zia's majority Bangladesh Nationalist Party now bereft of a strong leader and the 29 opposition parties fragmented and fractious, the fate of civilian rule seemed to depend on who flexes the biggest muscles. For the moment at least, the military's guns were supporting the government.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949190,00.html
TIME Monday, Jun. 08, 1981
Manjur's confident proclamation of a coup seemed premature. The official Bangladesh radio in the capital of Dacca assured the country's 90 million people that the government was safely in the hands of Vice President Abdus Sattar. The government declared a state of emergency and called upon the rebels to surrender. Moreover, stressed the state radio, all international agreements remained in force.
Bangladesh's long-troubled relations with India, the country that had helped it win independence, seemed to be at the heart of the assassination. The two nations are divided by bitter issues primarily concerning the lower Ganges River, which meanders through both countries as it flows out into a vast delta. Tensions have built up over rights to the Ganges water, various solutions to the water question and territorial claims to islands formed by silt at the mouth of a boundary river. The sovereignty question is particularly volatile: there are hopes of finding oil under nearby waters. While Zia had pressed India strenuously on the diplomatic front—even sending gunboats to one of the 'disputed islands last month—he was apparently not aggressive enough for a fiercely anti-Indian element with a strong base in Chittagong. The assassins were apparently linked to these militants.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922557,00.html
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