[ALOCHONA] TIME on Zia killing

Bangladesh: Death at Night

TIME  Jun 08, 1981

President Zia is assassinated

Ten years ago this spring, young Major Ziaur Rahman broadcast an electrifying message from a clandestine radio in the East Pakistan city of Chittagong, proclaiming a rebellion against West Pakistan that ultimately created the nation of Bangladesh. Late last week there was another voice on the radio from Chittagong, announcing that Major General Manjur, 40, had taken over the government and abrogated the country's 1972 friendship treaty with India. The hero of a decade ago, President Ziaur Rahman, only 45, lay dead with two aides and six bodyguards in a government rest house in Chittagong. All were reportedly shot by an assassination squad, led by Manjur, in the early morning hours Saturday.

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.

The slain Zia had been one of South Asia's most promising leaders, a man who lived modestly while others chose corruption, who searched tirelessly for solutions to his country's awesome poverty. He was also a fatalist. Once, reflecting on his service for Pakistan in the 1965 war with India over Kashmir, he observed: "There is no scientific explanation for a man to die or live. In front of me many people died, but I got a bonus of life." He used that bonus well, but last week it ran out.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922557,00.html

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Facing a future without Zia

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

 

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