When this man is executed, it will be, in part, our fault.
Earlier this month, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a self-described “Muslim Zionist,” traveled to the U.S. to address audiences in New York City and at Yale University. Publisher of the largest English-language daily newspaper in Bangladesh, Choudhury has been jailed, beaten, nearly blinded, and is now on trial for his life for his reporting, and for his pro-American, pro-Israeli views.
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Bangladesh has slapped Choudhury with charges of blasphemy, treason, and sedition, the last of which potentially carries the death penalty. Disturbingly, as Choudhury returns to Bangladesh this week to face trial, the United States has seemingly turned its back on him.Prior to the inauguration of Barack Obama, the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka was sending observers to monitor Choudhury’s trial, according to Richard Benkin, an American human rights activist who helped, with the cooperation of U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), to secure Choudhury’s release from prison in 2003. But since January, Benkin says, the U.S. embassy has stopped sending the observers.
The article notes later that Choudhury’s calls to the embassy aren’t returned. He’s become persona non grata or, if you like just another person under the Obama realpolitik bus. I don’t see what we’re trying to do here, save appease every tin-pot tyranny we see in the vain hopes that our supine position will, for the first time in the history of the universe, elicit real respect.
It’s possible that our involvement here has had no effect and never will. But sending an observer to let the Bangladeshi government know we are watching what they are doing is dirt-cheap and can pay off in ways we can not calculate right now. Certainly, it’s reasonable to say that so long as we are watching, it’s far more difficult for the Bangladeshi government to pull any funny business during the trial. Now, they can pretty much do whatever they want. Don’t think for a second they don’t know that.
Tags: Foreign Policy, Individual Rights, Islamism
