Cheri Blair's comparison of Bangladesh and Burma, and by extension of Sheikh Hasina and Aung San Su Kyi, verges on the farcical. She must indeed be a terrible lawyer if she cannot master such an elementary brief.
Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia were prime ministers of Bangladesh, the former once, the latter twice. The democratic process was ended on 11th January, 2007, not by the army alone but – and this takes the biscuit – by the western donor countries and their agencies backing the army (cold war habits never die). The country narrowly averted a civil war. The democratic experiment had failed miserably. The only reason the western powers ended the murderous sixteen-year experiment was that they didn't want a fourth Muslim country – after Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan – to descend into chaos. There are no parallels with Burma whatsoever.
Since "1/11", as the day of reprieve is known in Bangladesh, the Americans and the British have consistently supported the military-backed caretaker government. Bangladesh is, after all, a colony of the western powers.
That Bangladesh is a colony is vividly illustrated by the shocking red-carpet treatment accorded to Cherie Blair in a predominantly Muslim country. Although no longer the British prime minister's wife, she had lunch at the state guest house with Foreign Adviser Iftekhar A Chowdhury. Why should a nonentity receive such treatment?
And why is Cherie Blair so solicitous of Sheikh Hasina's health, and not that of the former leader of the opposition, Khaleda Zia? That may not be her brief, but as a conscientious member of the international legal community – hell-bent on upholding the rule of law and human rights - she should have shown some concern for the other arrested leader (the arrest of two leaders, after a sixteen-year-old violent democratic period imposed on the country by the west after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, proves once again that the alleged similarity between the caretaker government and the Burmese junta is totally vacuous).
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