Zia Assassination: Bangladesh's 45-Year Cover-Up
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- Ziaur Rahman was assassinated on May 30, 1981, at a government circuit house in Chattogram, having survived at least 20 prior mutinies and coup attempts during his rule.
- Lt-Gen Hussain Muhammad Ershad convened a secret military tribunal that concluded in just 17 days, charging officers with mutiny rather than murder and ordering 13 military officers hanged in a rushed civilian execution process.
- Major-General Muhammad Abul Manzur, the alleged ringleader and a respected liberation war commander, was shot dead in military custody at Chattogram cantonment before he could take the stand, permanently silencing the only potential witness to the wider conspiracy.
- A parallel judicial inquiry committee's final report was buried by the state and never published, establishing what the article calls 'calculated amnesia' that Ershad capitalized on ten months later with his own bloodless coup.
- The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, founded by Zia and now led by his widow Khaleda Zia, has refused to form an independent inquiry, citing the 1981 court-martial's legal closure — a stance critics say reflects a cross-party consensus to protect the army's institutional legitimacy.
- Zia's economic legacy — dismantling the BAKSAL one-party socialist system, deregulating the ready-made garment industry, and formalizing Gulf labor migration that still fills Dhaka's central bank with remittances — has proved more durable than any investigation into his killing.
Why it matters: Both major parties benefit from the 1981 cover-up, meaning accountability for a sitting president's assassination has been permanently traded for political stability. The economic foundations Zia built — garment exports and Gulf remittances — remain inseparable from the political architecture that refuses to investigate his killing.
