There is a curious weight in witnessing a moment that feels like the culmination of years of waiting, even if the full consequence of that moment may never be realised. The verdict on Sheikh Hasina carries precisely that weight as a symbolic punctuation to a decade of fear, suffering, and quiet endurance. In a country where power so often felt untouchable, where law could be bent to protect those with influence and destroy those without, the decision to hold Hasina accountable is not merely judicial but also personal.
To speak of justice in abstract terms is simple. Scholars debate procedure, diplomats discuss optics, international media deliberate fairness, and foreign governments weigh consequences. But those frameworks rarely capture the intimate, almost physical relief that comes from seeing a powerful figure confronted with accountability. There is a long history of people waiting in court corridors that seemed endless, of families pressing photographs into the hands of reluctant officials, of citizens carrying memories of disappeared friends, neighbours, and colleagues, and of loved ones killed in protests. Justice has often been absent, delayed, or warped to suit politics.
There is a reason why this verdict feels like a personal win. It is because we have had to live under the shadow of her choices and watch the erosion of the everyday sense of safety, the subtle conditioning of our minds, the quiet fear in public spaces, the erosion of civic confidence. Accountability, even if delayed, restores a sense of moral order. It confirms that cruelty leaves traces that the world cannot ignore indefinitely.
This is why the debates framed in diplomatic language feel insufficient. When discussions revolve around whether a death sentence complicates her extradition, whether India will cooperate, or how the United Nations will respond, they obscure the emotional reality for citizens who have spent years negotiating life under fear. For these citizens, this sentence is neither a matter of politics nor of optics; it is a matter of recognition. A recognition that public accountability is possible, even if partially. So, while the world debates the technicalities, the symbolism of the verdict cannot be overstated. For the families of the disappeared, the survivors of forced disappearances and institutionalised cruelty, the families of the around 1,400 people killed in the uprising, and thousands more injured for life, its significance is immeasurable.
There is a certain inevitability in our emotional reaction. Those of us who carried the burden of witnessing injustice or suffered directly at its hands feel a sense of vindication. It is as if, at last, the moral ledger has been balanced, even if the numbers can never fully account for the enormity of our losses. Justice, in this sense, is an echo of recognition; an affirmation that what was endured matters, that those who once felt powerless are not entirely unheard. This is historic precisely because it exists in tension with what came before. For too long, the apparatus of the state allowed selective justice to define the rules. Decisions were guided by proximity to power, by allegiance, and by fear. Ordinary citizens—the witnesses, the silent sufferers—were forced to inhabit a parallel reality: a world in which laws existed, but rarely for them. The sentence against Hasina disrupts that parallel.
Of course, there is no guarantee that this moment will translate into lasting systemic change. The procedural aftermath, the international commentary, and the political manoeuvres that follow will test the depth of this symbolic victory. However, this moment affirms that ordinary citizens, who watched power move like a tidal wave over their lives, have a stake in the moral universe that the law is meant to inhabit. Hasina's sentence does not erase any of their sufferings, but it places them in a moral context where they are no longer invisible. That alone, in a country where invisibility has often been the default condition for those outside power, is transformative.
Perhaps the most profound aspect of this moment is the way it reframes the imagination of possibility. To see accountability reach a figure perceived for so long as untouchable opens a conceptual space. It allows us to imagine a society in which systems, though flawed, are not entirely devoid of redress. It allows a generation to measure possibility not by fear alone, but by the courage and persistence of those who upheld principle until the moment of recognition arrived. The debate over fairness and proportionality is not insignificant. Legal scholars, diplomats, and international observers will continue to dissect, question, and deliberate over the technical merits of the sentence. That discourse matters in its own domain. Yet for citizens who have experienced the consequences of unchecked authority, those considerations are secondary to the emotional and symbolic resonance of accountability.
History will judge the verdict in its own way, but for those who lived under the shadow of Hasina's regime, the personal significance precedes history. In the end, the importance of the sentence rendered on Hasina is not confined to law or politics. It is a moment that will enter collective memory as proof that justice, even when deferred, can arrive—and when it does, it feels like a personal triumph for all who lived under its absence.
Maisha Islam Monamee is a graduate from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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