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By Iftekhar Sayeed (about the author)
Become a Fan -- Page 3 of 6 page(s)
'The armed men caught two young men and started to drag them towards the motorcade that waited on the Mirpur Road. At one point the men hit one of the captives in his head with a revolver and shot another in the chest point blank, witnesses said. A policeman who was leading a dozen men in riot gear stood silently nearby.' (Holiday February 5th, 1999)
'Two people were shot dead and 10 others injured in a gunfight between two rival factions of Awami League in Sandwip today....
'The two factions – one led by local MP Mostafizur Rahman and the other by then AL President Shahjahan, fought with guns and home-made bombs for establishing (sic) supremacy in local politics, police sources said.' (The Daily Star, February 26th, 2000)
Much of the violence is caused by the ruling party itself, against whose members such laws were most unlikely to be applied. After the last election, which the governing Awami League lost, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party along with three other parties won most of the seats, the violence was the act of the student bodies of the latter against supporters of the former, including the Hindu minority that traditionally votes for them. Amnesty International Secretary General, Irene Z. Khan, took up the issue with the government when she was in Bangladesh.
If the previous government passed a repressive law to stem violence, the next government went several steps further – it brought the army out on the streets, to enormous acclaim! "Operation Clean Heart" was conducted between October 2002 and January 2003. Never in the history of military rule – neither under General Zia nor under General Ershad – was the army used in this manner. Alleged criminals were picked up by the army and 44 died in custody.
Abul Hossain Litu (32) was one of the 44. He was reported in the papers to be a harmless young man who ran a poultry farm. On October 28th, members of the army raided his farm, blindfolded him and tied him to a tree and, it is claimed, beat him to death. The army had a significantly different story to tell. More importantly, his widow, Anjana, could not have the matter brought to court: parliament passed an indemnity ordinance that, in the words of a newspaper, says: "no one can seek justice and no complaints can be lodged against any persons involved with the joint drive for any arrests, deaths, tortures, violations of rights and any damages of physical, mental or financial nature between October 16 and January 9. And any case related to the Operation Clean Heart filed with any court would automatically be canceled".
"Where would we go to seek justice for the killing of my husband?" asks Anjana. "Why won't I get justice?"
However, the army drive – and the custodial deaths – proved remarkably popular with the people. This testifies to the intolerable level of violence attained by the nation, both before and after the election. It was 'vigilantism' on a national scale – with as much, or as little, moral and legal validity.
The Hartal
Farzana Khan, now a student of pharmacy in New York, lost her father during a hartal. He was walking down the road (not even taking a rickshaw, since hartals aim to keep vehicles off the streets through threat of violence) when political activists hurled a cocktail at him – he died. Farzana once sent me an anguished e-mail, but has never again communicated her incommunicable grief to me. She has been devastated, like many others.
The Banglapedia, which was compiled by eminent intellectuals of Bangladesh, proves mendacious on every subject pertaining to democratic violence – to please donors and the parties, again testifying to a climate of fear and corruption.
The article on "hartal" observes: " In Bangladesh, hartal is a constitutionally recognised political method for articulating any political demand". Then there follows a narrative of every agitation in Bengal back to the eighteenth century, only to legitimise hartal, to which merely three paragraphs are devoted at the end! "Thus, protestation is nothing new in the Bengal society. Only its forms varied from place to place and from time to time.( http://banglapedia.org/HT/H_0074.HTM)"
Firstly, hartal is not a constitutionally recognised form of protest. According to a Supreme Court ruling, based on a Madras High Court judgement, hartals must be – spontaneous and unaccompanied by fear.
When Farzana Khan's father died in a hartal, and Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4th May, 2001 at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days, the rest of the nation obviously had something to fear, to make an understatement: schools remain closed, for instance, due to the terror of hartals. No parent will risk sending their children to school during hartal for fear that the child may not come back alive. I asked Angela Robinson, once principal of The British School and then vice-principal at the Bangladesh International Tutorial to write a paragraph on the impact of hartals, and this is what I received:
"What d'ya mean - a paragraph on the impact of hartals? What impact? They are just there, like the weather! When I announce yet another disruption to the normal school week, I end it with "T-I-B" and the children chant back, "This Is Bangladesh!" I must not appear to bother too much as THEY must not bother too much - or despair would rule OK. We must learn to take these events on the chin, not because we do not care but because, while other people have the job of doing the caring - and campaigning, or whatever, we have to - in the great phrase - 'get on with it' .
"I sympathise with everyone if a school management insists on two consecutive Saturdays off. I always put pressure, at The British School, so that we never did that but recently, at BIT, we had 3 Saturdays in a row and it was awful. I found 40 girls who were absent for all 3 Saturdays and, disgracefully, 24 out of 32 in Class 8 were absent for the last one - I smell a conspiracy!
"I guess we all cheer, sometimes literally, at news of a hartal. Who does not want a lie-in and a free day? But the pain comes when you have to come to school on a precious Saturday and even, heaven forfend, on a Friday - although I DO draw the line there - and just do not turn up."
Fridays and Saturdays are weekends in Bangladesh. To make up for lost class, teachers have to ask students to come on weekends – and they don't want to do that.
Become a Fan -- Page 3 of 6 page(s)
'Two people were shot dead and 10 others injured in a gunfight between two rival factions of Awami League in Sandwip today....
'The two factions – one led by local MP Mostafizur Rahman and the other by then AL President Shahjahan, fought with guns and home-made bombs for establishing (sic) supremacy in local politics, police sources said.' (The Daily Star, February 26th, 2000)
Much of the violence is caused by the ruling party itself, against whose members such laws were most unlikely to be applied. After the last election, which the governing Awami League lost, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party along with three other parties won most of the seats, the violence was the act of the student bodies of the latter against supporters of the former, including the Hindu minority that traditionally votes for them. Amnesty International Secretary General, Irene Z. Khan, took up the issue with the government when she was in Bangladesh.
If the previous government passed a repressive law to stem violence, the next government went several steps further – it brought the army out on the streets, to enormous acclaim! "Operation Clean Heart" was conducted between October 2002 and January 2003. Never in the history of military rule – neither under General Zia nor under General Ershad – was the army used in this manner. Alleged criminals were picked up by the army and 44 died in custody.
Abul Hossain Litu (32) was one of the 44. He was reported in the papers to be a harmless young man who ran a poultry farm. On October 28th, members of the army raided his farm, blindfolded him and tied him to a tree and, it is claimed, beat him to death. The army had a significantly different story to tell. More importantly, his widow, Anjana, could not have the matter brought to court: parliament passed an indemnity ordinance that, in the words of a newspaper, says: "no one can seek justice and no complaints can be lodged against any persons involved with the joint drive for any arrests, deaths, tortures, violations of rights and any damages of physical, mental or financial nature between October 16 and January 9. And any case related to the Operation Clean Heart filed with any court would automatically be canceled".
"Where would we go to seek justice for the killing of my husband?" asks Anjana. "Why won't I get justice?"
However, the army drive – and the custodial deaths – proved remarkably popular with the people. This testifies to the intolerable level of violence attained by the nation, both before and after the election. It was 'vigilantism' on a national scale – with as much, or as little, moral and legal validity.
The Hartal
Farzana Khan, now a student of pharmacy in New York, lost her father during a hartal. He was walking down the road (not even taking a rickshaw, since hartals aim to keep vehicles off the streets through threat of violence) when political activists hurled a cocktail at him – he died. Farzana once sent me an anguished e-mail, but has never again communicated her incommunicable grief to me. She has been devastated, like many others.
The Banglapedia, which was compiled by eminent intellectuals of Bangladesh, proves mendacious on every subject pertaining to democratic violence – to please donors and the parties, again testifying to a climate of fear and corruption.
The article on "hartal" observes: " In Bangladesh, hartal is a constitutionally recognised political method for articulating any political demand". Then there follows a narrative of every agitation in Bengal back to the eighteenth century, only to legitimise hartal, to which merely three paragraphs are devoted at the end! "Thus, protestation is nothing new in the Bengal society. Only its forms varied from place to place and from time to time.( http://banglapedia.org/HT/H_0074.HTM)"
Firstly, hartal is not a constitutionally recognised form of protest. According to a Supreme Court ruling, based on a Madras High Court judgement, hartals must be – spontaneous and unaccompanied by fear.
When Farzana Khan's father died in a hartal, and Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4th May, 2001 at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days, the rest of the nation obviously had something to fear, to make an understatement: schools remain closed, for instance, due to the terror of hartals. No parent will risk sending their children to school during hartal for fear that the child may not come back alive. I asked Angela Robinson, once principal of The British School and then vice-principal at the Bangladesh International Tutorial to write a paragraph on the impact of hartals, and this is what I received:
"What d'ya mean - a paragraph on the impact of hartals? What impact? They are just there, like the weather! When I announce yet another disruption to the normal school week, I end it with "T-I-B" and the children chant back, "This Is Bangladesh!" I must not appear to bother too much as THEY must not bother too much - or despair would rule OK. We must learn to take these events on the chin, not because we do not care but because, while other people have the job of doing the caring - and campaigning, or whatever, we have to - in the great phrase - 'get on with it' .
"I sympathise with everyone if a school management insists on two consecutive Saturdays off. I always put pressure, at The British School, so that we never did that but recently, at BIT, we had 3 Saturdays in a row and it was awful. I found 40 girls who were absent for all 3 Saturdays and, disgracefully, 24 out of 32 in Class 8 were absent for the last one - I smell a conspiracy!
"I guess we all cheer, sometimes literally, at news of a hartal. Who does not want a lie-in and a free day? But the pain comes when you have to come to school on a precious Saturday and even, heaven forfend, on a Friday - although I DO draw the line there - and just do not turn up."
Fridays and Saturdays are weekends in Bangladesh. To make up for lost class, teachers have to ask students to come on weekends – and they don't want to do that.
http://iftekharsayeed.weebly.com
Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in Dhaka, €ŽBangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT, POSTCOLONIAL €ŽTEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other publications. €ŽHe is also a (more...)
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