This essay is published in Unlikely Stories
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. —John Ciardi
Did you miss the Interdependency Issue? Check that out, fool!
David Brennan relinquishes control of his music choices for one year
rhetorical atolls emerging: An interconnected set of movies and digital weirdnesses by Jason Nelson
Four Paintings by Allison Schulnik
AE Reiff reviews Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden
Stick Figure Symbiosis: Frankie Metro reviews Re-positioning by Stephen Bett
An excerpt from The Diamond Kings of Clarence Checkeredfish by Brian S. Hart
The Ninth Circle: Fiction by George Sparling
The Cacophonous Croak: Fiction by U. P. Eople
Neolithic Woman: Fiction by Robin Wyatt Dunn
Ebenaezer Appies on burning South Africa's water to produce coal
Dispatches from Hurricaned NY by Cindy Milstein
Three Poems by John Dorsey
Three Poems by Clare L. Martin
Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin
Three Poems by David McLean
Three Quantum Poems by Mark Cunningham
Three Poems by Michael Mc Aloran
the surge (hurricane sandy) —: Poetry by Steve Dalachinsky
Three Poems by CL Bledsoe
Graphic Notations by Stroud
Hurricane Sandy's Austerity Lessons by Lucine Kasbarian
Yacov Ben Efrat on why Netanyahu and Hamas both hate the PA
The role of students in establishing and maintaining democracy in Bangladesh has never received careful scrutiny. As the chart below shows, student politics has been a deadly, internecine affair. Today, student groups are used by political parties as private armies: they are given guns, told to collect taxes and bring down the government through violent hartals. They have become a highly criminalised group.
They are perpetrators as well as victims. Take the rape and suicide of 15-year-old Mahima. Activists of Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal, the student wing of the ruling BNP, picked her up from her home and gang-raped her on February 13th, 2002. The rapists also took photographs of the scenes and circulated them in public. On February 19th she committed suicide by taking pesticides. She was raped because her father and brother were opposition activists.
Or take the following news item: "A number of remote villages in
Fatikchari have made screaming headlines. Enraged by crimes ranging from
dacoity to rape by a gang, simple villagers were bold enough to ignore
bullets and other lethal weapons and beat 10 members of the gang to
death. For years, a notorious gang of 20-30, allegedly with links to the
Chatra Shibir and Chatra Dal [ruling coalition student and youth
wings], has unleashed a reign of terror in the area. On the day of the
incident the criminals raped three women, collected illegal tolls from
about 50 traders and also tortured some. (The Bangladesh Observer, February 19th, 2004)"
The role of foreign donors, such as USAID and DFID, in promoting such
a state of affairs must be carefully considered. These organisations
fund local NGOs. In fact, the role of donors in promoting NGOs has been
studied by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz in their book Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999). The writers speak of an "aid market" that local NGOs know how to exploit (p. 23).
"The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channelled through NGOs. (p. 22)" Bangladesh has 20,000 NGOs, probably the highest number in the world. The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread of democracy since 1990 to donor pressure, and reject outright the notion of an emerging civil society: "It cannot simply be a coincidence that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.(p.118)." As The Economist says: "...the cold war's end prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms" (December 18th 2004, p. 69). It is, therefore, a myth that students overthrew the dictator in 1990 and ushered in democracy: it was the donors who brought us 'freedom'.
Studies have revealed that only 25% of donor money reach the poor in Bangladesh (New Nation, September 26th, 2003).
The total silence of the NGOs on the subject of student politicians killing each other over turf can be explained in terms of their eagerness to please donors: the students are an integral part of the democratic process. If these boys did not take to the streets, the parties would not rotate in power. The disturbing picture of a "freedom industry" emerges, with crime (on the part of the local parties) as the base of the pyramid and the donors as the apex.
Half the women who fall do so under the influence of wine. —Leo Tolstoy
Did you miss the Interdependency Issue? Check that out, fool!
David Brennan relinquishes control of his music choices for one year
rhetorical atolls emerging: An interconnected set of movies and digital weirdnesses by Jason Nelson
Four Paintings by Allison Schulnik
AE Reiff reviews Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden
Stick Figure Symbiosis: Frankie Metro reviews Re-positioning by Stephen Bett
An excerpt from The Diamond Kings of Clarence Checkeredfish by Brian S. Hart
The Ninth Circle: Fiction by George Sparling
The Cacophonous Croak: Fiction by U. P. Eople
Neolithic Woman: Fiction by Robin Wyatt Dunn
Ebenaezer Appies on burning South Africa's water to produce coal
Dispatches from Hurricaned NY by Cindy Milstein
Three Poems by John Dorsey
Three Poems by Clare L. Martin
Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin
Three Poems by David McLean
Three Quantum Poems by Mark Cunningham
Three Poems by Michael Mc Aloran
the surge (hurricane sandy) —: Poetry by Steve Dalachinsky
Three Poems by CL Bledsoe
Graphic Notations by Stroud
Hurricane Sandy's Austerity Lessons by Lucine Kasbarian
Yacov Ben Efrat on why Netanyahu and Hamas both hate the PA
The existence of a freedom industry is further corroborated by the findings of a British organisation, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. They have been described as "nosily defending a grim lot of east European politicians against the imperialism of western do-gooders" (The Economist, December 4th 2004, p. 52). They claim that dubious methods used by pro-western politicians are routinely overlooked; yet when pro-Russian parties use the same methods, there are screams of protest. The group dislikes both liberal internationalism, of the European Union's sort, as well as the more violent Anglo-American kind. However, from my investigations it would appear that European liberal internationalism can be just as violent, and more pernicious, since it is hidden.
Further evidence of a purely donor-driven civil society emerges when we consider the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Regarding the role of civil society in the matter, Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma comment: "This important component of the Bangladeshi society remained mostly silent or ignored the events of militarization and military atrocities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts... From the late 1980s and during the 1990s, civil-rights organizations and activists started to become more and more vocal and raised their concerns on the prevailing situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the violation of human rights of its indigenous inhabitants." That is to say, since the advent of perestroika and glasnost, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union – absolutely keeping in line with donor requirements. (For Arens and Chakma, see http://www.euconflict.org.)
In addition, the group that dissented from the peace treaty - the United People's Democratic Front - has been airbrushed out of the picture. I conducted a three-hour interview of two members of the UPDF at Khagrachari in September, 2005: Ujjal Smriti Chakma, Coordinator, UPDF, Khagrachari District, and Mithun Chakma, General Secretary, Democratic Youth Forum. They deplored the fact that there was now an internecine armed struggle among the hill people themselves. Newspapers regularly report murders of members of one group by those of the other: 2 UPDF men gunned down in Khagrachari (The Bangladesh Observer, 16th December, 2005) is a typical headline. Things are so bad that the Chakma people I spoke to are terrified of going into new territory in their own hills.
However, donors insist there is peace in the hills, so civil society - including the contributors to the learned Banglapedia, the Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh, and well-known film-maker Tanvir Mokammel, in his documentary on the hill tracts Karnafulir Kanna (Tear-drops of the Karnafully, 2004) - has felt it necessary not to mention the existence of the UPDF at all.
To add another example: in a Muslim country, one would expect a modicum of interest in the Palestinian issue and an iota of expression. Given the loquacity of civil society, the consensual silence on this one subject is deafening. What interest one finds is purely bureaucratic. When Yasser Arafat passed away, the government declared three days of mourning: there was hardly a susurrus from civil society. According to Saik Hamza, the second secretary of the Palestinian Embassy in Bangladesh, there are no discussions or seminars on Palestine. Asked how many television programs there have been on the issue, he laughs and says, "Maybe one or two in the last ten or twenty years".
When, a year after Yasser Arafat's death, I asked Saik Hamza what remembrances were held on the first anniversary, he replied, "None". And why not? "I have...no comments."
One would have expected Amnesty International to take up the cudgel on behalf of the students. That has not happened - notwithstanding the fact that the current secretary general of Amnesty International, Irene Z. Khan, is from Bangladesh.
UNICEF has never raised a voice of protest against student politics, although their web site says:
Similarly, UNESCO* has failed to live up to its commitment "to the long-term and continuing process of developing a culture of non-violence and cooperative learning in schools and other educational institutions as an important contribution to a global movement for a culture of peace."
Headlines culled from newspapers since 2001 reveal that around 4 student activists are murdered by other student activists every month. The headlines also reveal that the murder of student activists is no secret: it is widespread, publicly available information. In fact, one retired judge has, during his stint as president, publicly made the observation that students are getting guns instead of education. "He reiterated his stand against the 'political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties'" (The Daily Star, July 11th, 2000)." Another ex-president has said: "Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts" (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30, 2005).
Nobody listened.
Thus the actions of 'civil society' must be seen in the context of international power struggles and the priorities of international players, especially western governments.
In Bangladesh, civil society acts only when it pays – and is paid - to act.
The donor community has achieved the legitimization of violence, and the anaesthetisation of conscience.
On November 8, 2005, ruling party activists gang-raped six-month pregnant Tahura Begum because her husband, Babar Ali, refused to quit the opposition: she had an abortion. After being kidnapped several times from hospital, she finally died on November 16th (The Bangladesh Observer, 20th November 2005).
Nobody noticed.
* UNESCO has got itself into a double bind. The two important dates in the mythology of Bangladeshi nationalism and politics are 21 February, 1952 and 6 December, 1990; the latter has already been discussed. On the former occasion, some students rose up in revolt against what they perceived as a downgrading of the mother tongue; a few of them died, and became 'language martyrs'. In 1999, UNESCO transformed the day into "International Mother Language Day", thereby sanctioning the actions of the students in 1952. Since the next glorious episode in the history of student politics is the supposed overthrow of the 'tyrant', General Ershad, in 1990, the latter constitutes a continuum with the former. Now, UNESCO cannot consistently cast a harsh light on student politics today without derogating from its earlier grandeur!
Check out Iftekhar's web page at www.iftekharsayeed.weebly.com
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. —John Ciardi
Did you miss the Interdependency Issue? Check that out, fool!
David Brennan relinquishes control of his music choices for one year
rhetorical atolls emerging: An interconnected set of movies and digital weirdnesses by Jason Nelson
Four Paintings by Allison Schulnik
AE Reiff reviews Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden
Stick Figure Symbiosis: Frankie Metro reviews Re-positioning by Stephen Bett
An excerpt from The Diamond Kings of Clarence Checkeredfish by Brian S. Hart
The Ninth Circle: Fiction by George Sparling
The Cacophonous Croak: Fiction by U. P. Eople
Neolithic Woman: Fiction by Robin Wyatt Dunn
Ebenaezer Appies on burning South Africa's water to produce coal
Dispatches from Hurricaned NY by Cindy Milstein
Three Poems by John Dorsey
Three Poems by Clare L. Martin
Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin
Three Poems by David McLean
Three Quantum Poems by Mark Cunningham
Three Poems by Michael Mc Aloran
the surge (hurricane sandy) —: Poetry by Steve Dalachinsky
Three Poems by CL Bledsoe
Graphic Notations by Stroud
Hurricane Sandy's Austerity Lessons by Lucine Kasbarian
Yacov Ben Efrat on why Netanyahu and Hamas both hate the PA
The role of students in establishing and maintaining democracy in Bangladesh has never received careful scrutiny. As the chart below shows, student politics has been a deadly, internecine affair. Today, student groups are used by political parties as private armies: they are given guns, told to collect taxes and bring down the government through violent hartals. They have become a highly criminalised group.
They are perpetrators as well as victims. Take the rape and suicide of 15-year-old Mahima. Activists of Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal, the student wing of the ruling BNP, picked her up from her home and gang-raped her on February 13th, 2002. The rapists also took photographs of the scenes and circulated them in public. On February 19th she committed suicide by taking pesticides. She was raped because her father and brother were opposition activists.
"The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channelled through NGOs. (p. 22)" Bangladesh has 20,000 NGOs, probably the highest number in the world. The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread of democracy since 1990 to donor pressure, and reject outright the notion of an emerging civil society: "It cannot simply be a coincidence that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.(p.118)." As The Economist says: "...the cold war's end prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms" (December 18th 2004, p. 69). It is, therefore, a myth that students overthrew the dictator in 1990 and ushered in democracy: it was the donors who brought us 'freedom'.
Studies have revealed that only 25% of donor money reach the poor in Bangladesh (New Nation, September 26th, 2003).
The total silence of the NGOs on the subject of student politicians killing each other over turf can be explained in terms of their eagerness to please donors: the students are an integral part of the democratic process. If these boys did not take to the streets, the parties would not rotate in power. The disturbing picture of a "freedom industry" emerges, with crime (on the part of the local parties) as the base of the pyramid and the donors as the apex.
Half the women who fall do so under the influence of wine. —Leo Tolstoy
Did you miss the Interdependency Issue? Check that out, fool!
David Brennan relinquishes control of his music choices for one year
rhetorical atolls emerging: An interconnected set of movies and digital weirdnesses by Jason Nelson
Four Paintings by Allison Schulnik
AE Reiff reviews Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden
Stick Figure Symbiosis: Frankie Metro reviews Re-positioning by Stephen Bett
An excerpt from The Diamond Kings of Clarence Checkeredfish by Brian S. Hart
The Ninth Circle: Fiction by George Sparling
The Cacophonous Croak: Fiction by U. P. Eople
Neolithic Woman: Fiction by Robin Wyatt Dunn
Ebenaezer Appies on burning South Africa's water to produce coal
Dispatches from Hurricaned NY by Cindy Milstein
Three Poems by John Dorsey
Three Poems by Clare L. Martin
Three Poems by Lyn Lifshin
Three Poems by David McLean
Three Quantum Poems by Mark Cunningham
Three Poems by Michael Mc Aloran
the surge (hurricane sandy) —: Poetry by Steve Dalachinsky
Three Poems by CL Bledsoe
Graphic Notations by Stroud
Hurricane Sandy's Austerity Lessons by Lucine Kasbarian
Yacov Ben Efrat on why Netanyahu and Hamas both hate the PA
The existence of a freedom industry is further corroborated by the findings of a British organisation, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. They have been described as "nosily defending a grim lot of east European politicians against the imperialism of western do-gooders" (The Economist, December 4th 2004, p. 52). They claim that dubious methods used by pro-western politicians are routinely overlooked; yet when pro-Russian parties use the same methods, there are screams of protest. The group dislikes both liberal internationalism, of the European Union's sort, as well as the more violent Anglo-American kind. However, from my investigations it would appear that European liberal internationalism can be just as violent, and more pernicious, since it is hidden.
Further evidence of a purely donor-driven civil society emerges when we consider the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Regarding the role of civil society in the matter, Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma comment: "This important component of the Bangladeshi society remained mostly silent or ignored the events of militarization and military atrocities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts... From the late 1980s and during the 1990s, civil-rights organizations and activists started to become more and more vocal and raised their concerns on the prevailing situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the violation of human rights of its indigenous inhabitants." That is to say, since the advent of perestroika and glasnost, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union – absolutely keeping in line with donor requirements. (For Arens and Chakma, see http://www.euconflict.org.)
In addition, the group that dissented from the peace treaty - the United People's Democratic Front - has been airbrushed out of the picture. I conducted a three-hour interview of two members of the UPDF at Khagrachari in September, 2005: Ujjal Smriti Chakma, Coordinator, UPDF, Khagrachari District, and Mithun Chakma, General Secretary, Democratic Youth Forum. They deplored the fact that there was now an internecine armed struggle among the hill people themselves. Newspapers regularly report murders of members of one group by those of the other: 2 UPDF men gunned down in Khagrachari (The Bangladesh Observer, 16th December, 2005) is a typical headline. Things are so bad that the Chakma people I spoke to are terrified of going into new territory in their own hills.
However, donors insist there is peace in the hills, so civil society - including the contributors to the learned Banglapedia, the Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh, and well-known film-maker Tanvir Mokammel, in his documentary on the hill tracts Karnafulir Kanna (Tear-drops of the Karnafully, 2004) - has felt it necessary not to mention the existence of the UPDF at all.
To add another example: in a Muslim country, one would expect a modicum of interest in the Palestinian issue and an iota of expression. Given the loquacity of civil society, the consensual silence on this one subject is deafening. What interest one finds is purely bureaucratic. When Yasser Arafat passed away, the government declared three days of mourning: there was hardly a susurrus from civil society. According to Saik Hamza, the second secretary of the Palestinian Embassy in Bangladesh, there are no discussions or seminars on Palestine. Asked how many television programs there have been on the issue, he laughs and says, "Maybe one or two in the last ten or twenty years".
When, a year after Yasser Arafat's death, I asked Saik Hamza what remembrances were held on the first anniversary, he replied, "None". And why not? "I have...no comments."
One would have expected Amnesty International to take up the cudgel on behalf of the students. That has not happened - notwithstanding the fact that the current secretary general of Amnesty International, Irene Z. Khan, is from Bangladesh.
UNICEF has never raised a voice of protest against student politics, although their web site says:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too.
The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.The reader will notice that all the highlighted rights have been violated in the case of the student politicians of Bangladesh. For student activists begin their violent careers well before they are eighteen.
Similarly, UNESCO* has failed to live up to its commitment "to the long-term and continuing process of developing a culture of non-violence and cooperative learning in schools and other educational institutions as an important contribution to a global movement for a culture of peace."
Headlines culled from newspapers since 2001 reveal that around 4 student activists are murdered by other student activists every month. The headlines also reveal that the murder of student activists is no secret: it is widespread, publicly available information. In fact, one retired judge has, during his stint as president, publicly made the observation that students are getting guns instead of education. "He reiterated his stand against the 'political use of students and urged the students to sever connections with the political parties'" (The Daily Star, July 11th, 2000)." Another ex-president has said: "Students are armed to punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts" (The Bangladesh Observer, March 30, 2005).
Nobody listened.
Thus the actions of 'civil society' must be seen in the context of international power struggles and the priorities of international players, especially western governments.
In Bangladesh, civil society acts only when it pays – and is paid - to act.
The donor community has achieved the legitimization of violence, and the anaesthetisation of conscience.
On November 8, 2005, ruling party activists gang-raped six-month pregnant Tahura Begum because her husband, Babar Ali, refused to quit the opposition: she had an abortion. After being kidnapped several times from hospital, she finally died on November 16th (The Bangladesh Observer, 20th November 2005).
Nobody noticed.
* UNESCO has got itself into a double bind. The two important dates in the mythology of Bangladeshi nationalism and politics are 21 February, 1952 and 6 December, 1990; the latter has already been discussed. On the former occasion, some students rose up in revolt against what they perceived as a downgrading of the mother tongue; a few of them died, and became 'language martyrs'. In 1999, UNESCO transformed the day into "International Mother Language Day", thereby sanctioning the actions of the students in 1952. Since the next glorious episode in the history of student politics is the supposed overthrow of the 'tyrant', General Ershad, in 1990, the latter constitutes a continuum with the former. Now, UNESCO cannot consistently cast a harsh light on student politics today without derogating from its earlier grandeur!
No comments:
Post a Comment