|
By Iftekhar Sayeed, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Axis of Logic exclusive
Wednesday, Nov 15, 2006
Editor�s introduction:
During a time when the alternative media is focused on capitalist wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, we forget that western imperialism
is deeply involved in places largely forgotten or ignored, like
Bangladesh. Alternative media writers, publishers and "screen-readers"
have learned the lexicons of the hot wars which are familiar to them. It
takes effort and a desire to be informed about the "other wars" being
carried out by western governments. It takes effort to learn the
geography, unfamiliar foreign names, political parties, their acronyms.
This well-researched and definitive treatise by
Iftekhar Sayeed is written for the serious reader. Unlike many
oversimplified essays and news items we occasionally read about
Bangladesh in the corporate media and on internet websites, reading this
one takes effort but offers equivalent rewards of learning and insight.
This enriching essay turns vague (but popular) notions of �democracy�
on their head. It identifies the murderous advance of the global
corporate empire and their disinformation campaign in Bangladesh � a
country long-neglected in the annals of progressive literature,
especially during a time when so much alternative news and commentary
are focused on the all-consuming "hot wars". As western governments
build their empire under the guise of �regime change�, �spreading
democracy�, �nation building� and �exporting freedom�, Sayeed�s surgical
analysis comes to us as a breath of fresh air in a smoke-filled room.
Iftekhar Sayeed demonstrates how NGO�s are created and used by �foreign
donors� to force the expansion of capitalism with its attendent
exploitation of natural resources, the working class and indigenous
people in other parts of the world. We strongly encourage readers to
carefully consider Sayeed�s exemplary work and to use it to put ideas
and verbiage about �democracy� and �freedom� to the test. We are deeply
grateful to Iftekhar Sayeed for this exclusive contribution to Axis of
Logic and its readers. � Les Blough, Editor
The Use of Students to Establish and Enforce �Democracy�
The role of students in establishing and maintaining
democracy in Bangladesh has never received careful scrutiny. 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 extort money - �taxes� and �tolls� - and bring down the
government through violent hartals. They have become a highly
criminalised group.
The number of headlines announcing the murder of a
student politician (including members of parties' youth fronts) was 47
in 2001, 44 the following year, 61 in 2003, 56 in 2004, 35 in 2005 and
31 so far this year. The headlines reveal that around 4 student
activists are murdered by other student activists every month in
gangland wars. *
15 Students Murdered at Tejgaon Polytechnic Institute(Dhaka) in 15 years (1985 � 2000)[i]
|
YEAR
|
STUDENT KILLED
|
POLITICAL AFFILIATION
|
MURDERED AT
|
AGE
|
2000
|
Zahid
|
Leader, Bangladesh Chatra League (BCL)
|
Hostel
|
Students
graduate
at the age of
18
|
1999
|
Sohel
|
Elected general secretary of students� union in 1997
|
Near hostel
|
1998
|
Sajal
|
President, BCL unit
|
Campus
|
1996
|
Riyad
|
Convener, BCL unit of institute
|
In front of hostel
|
1995
|
Mizanur Rahman
|
Convener, Jatiyabadi Chatra Dal (JCD)
|
Within 200 yards of hostel
|
1992
|
Shakil Ahmed
|
General Secretary, JCD unit
|
Dormitory
|
1992
|
Rab
|
JCD leader
|
Campus
|
1992
|
Shahabuddin
|
JCD leader
|
Campus
|
1987
|
Sharif Hossain
|
General secretary, student union
|
In front of hostel
|
1985
|
Miniruzzaman Munir and 5 other activists
|
Leader and members of Jatiya Chatra Samaj
|
Campus
|
The headlines also reveal that the murder of
student activists is no secret: it is widespread, publicly available
information. In fact, one retired chief justice, Shahabuddin Ahmed, has
during his stint as president, publicly made the observation that
students were 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��[ii]." Another
ex-president, Badruddoza Chowdhury, has said: �Students are armed to
punish the opposition and we strongly condemn such acts�[iii]
They are perpetrators as well as victims. Activists of
Jatiyatabadi Chatra Dal, the student wing of the ruling BNP, picked up
15-year old Mahima 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 19 she committed suicide by taking
pesticides. She was raped because her father and brother were opposition
activists.[iv]
To read an interview of a student politician, visit http://ritro.com/sections/worldaffairs/story.bv?storyid=3664
What should have provoked national and international
outrage - on a par with the shocking case of Mukhtar Mai of Pakistan -
was a mere episode, never noticed and therefore never recalled, for
obvious reasons. Indeed, in the Amnesty International report Bangladesh Human rights defenders under attack[v],
the word 'rape' occurs only once - and only in regard to the
post-electoral violence against the Hindu minority. "Following the
elections, hundreds of Hindu families were reportedly subjected to
violent attacks, including rape, beatings and the burning of their
property." What troubles one is the fact that organizations like Amnesty
International tend to respond to certain stimuli - such as communal
violence - and to disregard others. And, of course, the human rights
defenders they mention move in tandem - excluding cases like that of
Mahima or the daily rapes of garments factory girls and rural housewives
and young women (for rape figures after the democratic transition, see
second chart).
Again: "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
respectively], 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."[vi]
On 28th November, 2005, a packed courthouse heard the
judge hand down the death sentence on nine murderers - and only one was
in the dock, the others absconding. On March 26, 2004 the Jubo Dal[vii]
leader Rafiqul Islam Kajol and his gang killed a businessman and his son
for cash and property. They chopped up the bodies into 119 pieces, put
the pieces in polythene bags and deposited the bags in several places in
the city. The wife of the businessman said that she was afraid because
the criminals had warned her by telephone of 'dire consequences' for not
withdrawing the case.[viii]
In September 1998, a committee investigated
allegations of sexual abuse at Jahangirnagar University against boys
from the Chatra League, the student front of the then ruling Awami
League. It revealed that �more than 20 female students were raped
and over 300 others were sexually harassed on the campus by the "armed
cadres of a particular political party."[ix]
No charges were pressed. To quote The Daily Star:
�Over the years mainstream political parties have primed the student
organisations with criminal elements in the belief that laying control
on (sic) the campuses means half the electoral battle won.�[x]
Student-enforced Hartals
Students are used to enforce hartals. The word cannot be translated into English � it is usually rendered �general strike�, which is absurd. A hartal
is organised by the opposition to keep traffic off the roads using the
threat of violence. The term can only be defined by enumeration. A
description of a series of hartals during April-May 2001 � that is, before the elections of that year � has been compiled from newspapers:
Salahuddin (33), a fisherman, was killed in a skirmish between the two student wings of the political parties in the latest hartal.
Two rickshawpullers � one of them unidentified, the other Badaruddin
(32) - were bombed while they were pulling their rickshaws during hartal hours.
It took them 24 to 48 hours to die. An auto-rickshaw was burned to
ashes, and when the driver, Saidul Islam Shahid (35), tried to put out
the flames, he was sprinkled with petrol, and burned to death. It took
him more than two days to die. Truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when
a bomb was thrown on his truck. And Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old
injured by a bomb, died on 4th May at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital
after struggling for his life for eleven days.
All this is in keeping with Stanley J. Tambiah�s
observation regarding violence in South Asia: �...participatory
democracy, competitive elections, mass militancy, and crowd violence are
not disconnected.� He adds: �They were not disconnected in Europe: in
Britain, for instance, the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the
parallel rise of democracy and industrial militancy....And before that
the French Revolution had ushered in the crowd as an enduring political
force....�[xi] As we shall see below, his statement is confirmed by
S.E.Finer.
But the most important question must surely be: why has there been no outcry from civil society against student politics?
The Role of Foreign Donors and NGOs
The role of foreign donors, such as USAID and DFID, in
promoting such a state of affairs deserves careful scrutiny. 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[xii]. The writers speak of an "aid market" that local NGOs know how to exploit.[xiii]
�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.�[xiv]
The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread
of democracy since 1990 to foreign 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.�[xv]. The Economist [xvi]says: �...the cold war�s end
prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and
to start insisting on democratic reforms�.
Besides, it has been estimated that only 25%
of donor money reach the poor in Bangladesh.[xvii] According to The
Economist: �There are about 20,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
in Bangladesh, probably more than in any other country.�[xviii]
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 (hartal), 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.
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�[xix]. 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, since it is hidden, more
pernicious.
We have already seen how indifferent Amnesty
International has been to the fate of student politicians -
notwithstanding the fact that its current secretary general, Irene, Z.
Khan, is from Bangladesh. Multilateral organizations have behaved no
differently. 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[xx].
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[xxi].
Similarly, UNESCO[xxii] 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.[xxiii]"
�Civil Society�, the Freedom Industry and the Violent Nature of �Democracy�
Again, evidence for the existence of the freedom industry comes from the civil society guru, John Keane. In his book, Civil Society,
he observes: "A highly developed civil society can and normally does
contain within itself violent tendencies."[xxiv] Again: "Those who work
for a (more) civil society must recognize not only that violence is
often the antithesis of civil society, but also that every known form of
civil society tends to produce the same violent antithesis"[xxv].
However, he adds � and this is crucial here: �This inner contradiction
within the workings of civil society � that it tends to be a peaceful
haven of incivility � has been obscured by the originally
eighteenth-century theory of the upward spiral towards civilization,
and, more recently, by the strange silence about violence within the renaissance of the theory of state and civil society. (italics added)[xxvi]�
His views on violence are echoed by Robin Blackburn in
his book on the Atlantic slave trade: "Then again, the history of New
World slavery, as I will try to demonstrate, shows that civil society,
in a modern sense of the term, can itself powerfully - and, as it were,
'spontaneously' - contribute to highly destructive patterns of human
conduct."[xxvii] Thus, in all the propaganda issued by donor agencies,
their respective governments and their hired anthropologists and
sociologists, no mention has ever been made in Bangladesh, and,
according to John Keane, elsewhere, of this violent facet of civil
society.
Neither have any caveats ever been presented by the
freedom industry regarding the violent nature of democracy. According to
S.E. Finer: �The Forum polity is comparatively rare in the history of
government, where the Palace polity and its variants are overwhelmingly
the most common type. Only in the last two centuries has the Forum
polity become widespread. Before then its appearance is, on the whole,
limited to the Greek poleis, the Roman Republic, and the mediaeval
European city-states. Furthermore, most of them for most of the time
exhibited the worst pathological features of this kind of polity. For
rhetoric read demagogy, for persuasion read corruption, pressure,
intimidation, and falsification of the vote. For meetings and
assemblies, read tumult and riot. For mature deliberation through a set
of revising institutions, read instead self-division, inconstancy,
slowness, and legislative and administrative stultification. And for
elections read factional plots and intrigues. These features were the
ones characteristically associated with the Forum polity in Europe down
to very recent times. They were what gave the term �Republic� a bad
name, but made �Democracy� an object of sheer horror.�[xxviii]
�Democracy� as a Gift from God
Foreign Donors and their clients � both here and
abroad � have presented democracy as a divine blessing, almost repeating
George Bush�s revealing mission statement, �the liberty we prize is not
America�s gift to the world. It is God�s gift to humanity.[xxix]�
Judging by Finer�s and Tambiah�s remarks, the gift appears to be one
from the other party rather than from divinity.
One writer who has located the provenance of both
democracy and civil society in western Europe, and still maintained its
divine � in this case, Christian � origins, is Larry Siedentop.
Nevertheless, his insights are useful, for his major contribution to the
discourse is that civil society and democracy cannot be �exported�, and
indeed is incompatible with other religions (that is, pace George Bush,
he recognizes that other people have other faiths). �For the Christian
God survives in the assumption that we have access to the nature of
things as individuals. That assumption is, in turn, the final
justification for a democratic society, for a society organized to
respect the equal underlying moral status of all its members, by
guaranteeing each �equal liberty�. That assumption reveals how the
notion of �Christian liberty� came to underpin a radically new
�democratic� model of human association�� (italics original). �Thus, the
defining characteristic of Christianity was its universalism. It aimed
to create a single human society, a society composed, that is, of
individuals rather than tribes, clans or castes.�[xxx] Of course,
such a view can lead to universal proselytism on the part of Europe and
America � as, in fact, it has � and therefore spread violence far and
wide � as, in fact, it has; but, at least, it has the merit of
localizing civil society and democracy.
Siedentop is uncomfortable with multiculturalism: "If -
and of course this is a crucial assumption - Islamic schools teach the
radical subordination of women, if they teach that daughters must obey
their fathers at whatever age, and that sisters are subordinate to
brothers, do we really want public funding for such schools? For such
funding amounts to a kind of endorsement of views which most of us find
abhorrent, views which run directly contrary to our intuitions of
justice." This caricature[xxxi] of Muslim society serves a useful
purpose: it reveals that values of subordination are totally at odds
with western values of equality, precluding the emergence of a genuine
civil society, a view we heard from Chabal and Daloz (minus, thank God,
the theology!). We will see how central the family is to Bangladeshi
society: the family has, as a matter of fact, been used by donors to
influence public opinion. One of the maneuvers has been to select the
spouse of a newspaper editor as NGO boss to get the pro-donor agenda
across to the reading public (see the case of Mahfuz Anam, Shaheen Anam,
The Daily Star and the mega-NGO Manusher Jonno below).
The freedom industry is careful to conceal Siedentop�s
views, as those of Chabal and Daloz, Tambiah and Finer, Keane and
Blackburn.
The Acid Attacks
The disinformation spread by NGOs regarding the nature of acid attacks shows that these organizations are more
interested in endorsing the donors� agenda of labeling Bangladesh a
misogynistic male-chauvinist Muslim society than in helping victims.
Elora Halim Chowdhury, a former member of ActionAid Bangladesh, in an
article in the Star Weekend Magazine, observed: �The 1997 Acid Workshop
organized by Naripokkho [literally, �Woman�s Side�, an NGO] made public
the specifics of this systematic and gendered violence against women�. In
fact, in 1999, the proportion of men who were victims of acid attacks
was 17%, a figure that rose to 35% by January 2003[xxxii]; of the 315
victims of acid attacks between May and November 2000, 246 were
female[xxxiii]. And yet, in 2006, Elora Halim Chowdhury could still
maintain that acid attack victims were only women; her article never
once mentions men as victims.
In the British Council Quarterly[xxxiv] of 2000, we
come across the following: �Approximately 200 women and girls were
horribly disfigured last year in acid attacks in Bangladesh. The Acid
Survivor�s Foundation is working to help the survivors of this
particularly brutal form of violence against women.� And yet we saw that
in 1999, 17% of the victims were men, a curious omission on the part of
the British Council.
The Donor-Driven Nature of �Civil Society�
To remove any doubts regarding the foreign
donor-driven nature of civil society, consider another point. Until
1990, �civil society� was silent on the issue of the militarization of
the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In 1980, General Zia had forcibly re-settled
Bengali people from the plains in order to render the indigenous people
of the hills a minority in their area, and so quash their nationalist
aspirations, as they were perceived to be. Both sides committed
appalling atrocities. Regarding the role of civil society in the matter,
Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma comment[xxxv]: �this important
component of the Bangladeshi society remained mostly silent or ignored
the events of militarization and military atrocities in the Chittagong
Hill Tracts. A possible explanation might be its ethnocentric origins
(these civil-society organizations are mostly composed of and led by
Bengalis and have little or no participation from their indigenous
counterparts) and also its preoccupation with the struggle for restoring
democracy in the country following the tragic events of 1975, which was
considered more important.�
This is disingenuous. As we have seen, civil society
played no part in the struggle for democracy: foreign donors brought
about democracy in Bangladesh, as in so many other parts of the world.
NGOs were perfectly happy to work under General Zia and General Ershad. Indeed,
General Zia, who began the militarization of the Hill Tracts, had
America�s solid support: he re-introduced capitalism after the socialist
interlude ushered in by Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, the country�s first
prime minister. He also re-oriented foreign policy away from New Delhi
and Moscow towards Washington and the west in general. The process of
de-nationalization of industries nationalized by Sheikh Mujib that
General Zia had started was continued by his successor, General Ershad �
and so was the process of militarization of the Hill Tracts.
The authors continue: �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.
In 1997, a 'peace treaty' was signed between the Awami League government and the insurgents, the Parbata Chottogram Jana Samhati Samity
(PCJSS). However, a faction of the latter broke away to form the United
People's Democratic Front (UPDF) in rejection of the accord. They are a
major presence in the hill tracts, and I spent three hours talking to
Ujjal Smriti Chakma, Coordinator, UPDF, Khagrachari District, and Mithun
Chakma, General Secretary, Democratic Youth Forum, in September, 2005
at Khagrachari. 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[xxxvi]
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.
There is, therefore, a low-scale civil war going on at the moment in the hill districts.
One Disinformation Campaign: Peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
Donors, however, are chuffed. Jenneke Arens and Kirti
Nishan Chakma observe: "The accord, by and large, has been accepted by
the peoples of the region and by the donor community as well�though
one section of the indigenous people has explicitly rejected the accord
and has formed the United Peoples' Democratic Front" (italics
supplied). They go on to say: " Accordingly, a good number of
representatives from donor country/agencies and multilateral development
agencies have visited the region, and some of these agencies have
started to disburse funds for different development projects. Alongside
these initiatives, a number of NGOs�both local and national�are also
undertaking development programs. Prospects for peace in the CHT have at
least become brighter."
Nothing could be further from the facts on the ground.
The hill people are aware that a gigantic hoax has been played on them
by the PCJSS, the Awami League and the international community. When I
questioned him about the role of NGOs, Mithun commented that they
"supply chickens and hens to families" instead of addressing their real
issues. Their contempt for NGOs can be easily understood.
Nevertheless, the official, donor line is that there
is peace in the hill tracts - and Bangladeshi civil society goes along
with that piece of fiction.
Consider two examples:
Banglapedia[xxxvii] - the national
encyclopaedia of Bangladesh - was published in 2004 by the Asiatic
Society of Bengal. The most eminent intellectuals of the country
contributed. I consulted the CD-ROM for information on the hill tracts.
The article on "Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord" did not have a single word to say about the UPDF! Then I tried the article under "Parbatya Chattagram Jana-Samhati Samiti" - again, there was no word on the UPDF. In the index, I typed in "United People's..." and that's as far as I got.
The UPDF, and therefore dissent regarding the peace treaty, does not exist.
The next shock came when I bought a copy of Tanvir
Mokammel's documentary on the hill districts and the political situation
there, called Kornophulir Kanna (Teardrops of the Karnaphuli, 2004). There were many interviews in the film - but not a single UPDF member appeared before the camera, and the acronym never came up!
When the Daily Star magazine[xxxviii]
interviewed Tanvir Mokammel, he was never asked why he had excluded the
UPDF in his documentary. Instead, we find exchanges of the following
kind:
DS: What are the issues you strove to highlight in the film?
TM: The intention of the film was not to blame
anyone in particular but to find a solution to the problem. My
assessment is, the greatest hindrance to have [sic] a healthy
relationship between indigenous people and Bengalees is
non-communication. The two parties hardly know each other. From this
gulf of unknowing of each other emerges the serpent's egg.
But surely, the hill people know each other - why then
are they killing each other, holding each other for ransom, extorting
money from each other....? No question, no reply.
The film, unfortunately, has been banned by the
government; however, it would appear that the director was perfectly
capable of considerable self-censorship himself.
Since the UPDF does not exist per donor policy, civil society has denied their existence.
Media Complicity with The Donors
And the Daily Star has actively connived at
this distortion and spread of disinformation. "Over 250,000 people in
the Chittagong hill tracts speak Chakma", observed the Daily Star
in its coverage of minority languages[xxxix]. Yet the newspaper knows
very well that the Chakma people speak a dialect of Bengali, the
language of the majority. "The Chakma have discarded their original
Burmese language and today speak a variant Bengali dialect" observes the
Encyclopaedia Britannica[xl]. Mithun Chakma admitted the same when I
asked him about his language. This piece of disinformation is necessary
to prop up the �Peace Treaty�; if the donors admit that the Chakmas
speak Bengali, then [the premise of] their original grievance not only
evaporates, but actually proves embarrassing. The Daily Star is involved
in the process because of the close ties between the newspaper and
donors - for instance, the editor's wife, Shaheen Anam, has been
selected by donors to be the team leader for the mega-NGO, Manusher Jonno! Civil society in Bangladesh is a close-knit, family concern (just like Bangladeshi culture).[xli]
The Powerful NGO Alliance Against the UPDF
If one visits the Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) web site (www.ti-bangladesh.org),
one comes across an article on the democratization of the Chittagong
Hill Tracts[xlii]: as one would expect from an organization funded by
DFID (The UK Department for International Development), NORAD (the
Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), DANIDA (the Danish
International Development Agency) Sida (the Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency), USAID, Royal Netherlands Embassy,
ActionAid Bangladesh and Transparency International, Berlin, Germany,
the UPDF has been completely airbrushed out of the picture. This curious
omission appears to be totally at odds with the Code of Ethics of the
organisation, which states in section 1.3 that "TIB is committed to values
of democracy, justice, rule of law, transparency, accountability,
integrity and impartiality (italics original)." Perhaps the trustees
felt that the UPDF did not merit impartial treatment. (Mahfuz Anam,
editor and publisher of the Daily Star, is also a trustee of TIB.)
During my last trip to Khagrachari in July, 2006, I
spoke with members of the UPDF in their pukka, new premises (the first
had been burnt down in 2003 by their archrival, the PCJSS, and the last
office where I�d met with them in 2005 had been a mere bamboo shack).
Mithun Chakma and others were peeved that the Centre for Policy Dialogue
(CPD), a self-styled �civil society think tank�, had held a conference
in nearby Rangamati on the situation in the hill tracts without inviting
the UPDF to participate. They said they learnt about the shindig from
newspapers and TV only after it was over (as expected, �regional
dialogues� of the CPD are publicized by Channel-i, The Daily Star
and its sister vernacular paper Prothom Alo. At the 26th meeting of the
Board of Trustees of the CPD, the two newspapers agreed to provide
matching funds for the CPD�s activities, including the regional
�dialogues�.[xliii]) This is tantamount to asking the ruling party of a
nation to a dialogue on the politics of the country while keeping out
the opposition!
Donor Silence on Oppression of the Palestinians
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 our civil society on all subjects
under the sun, the universal 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�, despite the fact that there are several
private channels in Bangladesh which regularly feature corroborees such
as the one organized by the local British Council and Democracy Watch
between February 20 � 22, 2005.
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."
And yet on 10th November, 2005 - the day before Arafat
passed away a year ago - civil society was commemorating the death of
Noor Hossain. Noor Hossain was a Jubo League activist[xliv] who had been
shot during pro-democracy demonstrations in 1987. Eighteen
organizations placed wreaths at Noor Hossain Square in the morning. This
was clearly a commemoration of which the donors would approve (for
instance, in its report cited above, Amnesty International trots out the
usual fiction about students playing "a crucial role in ousting the
military president, General Ershad, in 1990 and the resumption of the
democratic process in the country").
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.[xlv]
The figures for lynching � a phenomenon unseen before
our democratic transition* - testify both to our sense of helplessness
and loss of humanity, as does the account below.
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 [xlvi].
Nobody noticed.
� Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com
*This fact is easily established: there is no word for �lynching� in
Bengali. Before democracy came along with its attendant lawlessness,
people would beat up a thief or robber and hand him over to the police;
hence, the words �gonoprohar� or �gonopituni�, mass beating. In Farsi �
Persian � too, there is no word for lynching.
References
[i] Table compiled from The Daily Star, April 3rd 2000
[ii] The Daily Star, July 11, 2000
[iii] The Bangladesh Observer, March 30 2005
[iv] The Bangladesh Observer, 7th March, 2002
[v] http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engASA130042005
[vi] The Bangladesh Observer, February 19, 2004
[vii] The ruling party - the Bangladesh Nationalist Party - youth wing.
[viii] For more on student politics in Bangladesh, visit http://www.catalyzerjournal.com/art/indexj.php?page=EEkApyuyupliAfaBnh
[ix] The Daily Star, October 1st 1998
[x] The Daily Star, July 31st 2001
[xi] Stanley J. Tambiah ,Leveling Crowds:
Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, (New
Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1996), p. 260
[xii] Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999)
[xiii] Africa Works, p. 23
[xiv] Africa Works, p. 22
[xv] Africa Works, p. 118
[xvi] The Economist, December 18th 2004, p. 69
[xvii] New Nation, September 26, 2003
[xviii] The Economist, March 15th 2003, p. 29
[xix] The Economist, December 4th 2004, p. 52
[xx] http://www.unicef.org/crc/
[xxi] See the first table. Today's Bangladesh Observer
(20 April 2006) tells me that a fifteen-year-old student, Redwan Ahmed,
was killed by members of his own student wing, the Jatiyatabadi Chatra
Dal (JCD) in Sylhet on April 19th.
[xxii] 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!
[xxiii] Sintra Plan of Action
[xxiv] John Keane, Civil Society, (London: Polity Press, 1998), p. 136
[xv] John Keane, Civil Society, p. 141
[xvi] John Keane, Civil Society, p. 141
[xxvii] Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, (London: Verso, 1997), p. 6
[xxviii] S.E.Finer, The History of Government from the Earliest Times, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 46-47
[xxix] The Economist, December 18th 2004, p. 50
[xxx] Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe, (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2000), pp 194 - 208
[xxxi] Let me illustrate: my brother-in-law knows that
he is subordinate to his four sisters because they are older than him;
the siblings - male and female alike - categorically know that they are
subordinate to their mother; the sons-in-law are similarly subordinate
to their mother-in-law; and every brother-in-law is subordinate to both
the sister-in-law and brother-in-law directly above him! And, of
course, when my father-in-law was alive, we were all subordinate to
him. So much for Siedentop's distorted nightmare of uniform female
subordination! (However, the word 'stroino' in Bengali reveals that many
men are, in fact, subordinate to their wives! The corresponding
expression in Farsi � Persian � is �zan zalil�).
[xxxii] The Daily Star, January 19th 2003
[xxxiii] The Bangladesh Observer, 9th November 2000
[xxxiv] bcquarterly, No.16 April to June 2000, p. 11
[xxxv] Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma,
�Bangladesh: Indigenous Struggle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts�,
Searching for Peace in Central and South Asia, 2002,
[xxxvi] The Bangladesh Observer, 16th December, 2005
[xxxvii] Banglapedia, National Encyclopedia of
Bangladesh, Multimedia CD (English Version), (Asiatic Society of
Bangladesh: 1st Edition February 2004)
[xxxvii] Eyes Wide Open, 16th December, 2005
[xxxix] Star Weekend Magazine, 24 February 2006, p.11
[xl] "Chakma", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Vol. 3, p.58
For instance, the editor of the popular weekly JaiJai
Din is Shefiq Rehman; his wife, Taleya Rahman, is the Executive editor
of the NGO Democracy Watch; as we saw above, she was presented Takas
405,000 by the Australian High Commissioner for a �democracy festival�;
in addition, Nasreen Huq, wife of the managing editor, was Country
Director of ActionAid Bangladesh until her death in May, 2006.
[xlii] Transparency International Bangladesh
[xliii] The Daily Star, July 14, 2006, p. 2
[xliv] That is, he was a member of the Awami League�s youth wing.
[xlv] One sample should suffice: "The real problem in
Bangladesh politics," observes Rehman Sobhan, one of our leading
intellectuals and chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, ' a civil
society think tank', and of the Board of Grameen Bank, a world-renowned
NGO and this years� co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize with its founder,
Mohammed Yunus, "lies in the fact that every party harbours mastaans
[Bengali for thugs, goons] because they play an integral part in the
election system and in securing a support base in particular areas."
Does Mr. Sobhan express outrage with this state of affairs? Far from it.
"Thus each party," he goes on, "feels a need for their mastaans and
will be reluctant to abandon them for potential but indeterminate gains
in public esteem unless their opponents are willing to do likewise.
Thus, invocations to political leaders to abandon such proven political
resources are an unreal expectation, however important this be (sic) in
the agenda of governance reform. (Rehman Sobhan, Structural Dimensions
of Malgovernance in Bangladesh, emphasis added)." Notice how calmly the
gentleman accepts the criminal - murder, rape and arson - as inevitable,
labeling it 'proven political resource'. Only a society that has
eschewed conscience in toto and all claims to civilized norms can
tolerate such wholesale endorsement of - for want of a better word -
evil.
[xlvi] The Bangladesh Observer, 20th November 2005
[Subtitles and emphases added by editor unless otherwise indicated.]
Iftekhar SayeedDhaka, BANGLADESHe-mail: ifti@bangla.net
alternative e-mail: if6065@yahoo.com
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