Four years of depredated human rights Mozammel H. Khan

Four years of depredated human rights

Mozammel H. Khan

Published on February 13, 2007

It started on the night of October 1, 2001 when it became clear that the four party alliance was on the verge of winning the election. The targets were the members of the religious minority community and the opposition workers. The scenario was not the one of reflecting the magnanimity in the aftermath of a democratic exercise; the way hell broke loose, as if it was an armed revolution overthrowing a dictatorial government. Since then torture, killings and rapes continued unabated. Newspapers were full of tales of depravity depicting the ruthless crimes of the ruling party thugs and the obvious indifference of the law enforcing agencies to their response to duty. Except for some isolated incidents, this scenario was never present in the Bangladesh political landscape even when two previous regimes, one of JP and another of BNP were forced to relinquish power following two separate mass upsurges. Even after the victory of our nine month armed struggle in 1971, very few of our victors took the task in their own hand to deal with people who took part in looting, killing and torturing our people. Had it happened, many of our present day custodians would not be breathing today to rise to helm of the State whose very creation they violently opposed.

Custodial torture and death became a regular phenomenon with the assumption of the power of the alliance government. The brutal techniques of torture meted out to the adversaries of the government, politicians and intellectuals alike, during the colonial rule once again resurfaced. During the semi-colonial rule of Pakistan, similar inhuman techniques of torture such as electric shock, blindfolded beatings as were inflicted on Ela Mitra in Rajshahi jail and the accused of the so-called Agartala conspiracy case inside Dhaka cantonment. According to the statistics given by the Human Rights bodies, in the first three years of the alliance rule alone, 115 people lost their lives in police custody. None of the incidents has ever been investigated and no punishment has ever been dispensed out to the perpetrators.

The UN declaration on Human Rights is very explicit in its declaration on custodial torture when in its Article 5 it says, ï¿½No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishmentï¿½. Even during a war, article 3 (a) of the Geneva convention explicitly prohibits, ï¿½violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and tortureï¿½, while on custody. It would be worth mentioning here an incident involving a Syrian born Canadian citizen who was tortured in Syrian (an autocratic state) custody as a terrorist suspect. Human Right organizations and politicians all across Canada bitterly criticized the Canadian government for its failure to prevent the torture and secure his early release. To admit the governmentï¿½s remissness, the Prime Minister of Canada went to the residence of the victim and personally offered his apology on behalf of the government of Canada. Only on the other day, the Canadian Ambassador in Syria has been grilled in the House of Commons by the MPs from all political spectrum for his failure to prevent the torture inflicted on a Canadian citizen.

Probably the most despicable of all the crimes committed by the government is termed by Human Right organizations as ï¿½terrorism by the Stateï¿½. These reprehensible acts, ironically, are perpetrated by the government of a State that derived its authority from a constitutional process. The guardians of that authority are bound by their oath to defend its source, the constitution of the Republic. According to the report of a Bangla Daily (October 13, 2005) which collected the information from a number of sources, there were 56 deaths in the name of so-called ï¿½heart attackï¿½ in the operation clean heart carried out by the members of the armed forces from October 16, 2002 to January 9 ,2003. When the kin of some of the victims went to the court, in pursuance to their basic rights as enshrined in the constitution, challenging the allegedly fictitious story of the authority regarding the death of their loved ones, the government passed an indemnity act, the second time in our constitutional history, blatantly curbing the fundamental rights of the citizens of a free State to seek justice. According to the same report, so far 556 people have been killed in name of ï¿½crossfireï¿½ by the members of the police and the newly formed Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). These are glaring cases of extra-judicial denial of right of to life by the State overtly undermining the principal tenet of a just society that clearly manifests an equal right to life for every person. Even the strongest proponents of capital punishment in the modern day States never ever argue in favour of utter and deliberate denial of life without recourse to judicial proceedings. The UN Human Rights Charter in its Article 11 has made it explicitly clear that, ï¿½everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defenceï¿½. The constitutions of all the present day states, including that of the Peopleï¿½s Republic of Bangladesh in Article 35(3), have incorporated the very essence of the aforesaid declaration. By engaging itself in the extrajudicial killings, the government is putting itself in the dock on multiple counts. Firstly, it is further jeopardizing its already shattered credibility since the authority is attributing the cold-blooded murders as crossfire while the people largely know that there is no existence of such an occurrence. Secondly, every death in crossfire adds an extra count of no confidence of the government on the judicial process thereby encouraging the proliferation of anarchism in the society. Thirdly, it is a flagrant violation of the UN human charter and the constitution of the Republic. Fourthly, the cabinet ministers, one after another are not only lauding the so-called extrajudicial denial of lives but also are reprehending the proponents of basic human right and rule of law. Utterance of the finance minister that, ï¿½if the killings by the killers are not human right violation, how can any one term the death of killer a human right violation?ï¿½, has equated an individual with the state, reflecting the sheer incomprehension on the part of the minister of the rule of law. Only a few days ago, while elaborating the successes of the government in the last four years, one of the senior cabinet ministers categorically denied that no innocent person has ever been killed by crossfire reflecting his absolute lack of perception of the Article 11 of the UNHR charter and Article 35(3) of Bangladesh constitution as outlined above. Finally, there are wide spectrum of condemnations by the human right organizations and the international bodies around the globe, which has placed the much-desired image of the country in the dock.

The atrocities of so-called Bangla Bhai, which were are either aided by some leaders of the ruling coalition or ignored by the central leaders of the government reflected a horrific state of affairs of the State where the citizens of the republic were killed and kept hanging on the trees. These horrid activities of an alleged criminal, whose existent was constantly denied by the government leaders until recently, albeit there were reports of his parading the streets of a northern city along with his co-accomplices with police escort, attracted media attention even outside our border. On several occasions, his followers fought pitched battles with the members of the law enforcing agencies in broad day light. The Bangla Bhai has now grown into a monster, as he was the alleged mastermind of the unprecedented bomb attacks on August 17 and October 3. How far the government is serious about bringing this so far ï¿½nonexistentï¿½ criminal to justice is yet to be seen.

The age-old practice of appointing our best talents to the University faculty has come to end with the assumption of power by the four party alliance--indeed a far-reaching consequence for the future of the nation. A candidateï¿½s eligibility now is determined by oneï¿½s allegiance to a particular political belief, a clear case of discrimination as defined in the Human Right charter. Only on the other day, the best student of both the Honours and the Masters Degree Exams of a Dhaka university department was bypassed by the inferior ones only because the said studentï¿½s brother is an activist of an opposition political party. On a personal account, last month my own niece who topped the merit list of both the Honours and the M. Sc. Exams and the recipient of multiple gold medals of a department of Islamic University was not selected for a faculty position although multiple appointments took place in the department. My absolutely apolitical niece, the youngest child of a humble widow, never had any time even to explore the difference between Bengali and Bangladeshi nationalism. In any other democracies, this discrimination is a serious human right issue and is rightfully dealt in the national human right commission. In the absence of any such independent commission, and in the alliance ruled Bangladesh when the executive acts as the judge, jury, and executioner what type recourse is available to the citizens to redress the gross violation of human rights any way?

Dr. Mozammel H. Khan is the Convenor of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh. He writes from Toronto, Canada.