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From Bangladesh�s perspective, 2004 was a classic Annus Horribilis!
The year 2004 is fast winding down, it is about the time to synopsize the good things, and bad that happened in my motherland that has decided to tread on a slippery road in the last three decades or so.
Why should one characterize 2004, the year, which is fleeting now, as Annus Horribilis or a horrible year? For that, one has to go no further than any archive of Bangladesh�s Internet news daily such as Bangladesh Observer, Independent, or New Nation. One dive into the archive will make a believer out of you.
Bangladesh under the �able� leadership of Mrs. Khaleda Zia and an assembly of some anti-1971 force have plunged this nation of about 145 million impoverished people into a chaotic state. Thanks to an Islamist par excellence who goes by the moniker �Bangla Bhai.� The dramatic rise and fall of Bangla Bhai all happened in 2004. Some quarters of the ruling party has patronized Bangla Bhai and his Jihadi brigade to unleash a reign of terror in western part of the nation with devastating results. The newspapers in Bangladesh carried some very disgusting tales of Bangla Bhai and his force�s repression on Hindu communities as they extort protection money from them. A segment of the secular folks in that area also had suffered because they quite did not fit into Islamic mode of living as envisioned by Jagrata Muslim Janata, the party of Bangla Bhai. The Prime Minister, Mrs. Zia, after reading a plethora of reports in national dailies had the epiphany at long last; therefore, she ordered the arrest of Bangla Bhai but only to see that her arrest order was blithely ignored by the police chief in Rajshahi Division. What a fine example of insubordination! Thumbing their nose at Khaleda, the police in Rajshahi escorted Bangla Bhai�s men in the main streets of Rajshahi as the marauding thugs paraded the city streets in jubilation. Then, with the police�s help Bangla Bhai and his top lieutenants vanished into thin air in a cinch. In the meantime, the world has seen the bloody picture of a villager who was murdered and then hanged upside down by the branch of a tree. The Bangla Bhai phenomenon never did cause concern among the leaderships of the ruling party. Many an expert in Bangladesh rightfully thinks that Bangla Bhai was a creation of BNP leaderships in the western region of the nation to combat the communists who are also bent on creating lawlessness in the western region of Bangladesh.
Civil rights violations amongst the intellectuals and common men became so rampant that many civil rights group both inside and outside the country rang theirs alarm bell. Consequently, Bangladesh received a black eye. The absolute lawlessness and mayhem created by party cadres of all hues made the nation askew but that did not cause any concern amongst the ruling party leaders; they pretended as if things are hunky-dory allover Bangladesh. In this context let me mention here what did happen to one smart professor of Dhaka University. On February 27, 2004, Prof. Humayun Azad was brutally attacked outside Bangla Academy as he was returning from Book Fare to his apartment located in the university teachers� quarters. The professor survived miraculously the deadly attack but he was a broken hearted person who could not recover fully from the shame associated with the assault. A week before his death in Munich, Germany, the professor wrote his swan song that was published in Janakantha, a leading Bangla newspaper in Dhaka. In the article, the professor could clearly see what went wrong in Bangladesh. The civil society, government, or Dr. Azad�s colleagues hardly cared about what the professor wrote in blunt language the degradation that took place in the fabrics of Bangladesh society. Many of the detractors of Dr. Azad however heaved a collective sigh of relief as the news of his death reached Bangladesh. With the passing of Dr. Azad, the nation lost a strong voice of dissent against obscurantism and parochialism but that hardly ruffles feathers in most educated folks of Bangladesh. It is a small wonder that the government kept a deafening silence when some Islamists issued death warrants on June 29, 2004 through a fatwa against three secular professors of Dhaka University.
The anti-secular force in Bangladesh is so active that on December 24, 2004, Prof Mohammad Yunus, an elderly professor of Economics department, Rajshahi University, was stabbed to death inside the campus after dawn. The same professor was attacked years ago in the same campus. Knowledgeable people in Rajshahi University think the professor was targeted for his liberal views. Thus, in 2004, two professors were the victims of the stealth dark force that is hell-bent on wiping the vestiges of secular demeanor of Bangladesh.
In April 2004, we learned the news of a massive arms haul in Chittagong. Sadly, though, the government could not solve the mystery behind such a big arms haul. It is a failure by the government of massive proportion. Crime in general was up throughout the year and to rid the miscreants from Bangladesh society, the government formed a team of sharpshooters calling them RAB to join another battalion of police by the name Cheetah. Now, many antisocial elements are being killed in the �crossfire.� In January 2003, the government of Khaleda Zia instituted �Operation Clean Heart� to nab miscreants. At that time, many innocent people were killed under police custody and the government said the arrested people died of �cardiac arrest.� The government has fascination for �C� words. What would be the next �C� word � I wonder! The police, Cheetah or RAB regularly kills the citizens of Bangladesh with full impunity. No wonder that Khaleda Zia�s government receives a flunking grade as far as human rights violation is concerned.
From �freedom of speech� let us move to �freedom to practice religion.�. A section of religionists in Bangladesh are hell-bent on starting a sectarian feud in Bangladesh. These �saviors� of Islam think that the onus is on them to save the religion; thus, they want to destroy the minority sect, Ahmadiyya, in this �peaceful� nation of 145 million. The civil society of Bangladesh receives a high mark for taking the onus on them to safeguard Ahmadiyya mosques. In a worst infringement on freedom of writing, the government has banned many of the books by Ahmadiyyas. The government hardly realizes that this action by the government fuels the fire of hatred and gives moral support to ban Ahmadiyya as a bona fide Muslim sect.
The political repression by ruling party against the opposition raised some eyebrows in the international community and Amnesty International. When the Awami League General Secretary, Mr. Jalil, facetiously had proclaimed to oust the government by June 30, 2004, the government rounded up over ten thousand people cramming all the available jail space in and around Dhaka. People�s rights to move freely in a democratic nation were severely curtailed but that hardly bothered Mrs. Zia and her cohorts. The same thing happened again later in the year as opposition was mounting pressure to oust the government. Many civil rights groups went to Supreme Court to challenge the government�s action but given the fact that the court system in Bangladesh had been politicized up to the brim; thus, no remedial action ever came out of the judiciary. Such are norms in Bangladesh.
On August 21, 2004, the nation stood silently as they heard the news of an assault by a stealth dark force that tossed dozens of military-grade grenades on the main opposition party members including Sheikh Hasina and her lieutenants as they gathered near their party headquarters. When Sheikh Hasina just finished her lecture, grenades were being lobbed at her and party leaders; over two dozens people lay dead on the street because of this heinous attack. Still worse, when Hasina was taking refuge in her bulletproof car, the assailants pumped bullets in the presence of hundreds of policemen who became silent spectators at the scene. Few months later, one lone judge appointed by the government published the abstract of his commission to point finger at the intelligence department of a neighbor nation. That is where the buck stopped. Bangladesh�s police is so inept that it could not solve one mystery up until now even though the FBI and Interpol had sent investigators to help figure out who threw deadly hand grenades to Mr. Anwar Chowdhury, the newly appointed British High Commissioner on May 21, 2004 in front of a Sufi shrine in Sylhet and to Hasina and her party leaders on August 21, 2004.
The government announced a price tag of one crore booty on any member of the stealth force behind the grenade attacks but so far there is no taker. However, the government was prompt to catch an honest college kid, Shaibal Partha Saha from an Internet Caf� on the allegation that he sent a threatening e-mail to a Bangla news daily in which he mentioned to kill Sheikh Hasina within a week. Mr. Saha�s attorney tried his best to obtain a bail but he failed because of the government�s stubbornness. In the meantime, the interrogation team has maimed Mr. Saha and even refused to send him to hospital for treatment. Through government�s action against leading intellectuals such as Shariar Kabir, Dr. Mutasir Mamoon, Dr. Alamgir, reporter Mr. Selim Samad, Brit Zaiba Malik, Italian Mr. Sorrentino, and now against a minority college kid, Partha Saha, Bangladesh has received a proverbial black eye from International communities. Gone are the days when Bangladesh used to be known as a peace-loving nation. Soon, through the action of Cheetah, RAB, etc., this nation of teeming people will be labeled as one of the most dangerous place on earth to visit.
The month of July 2004 brought a deluge of floodwater (no pun intended) to Bangladesh with devastating results. The city of Dhaka became an island with no plan to move floodwater through rivers that are taking assaults from encroachers and heavy siltation. Luckily, many civil society organizations inside the country and NRB groups from outside open their wallets to assuage the pain and sufferings of the flood-stricken people. The Mukto-mona e-group collected money to rebuild a flood-damaged school in Roumari, a backwater place in Rangpur near Assam border. This has to be a one bright example of how donations from private groups are making a difference in Bangladesh. In addition, small civic groups such as Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (BAPA), Bangladesh Environmental Network (BEN), and few other groups were able to host an International meeting in Dhaka in mid December 2004 to highlight the peril waiting to happen if India gives green light to her pernicious river interlinking plan. Both the Prime Minister and the president stayed far away from the conference venue lest Indian Government in connivance with Tata pull rugs under Khaleda Zia Administration and deprive the nation of billions of foreign investment. Mrs. Zia however sent a low-level minister to the conference to appease Bangladesh�s environmental activists. Such is the resolve of this government.
The year 2004 should also go down in the history of Bangladesh for ushering in dynastical politics. Mrs. Hasina Wazed�s son, Sajib �Joy� Wazed returned home with his American wife (probably his greatest achievement thus far) to reclaim his rightful place in Bangladesh politics. He received a tumultuous reception at the international airport. Today (December 25, 2004), I read in the Internet newspaper that American ambassador, Mr. Harry K. Thomas, paid a brief visit to Sudha Sadan to acquaint with the shinning star of Awami League. South Asia is rife with dynastical politics; therefore, Mr. Sajib Wazed has a bright prospect waiting for him in Bangladesh. This scribe does not know where Mr. Wazed had gone to school or what degree he had obtained in how many years. But that matters hardly in Bangladesh, which is run by politicians who received no college training whatsoever. The BNP stalwart, Mr. Tareq Rahman, is a shining star too who did not even attend any college. The return of Mr. Sajib Wazed to Dhaka ought to be news worthy item considering how much public adulation he is receiving after setting foot to his motherland.
In summary, the year 2004 brought a deluge of bad news for a nation that is acclimated in the last thirty three-year of her existence to receive nothing but inauspicious news. It was an eventful year marred with street-level violence, political unrest, and grenade tossing involving British High Commissioner and the ex-Prime Minister. This year experienced a huge hauling of firearms, death of a leading intellectual. However, the bright spot was on private efforts to rebuild homes, schools, etc., after a devastating flood. Dynastical politics also perked its head as the scion of Sheikh Mujib�s family returned home tumultuously to make his entry into the ground floor of deshi politics that is all but calm and serene. He probably will be anointed soon with the blessings of Sheikh Hasina and her lieutenants. --------------------------- Dr. A.H. Jaffor Ullah, a researcher and columnist, writes from New Orleans, USA
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