Unheard Voice

Match the quotes with the ministers. Bonus points if you can tell the circumstance of the quote.

1. আল্লাহর মাল আল্লাহ নিয়ে গেছেন ।
2. We are looking for শত্রুs.
3. We have got a new dimension. We have found a Hindu জঙ্গি ।
4. সন্ত্রাসী যে-ই হোক, বিশ হাত মাটির তল থেকা, প্রয়োজনে পানির নিচ থেকে তাদের ধরে আনা হবে ।
5. সারা দেশে যা হচ্ছে তা ওদের নিজেদের গন্ডগোল্, ওরা নিজেরা নিজেদের মারছে ।
6. জঙ্গিs should be caught, nothing matter who is Bangla, who is English brother.
7. পুলিশের জানাজা পড়ি, সন্ত্রাসীদের জানাজা তো পড়ি না ।

8. ‘এসব বিচ্ছিন্ন ঘটনা। এটা কোনো ব্যাপার না। এমনটি ঘটতেই পারে। তবে আমরা কী পদক্ষেপ নিচ্ছি সেটিই বড় বিষয়।’

a. Altaf Hossain Chowdhury.
b. Lufuzzaman Babur.
c. Mohammed Nasim.
d. Sahara Khatun.

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This is not a fun game.  Each of these statements were made by the person entrusted with maintaining law and order, the very first task of a government, after some tragic incidence for which each of them should have taken moral responsibility. 

Last April I called for Sahara Khatun to show moral responsiblity.  Today I ask the Prime Minister to show leadership and fire the Home Minister.

The background, from today’s Prothom Alo:

‘মনে হচ্ছে, ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে একজন ছাত্রকে হত্যা করা খুব স্বাভাবিক ঘটনা। আমরা নিরীহ মানুষ। কার বিরুদ্ধে অভিযোগ করব? কার কাছে বিচার চাইব? ওপরওয়ালা আছেন। তিনি সব দেখবেন।’
ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের ছাত্র আবু বকর সিদ্দিকের মৃত্যু নিয়ে স্বরাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রীর বক্তব্যের পর এই প্রতিক্রিয়া তাঁর ভাই মুদি দোকানদার আব্বাস আলীর। তিনি গতকাল শুক্রবার প্রথম আলোকে আরও বলেন, ‘আজ যদি প্রধানমন্ত্রীর ছেলে মারা যেত, তাহলে কি মাননীয় স্বরাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রী এমন কথা বলতেন?’
গত বৃহস্পতিবার আইন মন্ত্রণালয়ে অনুষ্ঠিত তিন মন্ত্রণালয়ের সমন্বয় বৈঠকের পর স্বরাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রী সাহারা খাতুন সাংবাদিকদের বলেছিলেন, ‘এসব বিচ্ছিন্ন ঘটনা। এটা কোনো ব্যাপার না। এমনটি ঘটতেই পারে। তবে আমরা কী পদক্ষেপ নিচ্ছি সেটিই বড় বিষয়।’

Nations Supreme court just dismissed two leave-to-appeal petitions against the high court verdict declaring certain portions of fifth amendment  illegal. While supporting views are available in powerful media, no clear analysis is available to discuss the potential negative side of the verdict. As this verdict deals with constitution and extremely political nature of the verdict, it is very important to discuss the pros as well as cons of the verdict and potential implication of such verdict as a precedence for future  judicial actions. When judiciary decides to take on such a contentious political matter, it is expected that they would subject the verdict to public scrutiny rather than using ‘contempt of court’ protection. In the following post, published in “In The Middle of Nowhere”, tacitaerno dissects the supreme court’s rejection to allow an appeal process and analyzes justice Khairul Haq’s original verdict.

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Supreme Court Decides the fate of the Fifth Amendment

In 2005, a High Court bench led by Justice Khairul Huq declared the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of Bangladesh illegal. The full judgment is available at Unheard Voice. It is a fascinating read. Justice Khairul Huq’s portion is slightly longer than Justice A. T. M. Fazle Kabir’s. Page 336-337 contains the reasons that the Fifth Amendment was found to be invalid.

This case is worth thinking about, because it does not deal with legal technicality, or arcane judicial procedure. This case is about the design, the blueprint if you will, of the State of Bangladesh. It is also about whether we, the people of Bangladesh, tell our government what to do, or whether they turn around and tell us what to do. Who gets the last word, the people or the government?

The Constitution of Bangladesh is the supreme law of Bangladesh. The First Parliament of independent Bangladesh, as elected representatives of a sovereign people, approved it. This constitution is a written contract between us, the people of Bangladesh, and the government, whom we allow the exercise of state power on our behalf. This contract is binding upon all organs of this government: the parliament, the president, the Supreme Court and all lower courts, the military, the police, and our local representatives, all must abide by it….

Read More in In The Middle of Nowhere…

7am, 28 January 2005. The local news is on TV, the foreign ones in Financial Times, and Daily Star from home. The last one has a cover story reading:

Kibria, 4 AL men killed in grenade attacks

I sit there for a while, my tea getting cold. I think about calling my parents, but decide against it — it’s middle of the night there, why wake them up. Why wake them up to the fact that the country was sleepwalking to a disaster?

Or did they need waking up at all? A few months earlier, I received SMS messages from friends and family: Dhaka is hot again, murder attempts on Hasina, we’re safe, don’t worry. For much of the following years, I’d receive more such messages: bomb attacks etc, but we’re safe, don’t worry. Things got so bad that in October 2006, when someone rang my cellphone and started: Have you heard the news? Dr Yunus… my first thought was the sentence would end in … has been assassinated.

Seemingly, Bangladesh has turned the corner since, since we haven’t had assassinations and grenade attacks for a while.

But have we really turned the corner? Five years later, the Kibria case is still unsolved. And for three of these five years, Bangladesh has been ruled by non-BNP governments (at the very least, local BNP men are implicated in the assassination, and there is a belief that BNP high ups were involved). Forget Kibria, three months on, we still don’t know who tried to kill Fazl-e-Noor Tapash.

Have we really turned the corner? Perhaps not.

Even as we mourn him, and demand justice, we should also celebrate SAMS Kibria’s life and achievements. We need more people like him in Bangladesh, particularly in politics.

(More at Mukti)

Too close to PIA? You be the judge.

PIA logo

PIA

The appeal against declaring constitution’s fifth amendment illegal is quashed.

For readers benefit, here is the full verdict by HC on the Fifth amendment

A post that appeared in UV last month is posted again below:

There is a lot of noise about the court case re: 5th Amendment.   Senior politicians from both parties, various legal experts, non-legal experts in TV talk shows, and other sundry pundits who write columns (and blogs) have been expressing their opinions freely.  Some people (including the Law Minister) are saying the court’s verdict means: we are on our way to the 1972 constitution, secularism will return, religion-based politics will become illegal, and oh, Zia’s government was illegal.  Others are saying this verdict means: Bismillah will be erased from the constitution and Islam will be gone from the country, we will have a constitutional crisis, and/or we will return to Bakshal-style fascism. 
Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a fun exercise:

Take your pick and substantiate your claim..
NRB = Never Relenquished Bangladesh
NRB = Non Reliable Bangladeshi
NRB = Not Required in Bangladesh

Thirteen years have passed, but the 1997 CHT Accord is yet to be implemented by Bangladesh Government. The region is on edge, and there are repeated clashes while Accord in limbo.
1) “This sparked severe violence between the locals and Bengali settlers which continued in waves through the evening. Shops were shut down as fear of widespread ethnic violence spread though the district town.”
2) Asked to comment on JSS allegation that UPDF was behind the attack on Santu Larma, UPDF leader Shanti Dev Chakma said, “This is completely baseless. Mr. Larma made this claim without investigating the matter….Why should we attack him, since he is already dead, politically and ideologically?”
3) “Speakers condemned the recent attacks on Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, Chakma circle chief Raja Barrister Devasish Roy and general secretary of BIPF Sanjeeb Drong.”
Read the rest of this entry »

The execution of the convicted murderers of Bangabandhu has happened. People started gathering around jail gate last night. The sms-es started flying. The journalists started gathering with cameras. There was a sense of inevitability around it. Yet, when it happened, how did the people react? I talked to one of them who until recently believed this will never happen. ‘Nothing to celebrate’, ‘End of a tragic chapter’, he said. But more importantly he said, it gives him a sense of closure. In the last few days, there has been frantic activity around this and government was determined to make this happen at the quickest time. But also interestingly a smal debate around capital punishment has started to generate by the Amnesty and EU letters to save the lives of these five people. Here is the Amnesty letter:

The killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members were grave human rights abuses, and those who committed them should be brought to justice. However, this should not be done through executions, because the death penalty itself is a violation of every person’s human rights and is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, and anywhere in the world, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner. The death penalty violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here is the response from the other side:

In addition to the above assertions, both in favour of and against capital punishment, one has to perceive the socio-political aspect of the society to make an absolute standing on the issue. The EU has the moral right to demand enactment of a law for the abolishment of capital punishment to the government, not to the court of law, since only one out of its 27 member countries, Latvia, still maintains capital punishment for crimes during war.

One has to take into cognisance the fact that it is only possible in Bangladesh, not in any member country of the EU, that a convicted cold blooded murderer of seven students at Dhaka University campus was freed from life imprisonment by the first military ruler of Bangladesh when he was running for president to obtain his (convict’s) father’s support in the election. Only a few years ago, a convicted killer got presidential mercy and his death sentence was commuted to acquittal, not even to life imprisonment. Does this type of socio-political scenario exist in any country of the EU?

What’s your take on death penalty in Bangladesh?

In three years of publicly writing on Bangladesh-related stuff, I have not received a stronger reaction than that on my assessment of the Prime Minister’s India trip.  And it’s not just me, other fellow UV writers have also had similar experience publicly and privately.  In this post, I respond to some comments from well connected political analysts. 

The comments can be paraphrased as follows.

The summit has cemented the gains of the past year in terms of confidence building from the Bangladeshi side, and has laid a firm foundation for resolving the major outstanding issues from the Indian side.  This is a considerable achievement and something to get enthused about — a qualified hoi hoi if you will.  In that sense the visit really has been significant and successful.  While communiques are generally what policy wonks focus on, in the current context, the communique alone is neither a very meaningful statement nor a useful way to look at / measure the success of the trip.  Atmospherics and context are key here.  And if you consulted people involved in the trip from either side of the border, you would appreciate the success much more.

My responses in detail are over the fold.  Quick take away:

1. Agree that in the past year, Bangladesh has taken immense measures in confidence building — measures that are good for Bangladesh regardless of tepid public reactions from India.

2. Concede that I have no inside information, and thus can be missing the atmospherics completely.

3.  Stress that if the above view of qualified hoi hoi is correct, then we should see some concrete steps from India reasonably soon.

Read the rest of this entry »