Bombs, Bowling and Birthdays
I woke up this morning only to receive an email in my inbox from the director of my program in Canada informing the two of us here in Bangladesh of last night’s grenade attack on a former Awami League (AL) finance minister. The incident in northeastern Bangladesh, the second of its kind in the last five months, killed the former minister and current advisor to the AL Mr. SAMS Kibria, along with three of his colleagues as well as his nephew.
While I was saddened but not necessarily startled by the attack at first, it wasn’t long before I recognized the name and remembered that I had listened to a speech by Mr. Kibria exactly a month ago today at a seminar organized by my organization here in Dhaka. That’s when I realized that the forum was more than an assembly of well-intentioned but powerless former politicians who all happened to be members or supporters of the official opposition.
Even though the round-table discussion, entitled “Human Rights Situation: Bangladesh Perspective,” was conducted almost entirely in Bengali, I was able to get a basic idea as to what was being discussed for every now and then a word of English would pop out from the melodic Bengali dialogue. In fact, I began to write down the words that I recognized in a bid to follow along with the discussion, but also to avoid falling asleep in my comfortable chair on an exposed end of the u-shaped seating arrangement. Here’s a selection of what I jotted down:
Target killings; Islamic extremism; crossfire; Christian; Hindu; British High Commissioner; so-called politicians; freedom from fear; neo-colonial; poverty; unemployment; frustration; US Supreme Court; civil society; German zeppelin bombardment [I still don’t understand where that came from]; aggressive population; and “should terrorism be combated with terrorism? Barbarism with barbarism?”
Those words and the seminar itself now represent so much more than they did to me that day. Even our director mentioned that many of the speeches, though laced with idealism and progressive statements, were often hypocritical, for these individuals did not act upon their own words when they were in power but felt free to do so now that they were no longer in office. It was therefore difficult not to look upon the gathering of political and social elite as an assembly of talking heads unable to affect real change. Now it’s become clear, however, that their words and political affiliations mean a great deal to their supporters, and perhaps even more to their enemies.
The following is a translated excerpt from the late Mr. Shah AMS Kibria’s speech that evening. Its tragic irony is overwhelmingly apparent.
After finding a copy of Nelson Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom, in our office last week, I’ve torn through its pages and have learned a great deal about the apartheid movement, the history of the African National Congress (ANC), and his philosophy towards leadership and fighting oppression in the process. In the first two decades of its existence, the ANC launched innumerable ‘stay-at-homes’ in an attempt to slow down their country’s economy and thereby put pressure on the government, controlled by the country’s white Africaans minority, to reform its racist apartheid Constitution and bring democracy and full equality to the people of South Africa. It soon became clear that the ‘stay-at-homes’, the equivalent to a hartal, were ineffective in meeting their long-term objectives.
Though Bangladesh is a homogenous nation, the tension between its two main political parties and their supporters is almost as fierce as that between blacks and whites in the darkest days of Apartheid in South Africa. It’s rare to find an apolitical Bangladeshi, meaning we’re not dealing with the politicized minorities that shape the direction of Canadian politics. If you’re not a supporter of the ruling BNP or the opposition Awami League, then you belong to the minority Islamist coalition (as recently discussed in an NYT article that's been heavily criticized by people of all political persuasions in this country).
So if the AL calls a nation-wide hartal but only represents half the population, it’s unlikely to be effective in bringing about the change it wants to see, regardless of the reason why it was called. Perhaps it made headlines and put pressure on the government in its earliest days, but at this point hartals have become so commonplace that they resemble any other government holiday, aside from the political rallies staged in most big cities.
Moreover, when a hartal is meant to protest an attack that was likely sanctioned in one way or another by the party in power in the first place, how effective can it be in forcing them to bring its perpetrators to justice?
Regardless of the answer to that particular question, today’s riots outside Dhaka University in response to the attack indicate that people aren’t in the mood to philosophize. The nation-wide dawn-to-dusk strike was modified this evening and will now last for a full 60 hours starting at midnight tonight; unfortunately, this falls at a particularly inconvenient time for cricket fans, especially the fifteen of us North Americans who were going to attend the B’Desh versus Zimbabwe day-night match with flags waving and drums pounding. After a lengthy discussion over drinks and a few rounds of bowling at the Fu Wang Club tonight, we came to the decision that it’s probably not worth the risk going to the game tomorrow, for it’s likely to be a patriotic yet politicized, 30, 000 person concrete tinder box (and that’s assuming it won’t be cancelled tomorrow morning).
More significantly, however, is that I wouldn’t want to make my father worry about the safety of his only son on a day in which he should be thinking only good thoughts: Happy Birthday, Dad.
While I was saddened but not necessarily startled by the attack at first, it wasn’t long before I recognized the name and remembered that I had listened to a speech by Mr. Kibria exactly a month ago today at a seminar organized by my organization here in Dhaka. That’s when I realized that the forum was more than an assembly of well-intentioned but powerless former politicians who all happened to be members or supporters of the official opposition.
Even though the round-table discussion, entitled “Human Rights Situation: Bangladesh Perspective,” was conducted almost entirely in Bengali, I was able to get a basic idea as to what was being discussed for every now and then a word of English would pop out from the melodic Bengali dialogue. In fact, I began to write down the words that I recognized in a bid to follow along with the discussion, but also to avoid falling asleep in my comfortable chair on an exposed end of the u-shaped seating arrangement. Here’s a selection of what I jotted down:
Target killings; Islamic extremism; crossfire; Christian; Hindu; British High Commissioner; so-called politicians; freedom from fear; neo-colonial; poverty; unemployment; frustration; US Supreme Court; civil society; German zeppelin bombardment [I still don’t understand where that came from]; aggressive population; and “should terrorism be combated with terrorism? Barbarism with barbarism?”
Those words and the seminar itself now represent so much more than they did to me that day. Even our director mentioned that many of the speeches, though laced with idealism and progressive statements, were often hypocritical, for these individuals did not act upon their own words when they were in power but felt free to do so now that they were no longer in office. It was therefore difficult not to look upon the gathering of political and social elite as an assembly of talking heads unable to affect real change. Now it’s become clear, however, that their words and political affiliations mean a great deal to their supporters, and perhaps even more to their enemies.
The following is a translated excerpt from the late Mr. Shah AMS Kibria’s speech that evening. Its tragic irony is overwhelmingly apparent.
“Death in police custody has become today the symbol of the growing brutishness and unchecked power of police. Torture, practices with an almost sadistic malevolence, is used to extort information, to settle scores or to teach the person concerned a lesson. Bodies often badly bruised and mauled are then buried in haste by the police and are rarely returned to the relatives of the victim. The police, in all such cases, claim death to be a result of suicide, natural causes or some previous disease. Few cases are registered against the police and almost no convictions have been reported. Since power rather than authority is the hallmark of our policemen, it is not surprising that mafia gangs, influential hoods, unscrupulous politicians and the rich collude with the police to form an almost invincible corridor of brute power.”In response to yesterday’s deadly attack, the Awami League has called for two days of action throughout the country in protest, including a nation-wide hartal on Saturday. I’ve lost track of how many hartals have occurred in the five months that I’ve been living here, and despite the context within which this particular strike was called, I have little faith in its effectiveness.
After finding a copy of Nelson Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom, in our office last week, I’ve torn through its pages and have learned a great deal about the apartheid movement, the history of the African National Congress (ANC), and his philosophy towards leadership and fighting oppression in the process. In the first two decades of its existence, the ANC launched innumerable ‘stay-at-homes’ in an attempt to slow down their country’s economy and thereby put pressure on the government, controlled by the country’s white Africaans minority, to reform its racist apartheid Constitution and bring democracy and full equality to the people of South Africa. It soon became clear that the ‘stay-at-homes’, the equivalent to a hartal, were ineffective in meeting their long-term objectives.
Though Bangladesh is a homogenous nation, the tension between its two main political parties and their supporters is almost as fierce as that between blacks and whites in the darkest days of Apartheid in South Africa. It’s rare to find an apolitical Bangladeshi, meaning we’re not dealing with the politicized minorities that shape the direction of Canadian politics. If you’re not a supporter of the ruling BNP or the opposition Awami League, then you belong to the minority Islamist coalition (as recently discussed in an NYT article that's been heavily criticized by people of all political persuasions in this country).
So if the AL calls a nation-wide hartal but only represents half the population, it’s unlikely to be effective in bringing about the change it wants to see, regardless of the reason why it was called. Perhaps it made headlines and put pressure on the government in its earliest days, but at this point hartals have become so commonplace that they resemble any other government holiday, aside from the political rallies staged in most big cities.
Moreover, when a hartal is meant to protest an attack that was likely sanctioned in one way or another by the party in power in the first place, how effective can it be in forcing them to bring its perpetrators to justice?
Regardless of the answer to that particular question, today’s riots outside Dhaka University in response to the attack indicate that people aren’t in the mood to philosophize. The nation-wide dawn-to-dusk strike was modified this evening and will now last for a full 60 hours starting at midnight tonight; unfortunately, this falls at a particularly inconvenient time for cricket fans, especially the fifteen of us North Americans who were going to attend the B’Desh versus Zimbabwe day-night match with flags waving and drums pounding. After a lengthy discussion over drinks and a few rounds of bowling at the Fu Wang Club tonight, we came to the decision that it’s probably not worth the risk going to the game tomorrow, for it’s likely to be a patriotic yet politicized, 30, 000 person concrete tinder box (and that’s assuming it won’t be cancelled tomorrow morning).
More significantly, however, is that I wouldn’t want to make my father worry about the safety of his only son on a day in which he should be thinking only good thoughts: Happy Birthday, Dad.
***
The January 26th edition of the Global Byte is hot off the press, though some deft navigating will be required to access all the articles as some of it mistakingly ended up as a seperate issue for January 28th. The drop down menu on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen will be the answer to your problems. As for my articles, apologies in advance for the extended use of extended metaphors...
posted by Per at 2:54 p.m.
<< Home