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Forty years ago this month, the country of Bangladesh declared its independence from Pakistan. Then-President Richard Nixon supported Pakistan during the war because he wanted to prove the US would stand by an ally.

Many Americans disagreed with that stance. And when a ship headed for Pakistan with military equipment and ammunition was set to stop at a US port, one group of Americans felt it was necessary to get involved.

“I was ready to risk my life there,” says 78-year-old Richard Taylor. “I just wanted to get in front of that ship.”

In July 1971, Taylor and a group of protesters used canoes and kayaks to try and block the Pakistani freighter Padma from reaching the Port of Baltimore.

The ship was coming from Canada, bound for Pakistan. It was said to be carrying military equipment and ammunition, presumably to aid the government in its war with what was then called East Pakistan.

The US had ordered an arms embargo on new shipments to Pakistan. But newspapers reported that Pakistani freighters like The Padma were still visiting US ports to load military equipment that had been purchased before the embargo.

Taylor’s flotilla of two canoes, three kayaks and a rubber raft left from Baltimore’s Broening Park. The police and Coast Guard tried to stop it. But Taylor says the group was undaunted.

“One of key parts of this was that the US government was sending military aid to the West Pakistani government that was doing the invasion,” says Taylor. “So that made it poignant. People were suffering thousands of miles away, but our government was helping that suffering to happen.”

Timmy Aziz knew that suffering first hand. He grew up in East Pakistan. He was 10 when war broke out. He now teaches environmental design here in Baltimore.

“It’s really impressive how far they would have had to have gone,” says Aziz. “They would have been way in the middle of the water and completely in harm’s way. This massive freighter and these tiny little canoes, which would easily get washed away in the wake of the ship that size.”

Forty years on, Bengalis are expressing a renewed interest in their country’s independence movement. One of them is New Yorker Aris Yousuf. He finds the canoe blockade story so fascinating that he’s making a documentary on it.

“I wanted to see if I could make a film about the history of 1971, Bangladesh’s independence war and what happened in the US and be able to put it together from the people who participated at that time,” says Yousuf.

What happened that time in July 1971 was that the US Coast Guard foiled Richard Taylor and his friends. The Padma made it into the harbor; it was eventually loaded and left. The following month, protesters expanded their actions to include any Pakistani ship trying to dock in the US, regardless of its cargo. And they enticed longshoremen at the Port of Philadelphia to join the boycott.

“The cause had a heart, had a deep heart,” says 64-year-old Elliot Gevis. “And there were tremendous atrocities that were going on.”

Today, Gevis is a pediatrician. But back in 1971, he worked the docks in Philadelphia. He learned about the war in East Pakistan and the canoe protest from flyers, and helped convince other longshoremen not to load ships. The first freighter affected was The Al-Ahmadi. Richard Taylor and other protesters again used canoes and kayaks to try and block the ship. When it ran the blockade, Gevis and other dockworkers refused to unload it.

“Not everybody was supportive of that,” Gevis recalls. “But then again, they did respect unions. And they did respect not crossing picket lines, things of that sort. But at the same time, they had to pay bills and feed families. That was a big consideration.”

When the ship pushed off, no cargo had been loaded or unloaded.

After four more months of intense protests–and picketing in front of the White House– the US government finally ended all arms exports to Pakistan. It marked the end of one of the more unusual protest movements in America’s history.

“We’ve been just humbled by people who are Bengalis saying we couldn’t have done it without this movement here,” says Phyllis Taylor, Richard’s wife.

She, too, was involved in the protests.

“Not us necessarily, but a small group of committed people giving us hope, as Dick said, in the jungles that you could make a change.”

After nine months of fighting, East Pakistanis won the war. Their prize: a country now known as Bangladesh.

Striker Mohammed Ghadir puts Israeli anti-racism to the test

By James M. Dorsey

Maccabi Haifa striker Mohammed Ghadir believes that he and Beitar Jerusalem, the bad boy of Israeli soccer, are a perfect match.

“I am well suited to Beitar, and that team would fit me like a glove. I have no qualms about moving to play for them,” Mr. Ghadir is quoted by Israeli daily Ha’aretz as saying. Beitar has a large squad, a significant fan base, wide media coverge and lacks talented strikers, he says.

There is only one hitch: Beitar doesn’t want Mr. Ghadir. Not because he’s not an upcoming star and not because they wouldn’t need a player like Mr. Ghadir but because the striker is an Israeli Palestinian. “Our team and our fans are still not ready for an Arab soccer player,” Ha’aretz quotes Beitar’s management as saying. The club prides itself on being the only top league Israeli club to have never hired a Palestinian player in a country whose population is for 20 per cent Palestinian and in which Palestinians play important roles in most other top league teams.

The Beitar management may be right in its approach, not because the team has a point in picking its players on racial grounds but because it prides itself on its bad-boy racist image and is under no pressure to change its ways despite Israeli legal restrictions on discrimination in the work place, the Israel Football Association being the only Middle Eastern soccer body to have launched a campaign against racism and Palestinian tax money contributed to the funding of this year’s refurbishing of Jerusalem stadiums.

Beitar has argued that it has broken no laws by not having hired Palestinian players because no Palestinian has ever solicited at the risk of being a target of the club’s racist attitude. Mr. Ghadir’s desire to play for Beitar puts paid to that argument.

“Now an extraordinarily courageous Arab player has stood up, and fearlessly indicated that he is not afraid to play for Beitar. The Jerusalem squad did not assent to his request – not because he lacks sufficient talent, but because he is an Arab. This is a mark of Cain for Beitar Jerusalem and its fans, and also for the city of Jerusalem, the state of Israel and its legal system, the Israel Football Association and also for the media, which continues to cover this soccer team. Day by day, we reinforce and popularize this loathsome form of racism,” said Ha”aretz columnist Yoav Borowitz in a recent article entitled ‘Kick racism out of Beitar Jerusalem soccer team.’

Established in 1936 and supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate authorities. Its fans shocked Israelis when they refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Beitar has the worst disciplinary record in Israel’s top league. Since 2005 it has faced more than 20 hearings and has received various punishments, including points deductions, fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racist behaviour. Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians.

In some ways, Mr. Ghadir’s interest in transferring from Maccabi Haifa to Beitar has an element of going from bad to worse. Israeli police said in October that it suspect militant right-wing Jewish fans of Mr. Ghadir’s own team of painting slogans reminiscent of language used by Jewish settlers on buildings in the town of Bat Yam and Muslim and Christian graves in Jaffa, the formerly Palestinian part of Tel Aviv that today is home to both Israelis and Palestinians. The slogans asserted that “Maccabi Haifa doesn’t want Arabs on the team,” “Death to Arabs,” and “Rabbi Kahane was right,” a reference to the late leader of the outlawed extreme right-wing Jewish Defence League (JDL) who was assassinated in New York in 1990. The perpetrators signed the slogans as “Haifa supporters.”

Militant soccer fan racism is encouraged by far-right wing politicians such as National Union deputy Michael Ben-Ari, a proponent of expelling all Palestinians from Israel, who this year proposed legislation that would require members of Israeli national sport teams to sing the national anthem and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. The latter demand is rooted in an Israeli desire backed by Mr. Netanyahu to impose recognition of the Jews’ historic right to settle Palestine and block recognition of Palestinian rights to return to lands within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Mr. Borowitz noted that “Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, who cultivates an image as a tolerant, modern public servant, has yet to utter a word on this topic. He has done nothing to alter Beitar’s racist, discriminatory policy. Avi Luzon, chairman of the Israel Football Association, also remains inert on this issue; and the association’s court has never lifted a finger to challenge Beitar’s racism. Meantime, Israel’s media continues to cover the team’s games, and barely addresses the racism issue. Could an English or French soccer squad get away without putting a black or Jewish player on the field throughout its history? How would its fans respond to that? Would football associations in such countries countenance such blatantly racist policy?”

Mr. Borowitz notes further that Jerusalem’s 280,000 Palestinian residents contributed to the NIS 100,000,000 ($27 million) in taxpayer’s money allocated for stadium renovations this year. “Yet this contribution does not entitle the city’s Arabs to representation, even of the most minimal sort, on Jerusalem’s sole team in the nation’s top league,” Mr. Borowitz said.

The importance of Palestinian players to Israeli soccer was driven home to Israelis in 2005 when Abbas Suan, a devout Muslim who refused to sing the Hatikva before a game, achieved for a brief moment what politicians in more than a half-century had not: he united Israeli Jews and Arabs by securing with a last minute equalizer against Ireland Israel’s first chance in 35 years to qualify for a world cup. The game earned him the nickname The Equalizer and made him an Israeli hero; his cheery face and toothy smile featured in ads for the state lottery.

That sense of unity was short-lived. When Suan set foot on the pitch in Israel a week later as captain of Bnei Sakhnin, an Israeli Palestinian team, Jewish fans of Beitar Jerusalem, Israel’s most nationalistic club, booed him every time he touched the ball. “Suan, You Don’t Represent US,” blared a giant banner in the stadium. Fans shouted, “We hate all Arabs.”

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

By Mark Dummett BBC News

On 13 June 1971, an article in the UK’s Sunday Times exposed the brutality of Pakistan’s suppression of the Bangladeshi uprising. It forced the reporter’s family into hiding and changed history.

Abdul Bari had run out of luck. Like thousands of other people in East Bengal, he had made the mistake – the fatal mistake – of running within sight of a Pakistani patrol. He was 24 years old, a slight man surrounded by soldiers. He was trembling because he was about to be shot.

So starts one of the most influential pieces of South Asian journalism of the past half century.

Written by Anthony Mascarenhas, a Pakistani reporter, and printed in the UK’s Sunday Times, it exposed for the first time the scale of the Pakistan army’s brutal campaign to suppress its breakaway eastern province in 1971.

Nobody knows exactly how many people were killed, but certainly a huge number of people lost their lives. Independent researchers think that between 300,000 and 500,000 died. The Bangladesh government puts the figure at three million.

The strategy failed, and Bangladeshis are now celebrating the 40th anniversary of the birth of their country. Meanwhile, the first trial of those accused of committing war crimes has recently begun in Dhaka.

Anthony Mascarenhas

• July 1928: Born in Goa
• 1930s: Educated in Karachi
• June 1971: Exposes war crimes in East Pakistan that alter international opinion
• 1972: Wins international journalism awards
• 1979: Reports that Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons

There is little doubt that Mascarenhas’ reportage played its part in ending the war. It helped turn world opinion against Pakistan and encouraged India to play a decisive role.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told the then editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, that the article had shocked her so deeply it had set her “on a campaign of personal diplomacy in the European capitals and Moscow to prepare the ground for India’s armed intervention,” he recalled.

Not that this was ever Mascarenhas’ intention. He was, Evans wrote in his memoirs, “just a very good reporter doing an honest job”.

He was also very brave. Pakistan, at the time, was run by the military, and he knew that he would have to get himself and his family out of the country before the story could be published – not an easy task in those days.

When the war in what was then East Pakistan broke out in March 1971, Mascarenhas was a respected journalist in Karachi, the main city in the country’s dominant western wing, on good terms with the country’s ruling elite. He was a member of the city’s small community of Goan Christians, and he and Yvonne had five children.

It was terrifying – I had to leave everything behind”

Yvonne Mascarenhas

The conflict was sparked by elections, which were won by an East Pakistani party, the Awami League, which wanted greater autonomy for the region.

While the political parties and the military argued over the formation of a new government, many Bengalis became convinced that West Pakistan was deliberately blocking their ambitions.

The situation started to become violent. The Awami League launched a campaign of civil disobedience, its supporters attacked many non-Bengali civilians, and the army flew in thousands of reinforcements.

On the evening of 25 March it launched a pre-emptive strike against the Awami League, and other perceived opponents, including members of the intelligentsia and the Hindu community, who at that time made up around 20% of the province’s 75 million people.

In the first of many notorious war crimes, soldiers attacked Dhaka University, lining up and executing students and professors.

Their campaign of terror then moved into the countryside, where they battled local troops who had mutinied.

Initially, the plan seemed to work, and the army decided it would be a good idea to invite some Pakistani reporters to the region to show them how they had successfully dealt with the “freedom fighters”.

Foreign journalists had already been expelled, and Pakistan was also keen to publicise atrocities committed by the other side. Awami League supporters had massacred tens of thousands of civilians whose loyalty they suspected, a war crime that is still denied by many today in Bangladesh.

Eight journalists, including Mascarenhas, were given a 10-day tour of the province. When they returned home, seven of them duly wrote what they were told to.

But one of them refused.

Yvonne Mascarenhas remembers him coming back distraught: “I’d never seen my husband looking in such a state. He was absolutely shocked, stressed, upset and terribly emotional,” she says, speaking from her home in west London.

“He told me that if he couldn’t write the story of what he’d seen he’d never be able to write another word again.”

Clearly it would not be possible to do so in Pakistan. All newspaper articles were checked by the military censor, and Mascarenhas told his wife he was certain he would be shot if he tried.

Pretending he was visiting his sick sister, Mascarenhas then travelled to London, where he headed straight to the Sunday Times and the editor’s office.

Evans remembers him in that meeting as having “the bearing of a military man, square-set and moustached, but appealing, almost soulful eyes and an air of profound melancholy”.

“He’d been shocked by the Bengali outrages in March, but he maintained that what the army was doing was altogether worse and on a grander scale,” Evans wrote.

Mascarenhas told him he had been an eyewitness to a huge, systematic killing spree, and had heard army officers describe the killings as a “final solution”.

Evans promised to run the story, but first Yvonne and the children had to escape Karachi.

They had agreed that the signal for them to start preparing for this was a telegram from Mascarenhas saying that “Ann’s operation was successful”.

Yvonne remembers receiving the message at three the next morning. “I heard the telegram man bang at my window and I woke up my sons and I was, oh my gosh, we have to go to London. It was terrifying. I had to leave everything behind.”

“We could only take one suitcase each. We were crying so much it was like a funeral,” she says.

To avoid suspicion, Mascarenhas had to return to Pakistan before his family could leave. But as Pakistanis were only allowed one foreign flight a year, he then had to sneak out of the country by himself, crossing by land into Afghanistan.

The day after the family was reunited in their new home in London, the Sunday Times published his article, under the headline “Genocide”.

‘Betrayal’

It is such a powerful piece of reporting because Mascarenhas was clearly so well trusted by the Pakistani officers he spent time with.

I have witnessed the brutality of ‘kill and burn missions’ as the army units, after clearing out the rebels, pursued the pogrom in the towns and villages.

I have seen whole villages devastated by ‘punitive action’.

And in the officer’s mess at night I have listened incredulously as otherwise brave and honourable men proudly chewed over the day’s kill.

‘How many did you get?’ The answers are seared in my memory.

His article was – from Pakistan’s point of view – a huge betrayal and he was accused of being an enemy agent. It still denies its forces were behind such atrocities as those described by Mascarenhas, and blames Indian propaganda.

However, he still maintained excellent contacts there, and in 1979 became the first journalist to reveal that Pakistan had developed nuclear weapons.

In Bangladesh, of course, he is remembered more fondly, and his article is still displayed in the country’s Liberation War Museum.

This was one of the most significant articles written on the war”

Mofidul Huq/Liberation War Museum

In Bangladesh, of course, he is remembered more fondly, and his article is still displayed in the country’s Liberation War Museum.

“This was one of the most significant articles written on the war. It came out when our country was cut off, and helped inform the world of what was going on here,” says Mofidul Huq, a trustee of the museum.

His family, meanwhile, settled into life in a new and colder country.

“People were so serious in London and nobody ever talked to us,” Yvonne Mascarenhas remembers. “We were used to happy, smiley faces, it was all a bit of a change for us after Karachi. But we never regretted it.”



Censorship in Pakistan

Economist

Nov 25th 2011, 13:04 by L.M.

AN OFTEN overlooked perk of being a country with a large population and relatively low wages is the capacity to employ people to carry out silly tasks. In India, for example, some people spend their days pasting white stickers onto maps of Kashmir printed in foreign publications (such as The Economist). In neighbouring Pakistan, the regulatory body for telecommunications dreamed up an equally unlikely, if altogether more entertaining, assignment for its staff: to compile a list of “undesired words” that could be used to block offensive text messages. In a remarkable show of efficiency (to say nothing of creativity), the agency managed to find 1,100 words and phrases in English and nearly 600 in Urdu. (Admittedly they may have padded it out a bit—how else to explain the presence of “robber”, “oui” or “k mart” in a list that otherwise places rather more emphasis on sexual adventurism?)

Last week, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) memo and accompanying list of the words sent to mobile-phone service providers were leaked on the internet. Pakistanis were aghast and amused in equal measure. Previous bans have targeted Facebook, Rolling Stone magazine’s website and the use of encrypted networks. These met with limited opposition. But the directive to block text messages containing certain words was seen as an attack on free speech.

The official reason for the ban was “to control the menace of spam in the society”. Far more likely, the authorities finally grew tired of rude anti-government jokes that circulate widely via text message. Many feature the president, Asif Ali Zardari, in a starring role. (A tame example: “The post office issued new stamps with Zardari’s face on them but they had to be withdrawn because the public found them too confusing: it was impossible to tell which side to spit on.”) Texting is perhaps the most effective means of mass communication in Pakistan: two of every three Pakistanis have a mobile phone and the cost of sending an SMS is among the cheapest in the world. Following public uproar, damning editorials and the threat of legal action from NGOs, the authority sheepishly announced that “implementation of previous PTA instructions have been withheld” after it “received input from customers, government and other quarters on this issue”.

The government’s inability to take a joke isn’t restricted to text messages. In an interview with the state broadcaster on November 21st, the UN’s “world television day”, the information minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan, stressed the need for a code of conduct to help broadcast media through an “evolutionary phase”. There is little doubt that Pakistan’s news channels could do with some restraint, especially when it comes to coverage of terrorist attacks, which tends towards the gory. But critics fear that an enforced code of conduct would use obscenity as an excuse to target the hugely popular political satire programmes that make fun of the nation’s ruling classes. “It’s anti-government stuff, impersonations of Zardari and company—they don’t leave anyone alone. They make all kinds of jokes, some of them quite lewd,” said Murtaza Razvi, a senior editor at Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper.

Pakistan’s broadcasting rules were liberalised under Pervez Musharraf soon after he took power in a military coup in 1999, and the number of television channels quickly grew from a single state broadcaster to nearly a hundred channels. The government would do well to draw a lesson from the experience of Mr Musharraf, who tried to clamp down on press freedom in 2007 and found himself out of office soon after. Mr Zardari may not enjoy being the butt of jokes every night but it certainly beats having angry protesters on the streets of Islamabad.

By Vijay Prashad

21 October 2011 — The Greanville Post – Qaddafi, From Beginning to End

NATO’s Agenda for Libya

On the dusty reaches out of Sirte, a convoy flees a battlefield. A NATO aircraft fires and strikes the cars. The wounded struggle to escape. Armed trucks, with armed fighters, rush to the scene. They find the injured, and among them is the most significant prize: a bloodied Muammar Qaddafi stumbles, is captured, and then is thrown amongst the fighters. One can imagine their exhilaration. A cell-phone traces the events of the next few minutes. A badly injured Qaddafi is pushed around, thrown on a car, and then the video gets blurry. The next images are of a dead Qaddafi. He has a bullet hole on the side of his head.

These images go onto youtube almost instantly. They are on television, and in the newspapers. It will be impossible not to see them.

The Third Geneva Convention (article 13): ‘Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.’

The Fourth Geneva Convention (article 27): ‘Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honor, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.’

One of the important ideological elements during the early days of the war in Libya was the framing of the arrest warrant for Qaddafi and his clique by the International Criminal Court’s selectively zealous chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo. It was enough to have press reports of excessive violence for Moreno Ocampo and Ban Ki-Moon to use the language of genocide; no independent, forensic evaluation of the evidence was necessary. [Actually, independent evaluation was soon forthcoming from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, decisively debunking Ocampo’s charges. AC/JSC.]

NATO sanctimoniously said that it would help the ICC prosecute the warrant (this despite the fact that the United States, NATO’s powerhouse, is not a member of the ICC). This remark was echoed by the National Transitional Council, NATO’s  political instrument in Benghazi.

Humanitarian intervention was justified on the basis of potential or alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions. The intervention’s finale is  a violation of those very Conventions.

It would  have been inconvenient to see Qaddafi in open court. He had long abandoned his revolutionary heritage (1969-1988), and had given himself over to the U. S.-led War on Terror at least since 2003 (but in fact since the late 1990s). Qaddafi’s prisons had been an important torture center in the archipelago of black sites utilized by the CIA, European intelligence and the Egyptian security state. What stories Qaddafi might have told if he were allowed to speak in open court? What stories Saddam Hussein might have told had he too been allowed to speak in an open court? As it happens, Hussein at least entered a courtroom, even as it was more kangaroo than judicial.

No such courtroom for Qaddafi. As Naeem Mohaiemen put it, ‘Dead men tell no tales. They cannot stand trial. They cannot name the people who helped them stay in power. All secrets die with them.

Qaddafi is dead. As the euphoria dies down, it might be important to recall that we are dealing with at least two Qaddafis. The first Qaddafi overthrew a lazy and corrupt monarchy in 1969, and proceeded to transform Libya along a fairly straightforward national development path. There were idiosyncrasies, such as Qaddafi’s ideas about democracy that never really produced institutions of any value. Qaddafi had the unique ability to centralize power in the name of de-centralization. Nevertheless, in the national liberation Qaddafi certainly turned over large sections of the national surplus to improve the well-being of the Libyan people. It is because of two decades of such policies that the Libyan people entered the 21st century with high human development indicators. Oil helped, but there are oil nations (such as Nigeria) where the people languish in terms of their access to social goods and to social development.

By 1988, the first Qaddafi morphed into the second Qaddafi, who set aside his anti-imperialism for collaboration with imperialism, and who dismissed the national development path for neo-liberal privatization (I tell this story in Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, which will be published by AK Press in the Spring of 2012). This second Qaddafi squandered the pursuit of well-being, and so took away the one aspect of his governance that the people supported. From the 1990s onward, Qaddafi’s regime offered the masses the illusion of social wealth and the illusion of democracy. They wanted more, and that is the reason for the long process of unrest that begins in the early 1990s (alongside the Algerian Civil War), comes to a head in 1995-96 and then again in 2006. It has been a long slog for the various rebellious elements to find themselves.

The new leadership of Tripoli was incubated inside the Qaddafi regime. His son, Saif al-Islam was the chief neoliberal reformer, and he surrounded himself with people who wanted to turn Libya into a larger Dubai. They went to work around 2006, but were disillusioned by the rate of progress, and many (including Mahmud Jibril, the current Prime Minister) had threatened to resign on several occasions. When an insurengy began in Benghazi, this clique hastened to join them, and by March had taken hold of the leadership of the rebellion. It remains in their hands.

What is being celebrated on the streets of Benghazi, Tripoli and the other cities? Certainly there is jubilation at the removal from power of the Qaddafi of 1988-2011. It is in the interests of NATO and Jibril’s clique to ensure that in this auto-da-fé the national liberation anti-imperialist of 1969-1988 is liquidated, and that the neoliberal era is forgotten, to be reborn anew as if not tried before. That is going to be the trick: to navigate between the joy of large sections of the population who want to have a say in their society (which Qaddafi blocked, and Jibril would like to canalize) and a small section that wants to pursue the neoliberal agenda (which Qaddafi tried to facilitate but could not do so over the objections of his ‘men of the tent’). The new Libya will be born in the gap between the two interpretations.

The manner of Qaddafi’s death is a synecdoche for the entire war. NATO’s bombs stopped the convoy, and without them Qaddafi would probably have fled to his next redoubt. The rebellion might have succeeded without NATO. But with NATO, certain political options had to be foreclosed; NATO’s member states are in line now to claim their reward. However, they are too polite in a liberal European way to actually state their claim publically in a quid-pro-quo fashion. Hence, they say things like: this is a Libyan war, and that Libya must decide what it must do. This is properly the space into which those sections in the new Libyan power structure that still value sovereignty must assert themselves. The window for that assertion is going to close soon, as the deals get inked that lock Libya’s resources and autonomy into the agenda of the NATO states.

VIJAY PRASHAD is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

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by rahnuma ahmed

`A state within the state is now ruling the country.‘ Recently uttered by Dr Mizanur Rahman, National Human Rights Commission chair, these words, ominous as they sound, are of immense concern to the nation’s citizenry.

To those who love this country. Who feed off its soil, off the labour of those who plant, grow, nurture, feed us. What sense can one make of his words?

Dr Mizan was speaking at a roundtable on granting constitutional recognition to indigenous people but his words were occasioned by something else. An incident which is proving to be the turning point.

Yes, Limon. People across the nation are outraged. At the shooting. If possible, more so, at the subsequent cover-up attempts by some ministers, by a senior civil-military leadership nexus.

Cover-up? How else but by `criminalising’ the victim? Limon is a `terrorist’, his father’s a `terrorist’. The whole family is nothing but a bunch of terrorists.

Limon’s left leg had to be amputated after the 16-year old Jhalokathi college student, the son of an agricultural day-labourer, was allegedly shot in the leg by RAB’s officers on March 23. RAB claims, the shooting occurred during an `encounter’.

But the real problem, from RAB’s perspective, is that Limon has lived to tell the tale. Unusual, for RAB’s victims generally don’t. Human rights activists allege, since the formation of the elite anti-crime, anti-terror force in 2004, the number of extra-judicial killings has crossed a thousand.

Another problem, yet again from RAB’s perspective, is the image of Limon: half-reclining on his hospital bed, leaning heavily on someone who stands next to him, his one `whole’ leg outstretched before our eyes. The other, a mere stub. A look of silent reproach in his eyes. It refuses to go away. Even if you turn away your eyes. Even if you refuse to think about it.

Look at what they did to to me. How could this happen? How could you let it happen? Silent questions, hence, all the more powerful. Questions that corrupt, power-hungry, and power-wielding nexuses lack the moral strength to address, turning instead to parroting out ever-more lies to cover-up the big one. Lies that flutter around us, making members of the public exclaim, look, how nakedly they lie. Look, how brazenly they lie. They think we are fools.

The occasion which elicited Dr Mizan’s words, was the cancellation of a news story by Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the state-controlled news agency. The story ran for five hours on June 1, before being dropped.

According to it, sources close to Sheikh Hasina, highly-placed ones, said, she’d instructed government leaders and officials to withhold comments on Limon. Such comments are likely to prejudice the investigation. Ongoing investigations have not uncovered any evidence which indicates that Limon is a `terrorist.’ Very reasonable, no?

BSS’ explanations for dropping it? The story lacked authenticity, which of course, is a genuine concern for any news agency, but what is interesting is that Sheikh Hasina has spoken out on crossfire deaths, not only as head of the opposition—as our politicians are likely to, before changing colour, chameleon-like, when in position—but also, as prime minister.

In February this year, Sheikh Hasina divulged to the press that when she returned from abroad, her then political secretary Saber Hossain Chowdhury had come to meet her at the boarding bridge and said, ‘Don’t say a thing about crossfire. The waiting journalists will ask you about it.‘

But, ‘I had told him that I would speak against it,’ despite the fact that my outspokenness on the matter has raised the ire of `different quarters,’ even of diplomats, who have `tacit[ly] endorse[d] such killings.’ If trials can be held and my father’s killers can get executed through `due legal process’ instead of my getting them `simply killed,’ surely others deserve it as well? (February 3, 2011).

Maybe, that, is the problem. That she spoke out against crossfire not only when in the opposition, but now too, as prime minister. If people are as vocal against it in 2001 as they are now, she added, it would not have `continued for this long.’

BSS’s moves and shifts led Shahriar Kabir, acting president of Ekatturer Ghatok Dalal Nirmul Committee, to ask, is there someone inside the government who is more powerful than the prime minister? Is there a government inside the government?

It led senior journalist ABM Musa to pick apart the state-controlled news agency’s terminology, based on his rich 60-years experience as a journalist. BSS, he pointed out, had not `withdrawn’, or `discarded’, or `killed’ the story. It had `cancelled’ it (`batil’). These acts, reminded him of military rule during both Pakistan and Bangladesh periods (`Cchapa hoyni tobuo khobor,’ Prothom Alo, June 3, 2011).  It reminds me of a shared joke among Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, forced to live during periods of military rule: CMLA stands not for the chief martial law administrator but instead, `Cancel My Last Announcement.’

Is there a state within the state? Is there a government within the government? Unfortunately, all fingers seem to point at the military top brass. One wished it didn’t, for one needs a patriotic armed force to defend the country, in case of invasion by external forces. And there’s no reason to forget that the world in which we live, is far from being a peaceful one.

If true, is it incidental to the present AL-led government, or, can such a state be said to have existed far longer? Where and how does one search for answers?

Since we are talking about RAB I think it is worth noting what preceded RAB, i.e., Operation Clean Heart, which commentators note, initiated militarisation of law-enforcement during civilian rule. The 85-day long operation, launched in October 2002 by the BNP-Jamaat led government to `fight crime,’ deployed more than 40,000 military personnel. Towards the end, after more than 10,000 arrests and 50 custodial deaths in unclear circumstances, members of the public had re-named it Operation Heart Attack. For, officials insisted, custodial deaths had been caused by `heart attacks.’

But despite public concern, the government went ahead and passed the Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance 2003, granting immunity from prosecution to armed forces and government officials for their involvement in `any casualty, damage to life and property, violation of rights, physical or mental damage’ between October 16, 2002 and January 9, 2003 (`Judge, Jury, and Executioner,’ Human Rights Watch, December 2006).

The government, to my knowledge, has not yet responded to a High Court show cause ruling which asks it to explain why the Ordinance should not be declared illegal. The petitioner was the sister of a torture victim who had died in Operation Clean Heart.

In March 2004, the government formally created RAB, comprising elite members from the military (army, navy, air force), the police, and members of various law enforcement groups such as, Bangladesh Rifles, Ansar etc.

But given the rush of crossfire killings, and of impunity, it is not surprising that soon enough, grave concerns were expressed by human rights activists about the force, and its modus operandi. Under conditions of anonymity, a Bangladeshi human rights lawyer had said, it is “martial law’ in disguise’ (Judge, Jury, Executioner, Human Rights Watch, December 2006).

When the prime minister instructed government leaders and officials to withhold comments on Limon, was it aimed at particular leaders? At particular officials? At the defence adviser, the 100% sure-man that Limon is a criminal? At the home minister, who vouched for the former? Does it indicate fault lines in the government? Those close to the powers-that-be know better, I can only raise questions.

Militarisation is a women’s movement issue. It is so in the rest of the world, and I find no credible reason for it not to be a major issue in Bangladesh. But although women activists, some, not enough, have spoken out against how militarisation affects women belonging to particular groups, or, have spoken out against particular cases, and continue to do so, it is yet to emerge as a women’s movement issue in Bangladesh. Why? How much longer will we have to wait?

Although the consequences of militarisation for women are complex and complicated, sexual violence, gender-based crimes, and the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war

– as birangonas know, as we all know — is common.

Hill women know too, for they allege, sexual violence was inflicted on indigenous women and their communities as part of military strategy before the signing of the Peace treaty in 1997. Paharis claim, state-sponsored political and sexual violence still continues. In August 2003, over 300 houses in 7 pahari villages of Mahalcchari were razed to the ground by the army, aided by Bengali settlers. Paharis claim, ten Chakma women were raped, some of them gang-raped, including a mother and her two daughters, aged 12 and 15. Including two daughters of another family, aged 14 and 16 years. Victims allege, armed personnel alongwith Bengali settlers took part in the rapes. There is no public evidence that the Bangladesh army has investigated those claims in any way. Nor do we know if the Bangladesh army has charged any soldier as a result of the alleged assaults. Nor is there any public evidence that any military personnel has been punished for any of the alleged rapes (`Violence against women and girls: breaking taboos,’ New Age, November 24, 2008).

Rape by law enforcement agencies in the rest of Bangladesh are also known to have occurred, to cite one report where a RAB official was implicated: in July 2008, RAB-11 member Abdul Gafur allegedly raped a 14-year old girl at Sonargaon, Narayanganj, near a bus stand. He was later captured by local people and police (`Violence against women in 2008,’ The Daily Star, January 24, 2009).

Was the allegation ever investigated? Was he tried? Probably not, for, till date, RAB officers have only been tried and punished for involvement in extortion, fraud, drug peddling, and hiring sex workers. Not for committing grave human rights abuses. Not for torture. Not for killing (The gift of a `death squad,’ New Age, June 6, 2011).  Not for rape. Not that I know of.

RAB personnel are also alleged to torture. Their methods include beatings with batons on the soles of the feet and other parts of the body, boring holes with electric drills, and applying electric shock (for details of how Shaka Chowdhury, a BNP MP, and an alleged war criminal, was allegedly tortured recently, see last week’s column).

But accounts of sexualised brutality and torture, although few and far between, are available, and leaders and activists of the women’s movement need to take them seriously, need to learn from them.

One such account of torture under remand is provided by Bidisha, former wife of ex-president HM Ershad (Shotrur Shonge Boshobash, May 2008). Her detailed account is chilling because of the brutality that it describes, but it also reaches out with great pathos, when midway through her account of torture, she muses, the men who tortured me must have gone home to their wives and children. They must have caressed them as people caress their loved ones. Could his wife tell? Could his children tell what deeds these very hands had performed?

I myself do not know whether the families of torturers here bear the brunt of what they do. Testimony from other places indicate that they do. Frantz Fanon, Algerian psychiatrist and theorist, in The Wretched of the Earth, wrote of a French police inspector who tortured not only colonised Algerians, but also his wife and children. ‘[o]ne evening when his wife…criticised him particularly for hitting his children too much… He threw himself upon her, beat her and tied her to a chair, saying to himself `I’ll teach her once and for all that I’m master in this house.” (A tortured image, New Age, June 26, 2008).

Dismantling a master-servile relationship is not easy, especially not when one is up against those armed. But non-violent protests against militarisation initiated by the women’s movement has led to compelling results in Latin America, and elsewhere. One can only hope that the lessons and struggles of 1971, will be re-imagined and applied now, when forces inimical to ideals of life and love, thrive within.

———————–

Published in New Age, Monday June 13, 2011 http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/22194.html

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by rahnuma ahmed

A `death squad’ was the BNP-Jamaat government’s gift to the nation, a gift that has been nurtured and defended by two successive governments, each claiming to be vastly different to the previous one.

Claiming not only to be better, but morally superior.

The death-knell was struck more than seven years ago, on June 2, 2003, when the cabinet committee on Law and Order decided to form the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Those present were the committee president Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, law minister Moudud Ahmed, home minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, education minister Omar Farooq, and state minister for home affairs Lutfuzzaman Babar.

RAB was formally created eight months later, in March 2004, a composite force comprising elite members from the army, navy, air force, the police, and members of other law enforcement groups. It began full operations in June, the same year.

Remember Fakhruddin Ahmed, the ex-World Bank guy who led the military-installed caretaker government (2007-2008), who claimed to be driven by the objective of “holding a free, fair and credible election” which will truly reflect the “will of the people”? Who saw himself as a “champion or leader” motivated by the aim of “strengthening Bangladesh’s democratic order”? (Time, March 22, 2007).

Well, if you search the records, it turns out that around 315 persons were killed extra-judicially under his, and general Moeen U Ahmed’s, 23-month long emergency rule. Of these, the deaths of more than 250 persons were allegedly crossfire killings (`Bangladesh 2008. Insidious militarisation and illegal emergency,’ Asian Human Rights Commission, December 2008).

Even if, for arguments sake, these persons were hardened criminals, how is the democratic functioning of state institutions strengthened by officials of its elite anti-crime, anti-terror force behaving exactly as criminals do?
By killing point-blank. By making up stories later of crossfires, shootouts and encounters, which every Bangladeshi knows to be untrue. I’m sure even their kids know that. I would have died of shame if my father had worked for RAB. I agree that kids don’t choose their parents, let alone their dad’s occupation but thank heaven, for big — very big — mercies!

And before that, surely you remember Khaleda Zia’s stunning electoral victory because of the BNP’s No 1 campaign promise: to improve law-and-order in the country? This of course didn’t materialise, which made what the Awami League said in its 2008 electoral manifesto pretty accurate: extra-judicial killings had become the norm, the rule of law had disappeared. For, at the end of the BNP-Jamaat government’s rule, the country’s elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force had been implicated in the unlawful killing of at least 350 people in custody. Additionally, of allegedly torturing hundreds more.

These minor matters however did not deter Khaleda Zia’s government from awarding Swadhinata Padak, the most-prestigious national award, to RAB on March 23, 2006 for their “outstanding performance in maintaining law and order.” It did not deter her government from awarding police medals to 28 RAB officers the next year. All of these officers, according to AHRC, have allegedly been involved in serious human rights violations, including extra-judicial killing.

And if one were to tote up the figures since January 6, 2009 — since the Awami League-led grand alliance’s assumption of office — apparently, close to 200 people have been killed in RAB operations.

The director general of RAB had acknowledged 577 deaths, a figure which was later upped, in March 2010, to 622. Since extra-judicial killings have not ceased, official figures would now presumably be higher. Human rights groups in Bangladesh, however think that the number of crossfire deaths since RAB’s inception has crossed a thousand.

Recently, the New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the government to either take major steps towards making RAB accountable, to reform it within the next six months, or to disband it altogether (Crossfire, HRW, May 10, 2011). When Nurul Kabir was asked to comment on HRW’s urgent plea on a live TV talk show, he replied, our human rights organisations too would demand the same thing if they could.

How is democracy strengthened by giving killers legal impunity? For, as lawyers, journalists and human rights activists repeatedly point out, RAB enjoys impunity. A state of affairs enabled by the Armed Police Battalions ordinance, 1979, its 2003 amendment (on the basis of which RAB was formed), and the much older, colonial-era Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898.

RAB enjoys impunity because of governmental secrecy. Rules regulating RAB’s conduct in its performance of law enforcement tasks were drafted and put into effect in 2005, but these rules have never been made public. Additionally, the 1979 ordinance and the 2003 amendment created special internal courts similar to a military court martial to put alleged offendors on trial. But till date, RAB officers have only been tried and punished for involvement in extortion, fraud, drug peddling, hiring sex workers. Not for committing grave human rights abuses. Not for torture. Not for killing.

The worst punishment meted out to RAB officers, even where allegations of extrajudicial killings — not through crossfire/shootout — have been confirmed in inquiry reports, has been, at most dishonorable discharge. No one has been criminally punished.

The government has not taken any action despite a High Court notice to the government asking why crossfire killings should not be declared illegal, the result of a public litigation filed by ASK, BLAST and Karmajibi Nari (June 29, 2009). Despite a suo moto ruling by the High Court asking the director general of RAB, and secretary, home ministry, to show cause why appropriate action should not be taken against RAB officers who, allegedly, had killed the Khalashi brothers.

The reconstitution of High Court benches, and re-assigning the 2 judges who had issued the suo moto ruling to civil instead of criminal cases, took care of that.

In the early days, people had celebrated when hardened criminals were crossfired by RAB. They had cheered, had distributed sweets, an occurrence which was used to justify RAB’s modus operandi.

As each ruling government draws on RAB to carry out its vendetta against its political opponents, as each member of the public slumps and falls to the ground, as rumours fly around of individual officers, of small teams, hiring out their services to the monied to help them settle scores with their enemies, i.e., eliminate, what Brad Adams said at of HRW’s press conference in Dhaka (May 10, 2011) does not seem far-fetched at all. A death squad is roaming the streets of Bangladesh.

I cannot help but wonder, how do higher-ups of the BNP-Jamaat government feel, what do they think when they see their successors pronouncements fizzle out? When the government’s `zero tolerance’ for crossfire killings, torture, deaths in custody (Dipu Moni, foreign minister) gradually rises? To its current status of `a hundred percent,’ as evidenced by the prime minister’s defence adviser, Maj Gen (retd) Tarique Ahmed Siddique’s recent statement that Limon — the 16 year-old college student of Jhalokathi who was allegedly fired at point blank by RAB officials — is a `criminal’. That his father too, is a `criminal’. When the home minister Sahara Khatun chimes in, what Siddique said is the government’s position. And, no, criminalising Limon a priori, while police investigations are being conducted, will not affect its findings. No, it will not influence judicial proceedings either.

Do they feel happy? Gleeful? Ha-ha, now that you are in the seat, now you know. See, there was no reason for being so outraged in April 2006 when the prime minister’s advisor for parliamentary affairs, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury mockingly warned opposition members: follow the “right path” (siratul mustakim) or else, you’ll be on RAB’s “crossfire” list.

Probably not. Perverse delight at the AL government’s about-turn is probably tempered by news of Shaka Chowdhury’s current distress. He was detained by RAB officers, and officials of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) last December. Initially charged with instigating a firebomb attack, Chowdhury, who is generally thought to be a war criminal, is presently being investigated for 1971 war crimes. In a letter from prison, addressed apparently to the British government, Chowdhury writes of losing consciousness while being beaten around the head and back. Of recovering consciousness only to discover himself strapped to a metal table. “My abductors were engaged in clamping on metal clips and clamps on various parts of my body – my toes, my knees, my genitals, my hernia incisions, my chest nipples and my armpits. A bearded doctor strapped a blood pressure measuring [device] on to my arm and started instructions to first insert needles under my toenails and switch on electric surges.” (Guardian, February 25, 2011).

But, as Tasneem Khalil, journalist, who was himself handcuffed, blindfolded and tortured during the caretaker government period, insists, “In a civilized society, you cannot go after anyone in a totally arbitrary manner without access to bail and imprison them and not let them — [not let] their cases [be] tried by a free court, [an] independent court.” Even barrister Moudud Ahmed, despite his “role in creating the battalion” should not have been been led away blindfolded from his home, as he was in early 2007. He should not have been interrogated round the clock. He should not have been held in custody without trial or access to lawyers. Even Moudud Ahmed has the “right to due process.” (NPR, March 20, 2008). So would Lutfuzzaman Babar, currently imprisoned, who had said, “criminals do not have human rights.”

Calls for disbanding RAB have, predictably enough, given rise to clutching RAB-ever more dearly to-the-bosom responses from the government. Earlier defenses, “RAB had only killed `criminals.’ No more crossfire incidents are taking place in the country (law minister Shafique Ahmed), `What will the law enforcers do, save themselves or die, when criminals open fire on them?’ (Sahara Khatun), `Crossfire killings are not human rights violations, they have helped bring extortion and other crimes under control’ (port and shipping minister Shahjahan Khan), have been reinforced with new ones. A `conspiracy’ is being hatched to disband RAB. A plot is afoot. Why? Because it has been successful in tackling violent crimes, in dealing with militancy, says our `one hundred percent sure’ man, the prime minister’s defence adviser. A few bad apples, the whole unit shouldn’t be blamed. The conspirators are many, organisations, persons, foreign NGOs.

A deathly gift, treasured by the nation’s rulers, whether civilian or military, whether the BNP-Jamaat and its smaller partners, or the Awami Leage and its alliance members. Treasured by each party when in power, despite having suffered. At times, viciously. Torture. Targeted killings.

Since violence begets more violence, for us, law-abiding members of the public, cross-firing RAB cannot be the answer. Neither can appealing to the British government provide any solution, mired as it is in imperial wars.

Only accountability, can. Only the due process of law, can. Only people’s resistance, can.

This version is slightly changed, the original has been published in New Age, Monday, June 6, 2011

http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/21325.html

By rahnuma ahmed

The problem with Limon — from RAB’s point of view — is that he has lived to tell the tale. Usually, RAB’s victims don’t.

Take Rasal Ahmed Bhutto, for instance. A 34-year old shopkeeper, he was picked up by men in plainclothes outside a friend’s shop in Dhaka on March 3, 2011. A week later, men in vehicles, including ones marked RAB, brought Bhutto back to his neighbourhood. A volley of gunshots. Family members rushed out, they found him slumped against a wall. Dead.

RAB insists, there had been a shootout.

Or take Mohiuddin Arif, a  32-year old surgery technician at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka. He was picked up from his home on January 24, 2010 by 3 plainclothes men who claimed to be officers from RAB-4. Arif died 10 days later, after having been transferred to police, after having been sent off to Dhaka Central Jail. When jail authorities informed his father that his son was dead, he rushed to the DMCH morgue. Arif’s legs were `smashed,’ `flattened.’ They had turned green. From repeated beatings? His skin had been scraped off from parts of his body. His feet were swollen, they looked as if they were falling apart.

According to police, Arif had been sacked from work on charges of corruption. Not true, say hospital authorities. According to police, Arif had taken part in a robbery. Not true. Arif’s time punch card shows he was on hospital duty when the alleged robbery took place.

Thirty-two thousand taka poorer — 16,000 allegedly to Pallabi police station in exchange for assurances that he wouldn’t be tortured, another 16,000 reportedly to a court clerk, CMM court, Dhaka in hopes of getting early bail — his family has decided not to file a case. What’s the use? I won’t get my son back, says his father (Human Rights Watch report, Crossfire, May 10, 2011).

Dead men don’t tell tales.

But there are other problems with Limon. I mean, `problems’ from RAB’s perspective.

His innocence shines through, there’s no denying that. Thick black hair, a steady, unwavering look. Sad, but with a tinge of indictment. Look at what you’ve done to me. How could you?

He comes from a humble background. His father, Tofazzel Hossain, a share-cropper cum day-labourer, left Saturia village (Rajapur upazilla, Jhalokathi district) this February in search of better work, better pay. He managed to find work in a wholesale fruit market in Savar EPZ, Dhaka.

A college student, Limon’s HSC finals were days away when the incident occurred. Bent on getting good grades, he’d been studying harder. He wanted to fulfill his mother’s dreams. To be educated, to make her proud of him. He worked in a neighbouring brick kiln, lowly work, menial work, which upper class kids in cities, heady with lifestyle concerns, the `d-juice’ generation, cannot imagine. Neither can their parents. Limon also tutored children, meagre earnings to supplement an unsteady household income.

Limon Protest from Shahidul Alam on Vimeo.

On March 23, 2011, Limon, returning home with grazing cattle, was stopped by a team of RAB-8 led by deputy assistant director Mohd Lutfar Rahman, nearby Shohid Jomaddar’s home. They grabbed hold of my collar, they said, you are a terrorist. They dragged me to the front of Jomaddar’s house. One of them said, we’ll crossfire you. I gave him my mobile, I said, please, please call my college principal. I begged. He pocketed my mobile. Another RAB pointed his gun at my left leg and fired. His nameplate said Lutfar. I fell down, rolled on the ground till I struck a banana tree. One of them pinned down my hand with his boot. They wanted to know who I was. I told them my name, my college name, I even told them my HSC exams were beginning on 5th April.

I was wearing a red shirt, one of them took it off, tied my wound. They took off my lungi, wiped away the blood. They stamped at blood stains on the ground, they threw away the blood-soaked lungi in the nearby river. Another got a lungi from Jomaddar’s house. Limon had been lying naked until then. They called a village elder, he was heard to scream, `But he’s a good boy, and you shot him!’ (Asian Human Rights Commission, April 9, 2011).

His family learnt the next day that Limon was in Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital in Barisal, he’d been admitted four hours after being shot. It was a perforating wound, the bullet had passed through, bleeding had been profuse. There was little they could do, said the doctors. He was referred to Dhaka, brought here and finally admitted to Pongu hospital (National Institute of Traumatology, Orthopedic and Rehabilitation) on March 27. Police constables insisted the family pay the ambulance fare, a hefty 5,500 taka.

Doctors at Pongu amputated his left leg the same day. It couldn’t be saved, they said, too much dead tissue. They must foot the bill, said hospital authorities, operating costs, all other medical expenses. Villagers had chipped in, the family had mortgaged a piece of precious land, but cash was dwindling fast.

From information which surfaced later, it seems to be a case of mistaken identity. Our Limon was mistaken for Limon Hossain Jomaddar, a Dhaka resident, related to Shahid Jomaddar, who RAB was searching for. To nab. Or to kill, who knows? RAB’s informers had said, Limon Jomaddar, wearing a red shirt, would be there.

There’ve been other cases of mistaken identity. Remember Bappi who worked as a model, who was planning to get a degree in management? He was Kaiser Mahmud Bappi, he was mistaken for Kamrul Islam, also nicknamed `Bappi,’ a wanted criminal. Acting on information that the latter Bappi was planning a major crime at Aftab Towers, Dhaka, a RAB-1 team went there on September 9, 2009. Our Bappi happened to be near the gate; when officers wanted to know his name, he simply replied, `Bappi.’

RAB says, they shot in self-defense, but eye-witnesses say there was no shoot-out, that Bappi was killed without any provocation. That Bappi had pleaded `Please don’t kill me. You are mistaking me for someone else. I am from a good family.’

What immense power. Shoot, kill, no questions asked, that’s RAB’s modus operandi. A death squad. Period. Albeit, a highly vengeful one. As, also, are their apologists.

Power that is nurtured by impunity. Yielding to pressure by human rights groups, the home ministry had ordered an investigation into Bappi’s killing, the team included a member from human rights group Odhikar. According to its report, RAB was not able to prove that “armed criminals were present at the crime spot.” It recommended prosecution, but the government took no action.

Is it a wonder then that two criminal cases were filed against Limon and seven others on March 23rd night? They were accused of illegally possessing arms and ammunitions. Of obstructing law-enforcement agencies in their discharge of duties. Of attempting to murder. Limon’s age was recorded as being 25, not 16. According to RAB, his bullet injury was the result of a shooutout; they’d recovered firearms from him; he was an associate of Morshed, a local criminal.

Public sympathy for Limon is not to be tolerated. Growing public anger at RAB’s crossfire killings are not to be tolerated, one that has catalysed due to Limon’s fate, his amputated leg. That silent indictment, Look at what you’ve done? How could you do this to me? rankles. Feelings of guilt must be crushed. Impunity, to serve the government’s interests, must prevail. The state machinery has gone into action.

There have been one or two slip-ups, honest statements such as the one by RAB’s director general. `Limon is a young boy, not a notorious criminal. He just became a victim of the incident.’

But that was much earlier, before the government machinery had swung into action.

His mother’s attempts to file a case against the perpetrators were snubbed by the local police station. Henoara Begum went ahead and filed a case with the Jhalokathi court, she wanted justice, she said; a fair and speedy investigation, those who were guilty of shooting her son without verifying his identity must be punished. The magistrate (God bless her) ordered the police to record the case. They dilly-dallied, seeking permission to investigate all cases against, and by, the battalion. The petition was rejected. The police must record the case, and do it fast. Within 48 hours.

But since RAB’s impunity must prevail, a sub-inspector of Rajapur police station `secretly’ submitted a charge sheet against Limon before the Court. A horrendous saga began: Limon, with his amputated leg, was dragged off to Jhalokathi to appear before the court.  After getting bail in one case, he was dragged off to jail. Then back again in court, mercifully, he was given bail in the other case. In the meanwhile, in response to a public interest litigation filed by ASK, the High Court has granted Limon 6 months interim bail, it has directed the government to ensure his treatment at one of the best hospitals at the cost of the state, it has asked the government why a probe committee should not be formed.

Five bodies are investigating the incident, says state minister for home affairs, Shamsul Haque Tuku.  But according to Limon’s family members, the single-member home ministry inquiry committee has spoken only to witnesses planted by RAB. They spoke of a gunfight between RAB on one side, and Limon and a local terrorist group on the other. When Limon’s grandfather protested, these so-called witnesses disappeared. However Shawkat Akbar, additional division commissioner, and team-leader denies these allegations, “I talked with those people who spontaneously stepped forward….”

Limon was not deliberately shot at by RAB, says Maj Gen (retd) Tarique Ahmed Siddique, the prime minister’s defence adviser. He’s 100 percent sure, he says. A shot hit Limon in the leg as he attempted to run away when RAB tried to capture Jamaddar. Both Limon and his father are members of a criminal gang. A conspiracy is being hatched to get RAB disbanded.

Sahara Khatun, home minister has chimed in, what the defence adviser has said is the government’s position. And no, his comments won’t influence the investigation process, or the judicial process.

In Saturia, Limon’s relatives, neighbours, other villagers, professionals who have expressed sympathy, have been subjected to continuous threats and intimidation. A high presence of men in plainclothes is noticeable, surveilling common villagers constantly.

Shawkat Akbar has earned additional credit, in the interests of conducting an independent inquiry, he has grilled Limon and Tofazzel to the extent that both father and son burst out into tears.

Which well-known people have visited in you hospital? Has the editor of any newspaper come here to see you? Are you trotting out words that you have been told to? By any journalist? By any organisation? Why did you open a bank account seeking assistance for Limon’s treatment?  Who advised you? At a point, Tofazzel reportedly cried out and said, RAB shot Limon, his leg had to be amputated. Now they are trying to frame him as a terrorist. They are trying to frame the whole family as terrorists. I don’t want to live any longer. Give me poison. I will take it with the rest of the family, let us all die (Limon’s testimony to home ministry investigation committee, Prothom Alo, May 25, 2011).

His helplessness in the face of such implacable ruthlessness has made a newspaper reader comment on the daily’s website, maybe they should all be lined up in front of a firing squad. Maybe that will appease the death squad, and its apologists. As I read, I try to recollect, where had I read the line, “Meanwhile, extra-judicial killings became a norm, and the rule of law disappeared.” Oh yes, the Awami League’s electoral manifesto, 2008.

For some reason, the faces of present cabinet ministers, Sahara Khatun, Shamsul Haque Tuku, blur with those of former ones. Although it was Barrister Moudud Ahmed (law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister during the BNP-Jamaat rule) who had said, “Although technically you may call it extrajudicial—I will not say killing—but extrajudicial deaths. But these are not killings” when I see Sahara Khatun on TV news, she seems to be mouthing those same words. Former home minister for state, spiky-haired Lutfuzzaman Babor’s features, for reasons unknown to me, settle on that of Tuku’s. Their faces, their voices, become indistinguishable.

Lonkay gele shobai Rabon hoy. The seat of power, makes everyone a demon.

Published in New Age, Monday May 30, 2011

http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/20488.html

`Go, Mubarak go!’  USA’s tottering user-friendly tyrants…

By Rahnuma Ahmed

Having grown up amidst popular uprisings, such as the Civil Disobedience movement in 1969, and much later, having participated in mass uprisings, foremost among them, the one against general HM Ershad’s regime in 1990, witnessing scenes of the unfolding peoples’ revolt against the US-bolstered 30-year old Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, relayed live, courtesy of al-Jazeera television, is, well…, just great!

Every passing moment contributes to our history on earth, but some moments are crucial for they change history, writes Ashraf Ezzat, medical doctor and political analyst, from Alexandria. What the world now witnesses in Egypt, is not only the crumbling down of a dictatorship that stifled Egyptians for decades but “a whole age of authoritarianism in the Arab world.”

It all began in Tunisia. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, a vegetable-seller, set himself on fire on December 17, 2010 after police confiscated his unlicensed produce stand; he died on Jan 3. Protests against unemployment, police brutality and the regime’s corruption increased, leading to the toppling of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime, a dictator who had ruled for 23 years, was re-elected president five times, each time winning 99.9%-89.62% votes, who amended the constitution in 2002 to allow the president (read, himself) to stay in power until the age of 75, to be re-elected unlimited times. After a 29 day popular uprising, Ben Ali, who headed “one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes” (Guardian, January 15, 2011),  who was a “stalwart US ally” (Foreign Policy, February 5, 2011) was forced to flee, to take refuge in Saudi Arabia. Prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi took over as interim president as soldiers guarded ministries, public buildings and the state TV building, as security forces were authorised to fire live rounds.

“Freedom is expensive and my brother paid the price of freedom,” said Salem, Bouazizi’s brother. “My brother has become a symbol of resistance in the Arab world.”

So true he was, as instances of self-immolation followed soon. An Egyptian man set himself alight near the parliament, a Mauritanian in front of the presidential palace in Nouakchott, the capital, while four unemployed young men reportedly immolated themselves in Algeria.

America’s bout with democracy in the Middle East (and also, in Asia, Africa and Latin America) since World War II has led to nations being ruled by “user-friendly tyrants” (George E. Irani, April 29, 2003). Since the Tunisian revolution, some Middle Eastern and North African tyrants are busy declaring measures aimed at pre-empting civil unrest.

On February 2, president Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen who has ruled for 32 years, announced that he would step down in 2013, that his son Ahmed would not succeed him. But that did not quell the protests, demonstrators gathered for a “day of rage” on Friday February 4. US military aid to Yemen had averaged $20 million a year during the Bush era,

but under the Obama administration, US intelligence and security roles have expanded, military aid to Yemen is expected to reach $250 million this year. (Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2011).

In Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president since 1999, on February 3 promised to end the state of emergency “in the very near future,” to adopt measures for job creation, to lift restrictions on state-controlled media. Opposition leaders, human rights groups, unions, students and unemployed workers however, plan a march on February 12. Algeria forged “intimate links” with the US after September 11, 2001 voicing support for the US-led international `coalition against terror.’ Close cooperation reportedly exists between Algeria’s counter-terrorism and intelligence networks and the FBI and CIA. According to Israeli security experts, they were working with the Algerian military and national security sector (2002).

The Algerian parliamentary elections held at the end of May 2002 were, according to the US, evidence of the “development of democracy.”

In Jordan, despite the Financial Times’ optimism that “internal tensions between different factions in society” make a unified uprising “less likely” (January 17, 2011),  thousands of demonstrators took to the streets recently shouting, “Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians,” and banners, “Send the corrupt guys to court.” It has led King Abdullah—who has the power to appoint governments, approve legislation and dissolve parliament—to dismiss his cabinet, to appoint Marouf Bakhit as prime minister in place of Samir Rifai. But Bakhit, a retired major-general, prime minister from 2005-2007, earlier, national security advisor and ambassador to Israel, has not been welcomed by many, including the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing and Jordan’s largest opposition party. Bakhit, deemed to have “a history of oppression and corruption” was the mastermind behind the rigged 2007 elections. ”There is no reason to stop the protests now,” says IAF head Hamzah Mansur. Public anger at high inflation, unemployment and rampant poverty is coupled with resentment at a “rubber stamp parliament.” Rifai’s recent announcements of a $550 million package of new subsidies for fuel and staple products (rice, sugar, livestock, liquefied gas), pay rise for civil servants and security forces were swept aside by rising protests including the right to directly elect the prime minister, to a demand for changes in “how the country is now run.” Jordan, a key CIA counter-terrorism ally, is the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid on a per-capita basis, it has received more than $6 billion in development aid since 1952, the reward for having “pursued one of the most consistently pro-American foreign policies in the Middle East” (Foreign Policy, January 31, 2011).

While the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, at a high-level security conference in Munich warns of a “perfect storm” enveloping the Middle East if leaders do not implement political and social reforms to meet the demands of their people (al-Jazeera, February 5, 2011), tensions have emerged within the US administration and on Capitol Hill over the CIA and other spy agencies failure to warn president Obama adequately (Washington Post, February 3, 2011). Intelligence officials insist they had warned of “instability” but did not know what the “trigger mechanism” would be. As the National Security Council spokesman put it, “Did anyone in the world know in advance that a fruit vendor in Tunisia was going to light himself on fire and start a revolution? No.”

President Obama’s high-sounding advice to Mubarak to listen to what is “being voiced by the Egyptian people,”l his own message to the Egyptian people (a televised address following Mubarak’s address to the nation), “We hear your voices“ is nothing more than a rhetorical ploy, one that evades the unequivocal language in which Tahreer square protestors speak, “Obama needs to be clear…either he stands with Mubarak, or he stands with the Egyptian people” (al-Jazeera, February 4, 2011).

Or, as Hasan Mohammad, Egyptian living in the US, demonstrating outside the White House and the Egyptian embassy in Washington put it, the US should ask Mubarak to “get out now” for Egyptians can do “everything else themselves.” He added, “He [Mubarak] wants to destroy Egypt before he leaves. He thinks he inherited Egypt from his parents, he thinks Egypt is his. No, Egypt is everybody. Egypt is Egyptian; it is not Mubarak.” Other protestors want an end to US military aid to Mubarak, a placard outside the White House read, “Dictator made in the USA.” Another bore a sign equalling $30 billion in military assistance to Egypt with 30 years of dictatorship.

The US, writes Paul J Balle, has kept Mubarak in power, it gave his regime $1.5 billion in aid last year “mainly because he supported America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza” (`The Peoples Revolt,’ February 6, 2011).

Israel blockades Gaza on one side, while Mobarak blockades it on the other. Johan Hari writes of watching Egyptian soldiers refusing to let out sick and dying Palestinians for treatment which they cannot get in Gaza’s collapsing hospitals (The Independent, February 4, 2011).

But there is no reason for the US administration to begrudge the huge amounts of aid as much of it goes back to American defence contractors : Lockheed Martin has taken $3.8 billion from Egypt in the last few years, General Dynamics $2.5 billion, Boeing $1.7 billion (Pratap Chatterjee, Egypt’s Military-Industrial Complex, February 4, 2011). For the Egyptian people, however, there are solid grounds for resentment : US economic aid to Egypt in 2007 amounted to $455 million but translated to only $6 per capita. The total economic aid in 2010 of $200 million provided less than $3 per capita income.

Further, injury is heaped on these insults as tear gas canisters fired by Egyptian security officials in Cairo last week reveal they are manufactured in the US (ABC TV), as 12-gauge shotgun shells show “Made in USA” stamped on their brass heads (Sydney Morning Herald). Hillary Clinton’s “perfect storm” brewing warning conveniently overlooks these when she intones, we condemn in the “strongest terms [the Egyptian government's] attacks on peaceful demonstrators.”

Her slick denunciations also overlook allegations that Egypt’s near-total internet blackout was enabled by a California-based technology company’s sale of equipment which allows the Mubarak government to track online activity, as she urged the Egyptian government to “ensure journalists ability to report on these events to the people in Egypt and to the world,” to not “violate international norms that guarantee freedom of the press.”

And, as the US resists calls to cut military aid to Egypt, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, in an ABC TV interview, speaks of “plenty of [US] military presence throughout the region,” of the defense department’s “higher state of awareness.” The military, he said, is ready to provide any “response or support” in the crisis. This was later clarified, the four-star admiral had meant the US military’s readiness to evacuate American nationals.

As for Mubarak, he too, he says, is “fed up.” “After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go.” It is only the fear of Egypt falling into chaos which prevents him.

Fed in corruption over and above his head and ears is more accurate. Tyrants user-friendly toward the US are known to amass huge personal fortunes, and, as Pepe Escobar writes, “According to a mix of United States, Syrian and Algerian sources [Mubarak's] personal fortune amounts to no less than US$40 billion – stolen from the public treasury in the form of “commissions”, on weapons sales, for instance. The Pharaoh controls loads of real estate, especially in the US; accounts in US, German, British and Swiss banks; and has “links” with corporations such as MacDonald’s, Vodafone, Hyundai and Hermes. Suzanne, the British-Irish Pharaoh’s wife, is worth at least $5 billion. And son Gamal – the one that may have fled to London, now stripped of his role as dynastic heir – also boasts a personal fortune of $17 billion” (Asia Times, February 4, 2011).

Kaan tanle matha ashe, a Bangla proverb, meaning if you pull the ear, along comes the head. Egyptian calls for putting Mubarak on trial, must be supported globally. For pulling the dictator’s ear, will serve us the military-industrial head that breeds and furbishes authoritarianism in the Middle East.

More, next week…