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.”

Published on Saturday, September 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Claudia Lefko

We’ve been here before, confronting this question of children’s art, and why it creates such a stir. I wrote about it in May 2006 when Brandeis University cancelled an exhibit of Palestinian children’s art. This cancellation seems even more egregious because the museum in question is specifically a children’s museum.

Who objects to children’s art in a children’s art museum? And, what should we make of a children’s museum that allows the concerns of those constituents to censor the views of children, denying their right to expression? I’m talking about the Oakland Children’s Museum (MOCHA) and its decision to cancel the exhibit A Child’s View of Gaza, which was to have opened there this week, on September 24.

One can only conclude that those who have objected to this exhibit are troubled by the content. For whatever reason they want it buried, out of site and out of mind. They must be a powerful group. They succeeded in convincing the museum’s board to ignore its stated goal of “…advocating for the arts as an essential part of a strong, vital and diverse community”. And, they have put the museum in the uncomfortable position of denying Palestinian children their rights as guaranteed by Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC): the right of every child to express his or her views and to have those views given due consideration.

“The artist’s job is to be a witness to his time in history.” said the artist Robert Rauschenberg, and so it is with our young artists. Seeing, as we know, comes before words. A child looks and recognizes people, places and things before she or he can speak; “views” are developing from the moment of birth. So, imagine the views taken in during the long, wide-eyed hours of childhood in Palestine or in Baghdad on in Afghanistan. Imagine the tension, worry and preoccupation on the faces of the adults; imagine the looks on the faces of the of soldiers as they patrol the streets, or search homes. Imagine the hundreds upon hundreds of violent scenes that could and do play out in front of children living in war zones. This is their world. It surrounds them day in and day out. And oftentimes, they have not only no words, but no opportunity to tell us what they think and feel about this.

Taking crayon or pencil in hand, a child speaks out on his or her own behalf: this is me, my situation, this is what my life looks like. It isn’t easy for adults to bare witness to these stories. I’ve seen exhibits of children’s art from Hiroshima, from Spain during the Civil War, from Viet Nam, from Darfur, from the concentration camps in WWII and from Iraqi children. What we see in some of this art is the human cost of war, the terror and agony of being a child in an unpredictable, dangerous and violent world, a world gone inexplicably mad. A world where you are not safe, where even your parents cannot protect you.

This art is not about politics, it is about the human condition. If we cannot look at it, if it is too painful, it is because the world we have created, full of violence and conflict, is not one that is good for children. The famous 60’s poster with one giant flower said it all: War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.

We have a legal as well as a moral obligation to let Palestinian children, and all children express their views freely and to give those views our due consideration. If we are disturbed by children’s images from war zones, we should work on their behalf to create a better, more just and peaceful world , a world where children are truly valued and where their care, protection and overall well being is a social, economic and political priority. To do anything less is to deny the significance of children as the future of our planet.

Aldous Huxley wrote this, in his introduction to “They Still Draw Pictures! A collection of 60 drawings made by Spanish children during the war” (1938): The most that individual men and women of good will can do is to work on behalf of some general solution of the problem of large-scale violence and, meanwhile to succour those who, like the child artists of this exhibition, have been made the victims of the worlds collective crime and madness.

The museum, in canceling the exhibit has dealt yet another blow to children and their rights; surely a children’s museum, of all institutions, can do better than this.

To see examples from this exhibit: mocha.org

Claudia Lefko is the founding director (2001) of The Iraqi Children’s Art Exchange in Northampton MA. She is a long-time educator, activist and advocate for children.

Related link: Letter from Bangladesh

Muhammad Yunus banks on beating the enemies of microfinance

The Nobel peace prize winner discusses recent attacks on his schemes to relieve poverty, from within Bangladesh and abroad

Madeleine Bunting
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 July 2011 09.43 BST

Muhammad Yunus is good at being calm. At 7.30am in a chilly office in central London, he talks with urbane charm and all the dispassionate objectivity of a philosopher as he considers the Bangladeshi government’s campaign against him, and the possibility that it might destroy his life’s work building up the world’s first microfinance bank.

He is Bangladesh’s most famous son, known as the world’s banker to the poor, winner in 2006 with the Grameen Bank of the Nobel peace prize, a tireless campaigner at global summits for microfinance and social enterprise who can count Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy and Mary Robinson among his many friends. But as the saying goes, a prophet is never recognised in his own country. Neither the global acclaim – nor the protestations of both the French and the US government – is making much difference to a government intent on destroying Yunus’s hold on Grameen Bank and the network of social enterprise companies he has developed over the last four decades.

Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed has accused him of “sucking blood from the poor”, and others have alleged corruption despite official government inquiries clearing him last month of any wrongdoing. In the end, the only charge that has stuck is that at a sprightly 70, he is too old to be managing director of the Grameen Bank. A charge made, incidentally, by the 77-year-old finance minister.

“I’m not hurt by the vilification in the press; I’m disappointed and I’m worried. I don’t want to see an organisation which has come all this way and brought so much good to the country and brought power to the people, come to this. Many people are angry but anger doesn’t solve anything,” he says.

“I want to calm things down. If we are prepared, we can do damage control.”

This is his first interview since the crisis broke early this year. Yunus is refusing to talk to the Bangladeshi media for fear of further inflaming the controversy, and he is adamant that he will not be drawn into speculating as to why the government has forced his recent resignation. He simply says: “I can’t see the purpose, I can’t see what the country gains, what the government gains.”

There is certainly a lot to lose. Any bank depends on confidence and the last few months have been turbulent for Grameen’s 22,000 employees and 8.36 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women. So far, repayment rates on the millions of small loans are holding steady and borrowers are not withdrawing deposits – either could bring the bank to collapse. Yunus’s calmness in London is all about steadying the confidence of his Bangladeshi audience. As one of the most efficient and stable economic institutions in a desperately poor country, there are many who are hoping he will succeed and that Grameen will weather this storm.

It was a YouTube version of a documentary film made by a Dane and broadcast in Norway late last year about Yunus, Grameen Bank and microfinance generally that prompted the outcry against him. The film – in Norwegian, it has not yet been translated – eventually prompted a government review of the Grameen Bank, investigating a number of charges ranging from some obscure accounting between Grameen subsidiaries and the Norwegian aid agency in the 1990s, to the charging of high interest rates to poor borrowers.

The government review cleared Yunus in April, but made a number of recommendations for the future of the Grameen Bank. At the same time, the government followed another line of attack with the finance minister ordering that he resign because he is too old; Grameen Bank took the minister to court and lost. Reluctantly, Yunus decided that to avoid further turbulence, he had no option but to resign. He is hoping that “good sense will prevail” and the government will allow him to take up a position of non-executive chair to oversee the transition.

While Yunus refuses to be drawn on the reasons for this bitter political dogfight, his many friends and allies are rushing to his help. An international campaign, Friends of the Grameen, was launched in March, chaired by Mary Robinson, while both the US and the French governments have remonstrated with the Bangladeshi authorities. Clinton phoned to offer her personal support; Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to assure Yunus of his. It’s all a far cry from the day he stood up in Oslo and talked of putting “poverty into a museum” in his Nobel prize acceptance speech.

The most likely explanation for the attacks on him is that Yunus’s brief foray into politics in 2007 unnerved Sheikh Hasina. He announced he was going to set up a political party but ended up abandoning his the idea after only two months. His huge global reputation and the economic weight of the Grameen brand has made enemies insecure.

Yunus may be suddenly unemployed, but he is not short of offers. There has been plenty of interest from all over the world, he admits, adding that he has been offered institutes to head, initiatives to lead, figurehead positions. But on this he is very clear: he is not leaving Bangladesh.

If the man is under siege, so is the idea he nurtured. There is a crisis in the microfinance sector in India, where high rates of interest in the private sector microfinance banks were linked with suicides. Yunus is defiant about microfinance, which he still passionately believes has been of benefit to millions.

“We never said microfinance was a silver bullet,” he insists. “Or why would I bother to create 50 other companies ranging from agriculture to telecommunications? Job creation is the solution to poverty. Loans should only be given to fund enterprises. They mustn’t ever be used for ‘consumption smoothing’ or how can people pay back the loans? It has to be about income generation.”

“When microfinance spread across the world, some people abused it. Some went berserk. In my opinion, if there is any personal profit involved, it should not be called microfinance, which should be totally devoted to the benefit of poor people. People used the respect for microfinance. In every country where there was microfinance they needed proper regulatory authorities to oversee the sector and legislation to define it. I knew that the sector was crippled by an inadequate legal framework.”

Yunus recognises there was some “overbilling” of microfinance, but sees that as part of the way you win donors’ interest in a project. He certainly used powerful rhetoric to urge on efforts in tackling poverty. But beyond that he is unapologetic. He didn’t oversell it; when he talked of putting poverty in a museum it was a “hope”, he says, it was not a plan. And he is emphatic: “Microfinance does reduce poverty. Look at the people who have joined Grameen. It’s the most intensively researched organisation in the world.”

The research in Bangladesh has been positive but then the country’s economy has been growing at 8% a year, and the research has not been rigorous enough to separate out which has been responsible for poverty reduction. Yunus knows these debates about evidence but he will give them no quarter, and he simply repeats: “I believe it reduces poverty; it’s become the fashion to be negative about Grameen.”

“It was the media who built up microfinance,” he says.

On one thing even critics of microfinance agree. Whatever the problems now bedevilling the sector, its originator is being treated appallingly in Bangladesh. As for Yunus, he stoically insists his work must go on. He spends as much time talking about social business now as he does about microfinance, such as developing partnerships with businesses such as the food company Danone to create enterprise schemes for the poor. Institutes dedicated to social business have recently been launched in Glasgow and Paris.

“I’m programmed to keep working,” he smiles, and then he allows himself a little self-aggrandisement. “It’s like Socrates or Galileo. If you are saying something different or new, and it doesn’t fit, it will create tension. If people applaud, you’re not doing something new. If people get shocked, you’re in business.”

July 3rd 2011. 7:50 am.

In an exclusive interview with ShahidulNews, secretary of the National Committee to Protect Oil-Gas-Minerals-Power-Ports, Anu Muhammad, professor of economics of Jahangirnagar University, speaking outside the Communist Party of Bangladesh office in New Paltan in Dhaka, talked of over 50 activists having been arrested by the police in the early hours of the hartal.

Professor Muhammad was amongst those arrested but was later released. Other activists who remain arrested include active member of the committee Zonayed Saki and Saiful Huq a leading member of Biplobi Workers Party.

They were arrested this morning as they were heading towards their office. The professor spoke of the police having used force and numerous activists being beaten up.

Sunday’s hartal was called on the 18th January in protest against the controversial government treaty (PSC) with the American power giant ConocoPhillips. Activists maintain the contract, which has not yet been made public, only allows Bangladesh to have 20 per cent of the explored gas from Bay of Bengal, allowing the company to export the remaining 80 per cent.

Eyewitness report from Nasrin Siraj:

Anu Muhammad, professor of economics of Jahangirnagar University and member secretary of National Committee to  protect oil-gas-mineral resources, power and port is arrested from Paltan today (3 July) at 6:53 a.m.. While he was walking towards the office of Communist Party of Bangladesh to join the other activists of National Committee for strike campaign, at least 40 anti riot police came forward, grabbed him and took him away in a prisoner’s van. During the arrest he was silent. Anha F Khan, Mehedi Hassan and I were accompanying him today morning while he was walking from his residence. Mehedi Hasan was also arrested.

Today, from the very morning police started arresting activists of the National Committee. First, at 5:45 a.m leader of Student Union of Jahangirnagar University was arrested from Paltan. All the central offices of left political parties in Topkhana Road and Paltan were surrounded by police from the early morning. Almost all the central leaders of the National Committee are under police custody now.

Breaking News: Nasrin Siraj has since been arrested.

Video Clip from Shomoy TV

Earlier interviews with Anu Muhammad

Update at 9:30 pm July 3 2011.

Professor Anu Muhammad, speaking from Paltan Thana (Police Station) in Motijheel reported that except for a handful of activists, the rest of the people arrested were still in the police station. “The government is trying to lump our activists with the Islamic Movement to confuse the issue and divert attention from their controversial signing of the ‘sell-out’ contract.”

News update: 10: 10 pm July 3rd 2011.

All arrested activists at Paltan Thana have been released. Paltan had the highest concentration of high profile activists, including Mushrefa Mishu, Saiful Huq, Zonayed Saki and Ruhin Hussain Prince and a large number of women activists. Nasrin Siraj Annie had been earlier released at 7:30 pm.

Activists at Shahbagh Thana and Lalbagh Thana are yet to be released. A large number of respected citizens, as well as MPs of the ruling party campaigned for the release of the activists. Barister Sara Hossain and other lawyers were also present at Paltan Thana and demanded the release of the activists.

Except for one activist, all other activists from Shahbagh and Lalbagh Thana were also released by 10:30 pm. Jubilant crowds clapped as the leaders of the protest rally were released.

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The regular weekly “Solidarity for Limon” rally had been steadily attracting bigger crowds, despite the monsoon rains. The gathering this Friday the 24th June 2011 was especially large. The street plays were popular and since this was not an event aligned to either of the main political parties, it attracted ordinary people who came to express solidarity, or merely to enjoy the performance.

This week’s performance, a drama called Khekshial (Jackal), performed by Aranyak Natyadal in front of the National Museum at around 4:30pm, was however disrupted when two men burst through the surrounding crowd and began wrecking the props.

Attack visible from 8 mins 58 secs onwards.

The audience, intially slow to react, as they thought it was part of the play, soon went after the men, but they disappeared into the crowd. Later a young man called Al-Amin was caught by the crowd and accused of being one of the attackers. The man was taken away by Shahbag police, who arrived sometime after the event. The police are reported to have released Al-Amin as he was an innocent by-stander.

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by rahnuma ahmed

In the end, treachery will betray even itself.

Roman proverb

When the prime minister, the finance minister etc., not known for being democratically-oriented, feel obliged to respond publicly according to the terms and conditions set by the National Oil-Gas Committee, it is clear that the tide is shifting.

It is clear that  the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports (NCPOGMR) has made a significant impact on public consciousness. That there is a growing national awareness of the issue of ownership of natural resources; of the terms on which production sharing contracts are signed with international oil companies (IOCs); a growing suspicion that exporting extracted gas may not be the best way of solving the nation’s energy shortfall. More precisely, of the hollowness of the government’s reasoning as to why gas blocks need to be, must necessarily be, leased out to multinational companies.  More broadly, of whether the nation’s ruling class, regardless of which political party is in power, does act in the interests of the nation, of its people.

It is clear from what top ruling party leaders are now obliged to say, to repeatedly say, we are patriotic, we are not treacherous, that they have been forced to cede ground.

It is clear that a moral battle has been won.

Two days after the deal was signed with energy giant ConocoPhillips on June 16, 2011 for deep sea exploration in the Bay of Bengal, prime minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to say, we are not doing anything which goes against the interests of the nation, against the interests of the people. She was echoing what her cabinet colleagues and energy officials had said earlier. The finance minister had affirmed at the signing ceremony, the government has protected the country’s interest.   Petrobangla’s chairman Hossain Monsur too, had said, the production sharing contract contains nothing which goes against the national interest. Similar words had been mouthed by the prime minister’s energy advisor Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury.

No one is a better patriot, no one is a better protector of the nation’s interests than me, said the prime minister (Who is a better patriot, asks PM, bdnews24, June 18, 2011).

News reports indicate, she then went off into a rant. Where was the National Oil-Gas committee during the previous government when there was no development in the country? When there was no electricity production? When there was no gas exploration? When investors were kept waiting due to lack of gas and electricity?

Leaders and activists of the National Committee were exactly where they are now. They had demanded then, as they demand now, that energy policies should benefit the people, not the multinational companies. That it is detrimental to the national interest.

But I wonder whether the prime minister remembers where she herself had been when there was `no development in the country, when there was no electricity production…’ etc. etc. When the people of Phulbari had risen up against Asia Energy’s proposed open-pit mine. When an elderly woman had said, “No, we do not want the coal mine. What will we eat?” When a young man had asked, `Two coal mines have been built in neighbouring areas. What development has it brought, tell me?’ When paramilitary forces had opened fire on August 26, 2006. Three persons killed. Many more injured (`You cannot eat coal.’ Resistance in Phulbari, New Age, August 19, 2008).

Sheikh Hasina, then leader of the opposition, had visited Phulbari. She had publicly pledged to resist any move to start open-pit mining in Phulbari, or at any other place in the country.  She had lent support to the hartal called by the National Committee on August 30, 2006; had publicly called upon the government led by Khaleda Zia, to stick to the agreement it had entered into with the people of Phulbari.

It is a pledge that has been betrayed since the government, by all indications, is moving ahead to implement an open-pit pilot project at Barapukuria, with top-ranking government leaders desperately trying to shore up support for open-pit mining.  The very leaders who earlier opposed it, now insist, open-pit mining will yield higher economic benefits.

Is it a wonder then that the National Committee accuses the government of betraying the people? Of betraying themselves? Their own words, their own actions? That it accuses them of treachery?

The chorus of voices to be seen and heard now, had been noticeably absent when cables from US embassy Dhaka, WikiLeaked on 24 December night, revealed that US ambassador James Moriarty had met the prime minister’s energy advisor, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, had sought assurances that US-based Conoco Phillips (from among 7 bidders) be awarded two of the uncontested blocks in the Bay of Bengal.

New Age had contacted foreign minister Dipu Moni, and the energy adviser Chowdhury. It had sought official responses on the disclosure. They had avoided questions; a day later, they stopped receiving calls. They did not responded to text messages either (WikiLeaks Bangladesh-1, New Age, December 27, 2010).

Till date, this government, which won a landslide victory in the December 2008 elections, has not responded to the WikiLeaks disclosure.

Instead, top-ranking government leaders keep mouthing words, no, the contracts are not against the national interest. We would never do such a thing, would we?

How can one tell if the contracts are not made publicly available? All contracts signed thus far for coal and natural gas, have been kept secret. They have not been placed before the parliament—the people’s elected body—either.  There has been no parliamentary discussion. To top it all, these contracts have been kept secret from the parliamentary standing committee on energy as well.

Is it not reasonable to want to read the contracts, especially in the light of WikiLeaks disclosure which served only to confirm, and very definitively so, what the National Committee had suspected all along?

But instead, whenever specific criticisms of the terms of the contract are raised, for instance, that the leasing company has been awarded the right to sell off 80% of the gas extracted, that they are likely to do so given our own experiences and that of other third world countries, that this will not solve the country’s energy crisis, or, that the multinationals will sell it to us at very high prices, that gas prices will double from earlier prices, $2.92, or 210 taka for a million cubic foot to $5-6 or 420 taka,  that this will push up the prices of daily necessities and services further (rice, lentils etc., to transport), that we can see through the government’s excuses, that just because India and Myanmar are going ahead with exploration in their own offshore territory, does not mean that unless we sign over blocks to MNCs we will lose control of that which indisputably belongs to Bangladesh, that we should instead pursue a different path to development, by retaining control over our natural resources, by strengthening the nation’s exploration agencies, that we should stop moaning, `we have neither the money nor the technology’ that it is the political will that matters….

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’ll stick to the issue of contract instead. All reasonable concerns raised are either dismissed by the Petrobangla chairman, by high officials at the energy ministry as being merely `speculative.’ Or, they are pooh-poohed by our garrulent finance minister, it is `utter nonsense.’  But I have noticed that some of these high officials slip up in their enthusiastic defence, this wont-happen, no, that wont-hapen either, where does it say in the contract?

But exactly. Where is the contract? Why has the government not made any contract available publicly? Why are they secreted away? The only document that we, members of the public, have access to, is the production sharing contract (PSC model 2008), which Anu Muhammad, member secretary, National Committee, is quick to point out, was designed during the caretaker government and was uploaded on the net to facilitate international bidding. Not to elicit comments or suggestions from members of the public. Does secrecy over contracts not lend credence to B D Rahmatullah’s accusation that the power crisis has been manufactured, has been `artificially created’ to push through anti-people power projects like rental power plants? There is reason to take his word for it, he was former director-general of the Power Cell. `Our engineers,’ he says, `are willing to sell their country just for a ticket abroad’ (Budhbar, August 18, 2010).

Did the Awami League sign a muchleka with foreign powers that if voted to power, our natural resources would be handed over?

As the issue of caretaker government rages between the two major political parties, which government will hold the next parliamentary elections, will it be the current one, or a caretaker government, as rumors fly around of the dice being stacked so that Hossain Mohd Ershad and his Jatiya Party, currently a member of the ruling alliance, can form the loyal opposition, as it increasingly seems that the war crimes trials are being drawn-out to help win another election, as Ershad gets acquitted in a money-laundering case filed over 15 years ago (as I write),  suspicions keep deepening.

Suspicions which led the National Committee to organise a seige of the energy ministry—dubbed Kashimbazjar Kuthi—on June 14, 2011, to protest against the government’s decision to sign the deal with ConocoPhillips.  Police action prevented the seige from taking place, protestors were clubbed, many were hurt and injured.

Mir Jafar, who swore by the Holy Quran to fight the English, bowing before Robert Clive after the Battle of Plassey, 1757, which inaugurated 200 years of British colonial rule and exploitation in India. Artist Francis Hayman, 1757

Our rulers have not learned any lessons from history. Despite Mir Jafar being one of the most despised and reviled names, despite his having been unable to `benefit’ in the narrow sense of the word from his act of treachery.

The demoted army chief of Nawab Sirajuddoula, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, entered into a secret pact with the British, negotiated by William Watts, chief of the British factory at Kasimbazar. In exchange of promises of huge bribes and the Nawabship of Bengal, Mir Jafar withheld his troops when Sirajuddoula fought with the British East India Company’s army on June 23, 1757. Despite being numerically superior, the nawab’s forces lost; forced to flee, Sirajuddoula was later caught and executed

Later day historians agree that although the purported reason given for the Battle of Plassey was Sirajuddoula’s capture of Fort William in Kolkata, the Company had actually decided that only a change of regime would help it advance its interests. That the East India Company’s geo-political ambition and the larger dynamics of colonial conquest are essential to understanding the larger picture. For, the conquest of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had led to further conquests. Of India. Of South Asia.

And what of geo-political ambitions now? Critical commentators agree that the the US-led `war on terror’ is actually a war for energy resources. That America’s foreign oil dependency is being militarised by the US government, that it has chosen to rely on military forces to protect access to foreign oil. And that, as other players (China, Russia) enter the stage, the US administration is turning to seek other energy sources.

But to return to history, what happened to Mir Jafar? Installed as the Nawab, he was a mere puppet figure. He was un-installed when he realised that British expectations were boundless, but was re-installed after Mir Qasim proved to be too strong-minded. Another quisling, Jagat Seth, hereditary banker to the Mughal Emperor and the Nawab of Bengal, reportedly went mad after Clive refused to give him 5% of the loot promised.

To return to the present, close to Mir Jafar’s palace in Murshidabad, in ruins, stands a gate known as Nimak Haramer Deori (the traitor’s gate).

Published in New Age, Monday, June 20, 2011 http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/editorial/23090.html

Himal Magazine

February 2011

By Kanak Mani Dixit

Can a formal bilateral communiqué be a ‘game changer’, foretell a ‘paradigm shift’, in a Southasian relationship? If India and Bangladesh manage to follow through on promises to open up their economies for transit and trade as set out in a memorandum of January 2010, a new era could dawn across the land borders of Southasia. The challenges are bureaucratic inertia in New Delhi and ultra-nationalist politics in Dhaka.

The political partition of the Subcontinent in 1947 did not have to lead to economic partition, but that is ultimately what happened. This did not take place right away, and many had believed that the borders of India and Pakistan’s eastern and western flanks were demarcations that would allow for the movement of people and commerce. It was as late as the India-Pakistan war of 1965 that the veins and capillaries of trade were strangulated. In the east, in what was to become Bangladesh just a few years later, the river ferries and barges that connected Kolkata with the deltaic region, and as far up as Assam, were terminated. The metre-gauge railway lines now stopped at the frontier, and through-traffic of buses and trucks came to a halt. The latest act of separation was for India to put up an elaborate barbed-wire fence along much of the 4000 km border, a project that is nearly complete. Today, what mainly passes under these wires are Bangladeshi migrants seeking survival in the faraway metropolises of India – and contraband.

Photo credit: Sworup Nhasiju

Working relationship: Prime Minister Singh welcomes his counterpart to the presidential palace, 11 January 2010 Photo credit: Reuters

Against the wall of mistrust, what does Bangladesh have that is so crucial to India? The answer lies in one word: transit. And the most significant concession made by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the New Delhi talks in January 2010 – some would say courageously, others rashly – was to override the mindset against providing transit. In essence, she decided not to over-negotiate.

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By Shahidul Alam

Bangladesh will be 40 years old next year. Back in 1971, its civil war and declaration of independence gained global notice thanks to the Concert for Bangladesh, which drew over 40,000 to Madison Square Garden in New York. Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and other stars of the music world performed at the first major concert held for a social cause, concentrating attention on what was then East Pakistan, devastated first by the cyclone in Bhola and then by the atrocities committed by the Pakistani Army.

Bangladesh continues to have an eventful history. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father, was assassinated in 1975. The CIA is alleged to have played a role. Ziaur (‘Zia’) Rahman, the general who followed Mujib, was also assassinated, as were many others during those tumultuous years.

Zia moved away from the socialism and secularism on which the original Bangladeshi constitution had been built, and moved closer to the US and the Middle East. His successor, General Ershad, strengthened the Middle East ties by declaring Bangladesh an Islamic state. Secular Bangladesh had been buried.

Bangladeshis’ love for democracy is not to be underestimated, however. Resistance grew in the streets and, with the military refusing to bail him out, Ershad eventually stepped down. For once a deposed leader went to a jail cell rather than a grave.

Since then the democracy available has still been distinctly less than perfect. The two main parties – the Awami League, ruled by Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), ruled by Zia’s widow Khaleda Zia – have effectively taken it in turns to hold power, each sounding much more plausible in opposition than in government. Attempts to fix the elections by the most recent BNP government in 2007 infuriated the opposition, leading to violence in the streets.

The US and the European Union decided a pliant government backed by the military was much easier to handle than some messy democracy, and an ex-World Bank employee was brought in to head the military-backed ‘caretaker government’. This puppet government started by arbitrarily extending its prescribed 90-day tenure to two years. It then tried to break the existing parties, by jailing the top leaders and setting up its own party, but failed miserably. Eventually the two years ran out and the people were in no mood to accept another extension. Deals were hurriedly made and the unplanned exit took place without violence.

On election day in December 2008, a young man showed off the purple stain on his thumb. He had voted and was proud of it. After two years of effective military rule, Bangladeshis had voted in huge numbers. The landslide victory for the Awami League hadn’t been predicted. Occasional turnouts of over 100 per cent were somewhat embarrassing, but by and large it was a fair election. The overwhelming majority was something the new government, which had promised change, could use finally to set things right.

But soon it was business as usual. Feuds over the spoils led to intra-party fights. Accusations of sexual abuse by the student wing of the Awami League led to fingerwagging at her own party by Sheikh Hasina, but people were not convinced. The government seemed more interested in territorial disputes rather than the serious rise in prices, the frequent power cuts and the infrastructure failure.

The problems do not get any smaller. Bangladesh is one of the countries likely to be worst affected by global warming. Financial mismanagement in the US is beginning to affect Bangladeshi migrant workers, the biggest revenue earners in the country. For the 135 million Bangladeshis who live on less than two dollars a day, the promised change is long overdue.

Bangladesh Fact File

Leader Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
Economy: GNI per capita $520 (Pakistan $980, UK $45,390). Two-thirds of Bangladeshis are farmers, but more than three-quarters of Bangladesh’s export earnings derive from the garment industry, which employs over 3 million people (mainly women). Remittances from workers in other countries are also vital to the economy.
Monetary unit: Taka
Main exports Garments, seafood, jute and jute goods, leather.
People 160 million. Annual population growth rate 1.6%. People per square kilometre 1,111 (UK 253).
Health Infant mortality 43 per 1,000 live births (Pakistan 72, UK 5). Lifetime risk of maternal death 1 in 51 (UK 1 in 8,200).
Environment Given the consumption habits of the average Bangladeshi and the fact that virtually everything is recycled, the country has always had a low carbon footprint. However, the complete environmental disregard of industrialists has led to very high levels of pollution. Arsenic in groundwater, originally brought about by UN-sponsored tubewells, threatens to kill millions.
Culture Bangla culture has a rich history stretching back over many centuries – the earliest Bangla literary text dates from the eighth century. This heritage is shared with the Indian state of West Bengal. The Chittagong Hill Tracts are home to distinct ethnic groups collectively known as Jumma.
Religion Muslim 83%, Hindu 16%, tiny Buddhist and Christian minorities.
Language Bangla 98%.

Sources UNICEF, UNDP, Guia del Mundo, CIA.

Bangladesh ratings in detail (Previously reviewed 2000)

Income distribution: The gap between rich and poor has increased. The garment industry brought in $12.3 billion in 2009, but the minimum wage for garment workers ($25 a month) is among the lowest in the world.

Life expectancy: 66 years (Pakistan 67, UK 79). Improving, but families can be destroyed by a major illness due to the high costs of medical care.

Literacy: 54%. Primary education has improved, especially for girls – there are now more girls than boys in school – but poverty forces many to drop out of the education system.

Position of women: The role of women in urban civil society is impressive. The garment industry, while exploitative, has given rural women options. Women inherit half what men do by Islamic law, but in practice women inherit even less than that.

Freedom: Despite government repression, private media, especially television, have played a major role in highlighting irregularities. The government media are used entirely for propaganda.

Sexual minorities: Homosexuality is illegal and punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment or more. It is therefore difficult to be publicly gay, but ambiguous sexuality is accepted and hijras (men adopting female gender identity) often perform in religious ceremonies. Gay groups exist, but use other criteria for their association.
NI Assessment (Politics)

The new government had a landslide electoral victory. It had the public mandate for bringing about change, its campaign promise. But it has been business as usual. Extrajudicial killings have increased, as have the prices of essentials. The government has been more concerned with political games than with addressing serious issues. Unless it can control the rampant hooliganism of its student wing, the Chatra League, the next election will see a complete reversal.