The Face That Launched a Thousand Drones?

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

By Anne Holmes

The much talked about August 9 Time magazine cover, unabashed in its aim to shore up support for the war effort in Afghanistan, has left many still shaking their heads in disbelief at such brazen exploitation of a woman’s suffering. It’s not the first time the plight of Afghan women has been used to manipulate public opinion. It’s a narrative we have become so accustomed to since the 2001 invasion, that many of my most intelligent female friends did not recognize it for the subversive emotional blackmail that it is. More important, they said, was the attention it brought to women’s issues. Well, let us talk about those issues in earnest, then.

The picture, by South African photographer Jodi Bieber, shows an 18-year old woman by the name of Bibi Aisha. Her story is tragic, and all too common in places like Afghanistan. Married off at a young age, she was beaten regularly by her in-laws and forced to sleep in the stable among the animals. Aisha decided to flee, but women wandering around on their own don’t go unnoticed in Afghanistan, and before long, she ended up in a prison in Kandahar. While not officially a crime, running away is often treated as such and can receive hefty sentences; in this case three years. But her father found her, and took her back to her in-laws. Her punishment for disgracing the family was decreed: her husband, A Taliban according to some accounts, should cut off her nose and ears. She was left for dead in the mountains of Oruzgan. As a testament to her fighter spirit, she managed to drag herself to her father’s house, who took her to a US Army hospital where she was cared for until they turned her over to a shelter in Kabul. This was 2009.

After an article about her ordeal appeared in the Daily Beast in December of last year, the Grossman Burn Foundation in California offered to perform reconstructive surgery on her this past spring, long before her face appeared on Time’s cover. She arrived in the US to begin treatment last week, just as her portrait appeared on newsstands amid the media frenzy surrounding the recent release of some 76,900 classified Afghan war documents. Perfect timing.

Aisha’s story will have a happy ending. America will have done right by her. She will get her nose back and hopefully go on to live a perfectly normal life far away from her abusers. It’s a heart-warming story. But what about the remaining 15 million Afghan women, nearly 90% of whom it is estimated suffer from some form of domestic abuse, and moreover, what does this have to do with America’s war?

Most people will never read the accompanying article in Time magazine. They will only see the disturbing gaze of a mutilated woman and the message scrawled beneath it “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” question mark excluded. Most will never examine the mechanisms within them that bring about the deep emotional response. Subliminal advertisers know all too well that a powerful image can make a target audience ignore the caption, all the while absorbing it subconsciously, reducing them to zombie-like consumers ready to do whatever the ad tells them to: buy this car, try this diet, sell your house, dye your hair, get a new phone, support our war. Using emotional triggers like scantily clad women in ads that sell anything from watches to hair-loss treatment, have proven effective time and time again. A strong image can be a thousand times more powerful than the words that accompany it, but words can manipulate the message of an image in far more virulent ways. The photograph alone is subject to interpretation. But in this case, the two combined, we are being sent a clear message that tells us this is what will happen if we leave Afghanistan. Who among us wants this to happen to another Afghan woman? Guilt is the precise emotional response that makes us suddenly feel that being against the war is somehow a travesty.

Setting aside the obvious (that this is what is happening now, today, on our watch) how can Time editor Rick Stengel be so sure of the future? “I think we answer questions. I don’t think we ask them,” Mr. Stengel said in an interview with Katie Couric when she pointed out the missing question mark at the end of the headline. It’s one thing to draw conclusions about questions that can actually be answered, like is there undeniable evidence that Bernie Madoff cheated lots of people out of money? It is another to predict the future of a foreign country at war, something analysts, historians and military advisors have been unable to do since time immemorial.

Mr. Stengel explained his editorial choice in the first pages of the magazine as follows: “What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents,” he said, referring to the recent release of leaked classified papers titledThe Afghan War Diaries by whistleblower website Wikileaks. The White House has been struggling desperately to convince the public that we can’t leave Afghanistan amid the fallout following the leak, a trove of documents that reveal the true horrors of the war campaign on the ground, and it seems Mr. Stengel decided to play steward to the Pentagon and help sway public opinion.

In his chosen message, two points of absurdity emerge: when in the history of mankind has a war ever been fought in the name of women’s rights, and how can one justify the murder and mutilation of thousands of innocents in the name of eradicating domestic abuse, never mind the fact that the Pentagon has no vested interest in the said cause. Countries don’t spend billions of dollars to mobilize troops to liberate women from the chains of institutionalized misogyny.

Why then, should we believe that saving the Aishas of Afghanistan is a just cause for war? It’s a narrative we have heard periodically for nine years, though never when it stood to benefit the women in question. In the lead up to the war, we were shown images of Afghan women being beaten and executed by the Taliban at Kabul’s infamous soccer stadium. Stories in the press abounded about the terrible living conditions of women under the Taliban, pulling on the heart strings of the typically more pacifist female demographic, and yet, nary a member of congress brought the matter to the floor prior to 2001. If it was really a just cause for mounting a full-scale invasion, it begs the most conspicuous question: why have we not done so in other parts of the world where our sisters are suffering too?

It’s the same ludicrous line we’ve been fed about wars in the name of democracy and freedom. We went in to Iraq to liberate the people from a terrible dictator. What we ended up doing is “liberating” well over 4 million people of life, limb, or home, ripping the country asunder, ushering in extremist factions that made some of the once secular nation’s women dress in the code of Hijab or wear a Burqa for the first time in their lives.

So why have we heard this line about the women every time proponents of the war seem to be dwindling? Because it works. Look no further for evidence than a recently leaked CIA document in March of this year, drawn up after the Dutch decided to pull out of the war. Amid fears that Germany and France, who supply the third and fourth largest contingents to Afghanistan, might follow suit, it suggests pushing stories about abused Afghan women to drum up support for the war:

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive scepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

But women in Afghanistan suffer abuse at the hands of Talibs and non-Talibs alike. It’s a social problem, not a Taliban problem. Of course, ousting the Taliban did women a favour in many regards. They regained suffrage, for one. Yes, today women nearly fill the 25% quota for parliamentary seats, and education is no longer officially forbidden. But how many women really benefit from the new constitution? What is written on paper is rarely applied in practice for the vast majority of women, particularly those living in rural areas, which represent about 77% of the population.

According to a recent survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), “more than 87 percent of all women suffer from domestic abuse, making the country one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.” That is today. Are we to believe that 100% of women were being abused under the Taliban, or will be if they return to power? Is that meagre 13% of violence-free women really the result of the ISAF mission?

In 2007 I did a story on Afghan women who self-immolate. They are so desperate that, one day, something compels them to douse themselves with petrol and strike a match. I listened to their stories with unease. They were beaten, raped, used as prostitutes, molested and enslaved; all by husbands, fathers, cousins, uncles, brothers, or in-laws. Not one of them was from Taliban territory. Though it’s impossible to get a real sense of the numbers, most agree that the phenomenon is on the rise, and yet, we are meant to believe that the war effort is making progress on the front of women’s rights.

Oppression and brutality against women are not endemic to the Taliban alone in Afghanistan. Last year, President Karzai, in a bid to gain votes from the country’s Shia minority (roughly 19%) passed a controversial new law curtailing women’s rights. The Shiite Personal Status Law (SPSL), allows a man to deny his wife food if she does not submit to his sexual will, gives custody of children to fathers and grandfathers, and requires a woman to get permission from her family to work or to travel outside the home without a male escort. “It also, in effect, enables a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’,” says Human Rights Watch.

It’s worth noting that the Taliban are Sunni, not Shia, and that the US-backed president has enacted a law for the non-Taliban sector of society, rolling back rights for women that were written into the constitution. Before the elections, the Times Online reported that “the United States and Britain [were] opposed to any strong public protest [against the law] because they fear[ed] that speaking out could disrupt [the] election.”  The bill was pushed through parliament in February of 2009 and came into effect in July of last year. Afghan women fumed, while US and UK leaders stood by, and where was Time’s cover advocating for women’s rights then? Here are the covers they ran in February 2009.

Central to the debate about the message the Time cover sends, is the question are we really making progress for women – and if so, why should we believe that a good reason to continue fighting? While many people were moved by the cover, some things just don’t add up. After nine years of war, the public has grown wary of these kinds of media stunts. We are not so dumb anymore. The Bush years are over. Challenging our leaders is no longer tantamount to a capital offence. Not “supporting the troops” is no longer suggestive of treason, since so many of them are returning home to join the growing anti-war movement. Support for the war has plunged to an all-time low (36%). Too many US soldiers have committed suicide or come home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People are starting to feel uncomfortable about the number of Afghan civilian casualties, which sadly should have been an issue long ago, but what the Wikileaks documents show us is that the army has been cooking the numbers. All those deaths of “enemy combatants” were in reality far too often civilians. Such facts Americans are not happy to learn. The truth is coming out, though the editors of Time, like the Pentagon, obviously want to deflect our attention from it by shoving our faces in another gruesome reality that somehow makes even the staunchest pacifist wonder if maybe we should soldier on.

In my discussions with friends about the cover, I was amazed how many educated, sharp women couldn’t see how they were being manipulated. Many felt it was much more important to shed light on the plight of women, and missed the absurdity of the message attached to it. Some of them were Iranian expats, for whom the subject of women’s rights is all too close to home. But then I asked, what if Time magazine were to run a cover like this one?

See full article:

————-

Related link

Tags: Afghanistan, propaganda, Taliban, USA, Violence, war on terror, women

Viewer or voyeur? The morality of reportage photography

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

Do you look away from images of real-life horror, or look closer? A series of shocking photographs from Somalia asks disturbing questions about the ethics of bearing witness

Sean O’Hagan

Monday 8 March 2010 14.23 GMT

“To catch a death actually happening and embalm it for all time is something only cameras can do,” writes Susan Sontag in Regarding the Pain of Others, “and pictures taken out in the field of the moment of (or just before) death are among the most celebrated and often reproduced of war photographs.”

Sontag goes on to describe the context in which Eddie Adams took what was arguably the most shocking image of the Vietnam war: the moment in which a South Vietnamese police officer executes a Vietcong suspect by shooting him point-blank in the head. She points out that the picture was both authentic and staged – “by General Loan, who had led the prisoner, hands tied behind his back, out to the street where journalists had gathered. He would not have carried out the summary execution there had they not been available to witness it”. Wearily, Sontag concludes that “one can gaze at these faces for a long time and not come to the end of the mystery, and the indecency, of such co-spectatorship”.

I was reminded of that final quotation when, a few weeks ago, I navigated the winner’s gallery of the World Press Photo of the Year website. There, amidst the many dramatic images of conflict, death and destruction, was a series by an Associated Press photographer, Farah Abdl Warsameh, entitled Stoned to Death, Somalia, 13 December. The four images are shocking in a way that even the most graphic war reportage seldom is any more. The first shows the victim being buried up to his neck in earth. The second shows a group of men, their faces concealed by headscarves, raining rocks down on his head. The third shows his bloodied torso being dragged out of the soil. The last shows the men hurling large rocks at his prone and lifeless body to finish off their gruesome ritual. There are no captions; we are left to guess the context.

One’s immediate instinct on coming upon the photographs is to recoil in horror, which is what almost everyone I showed them to did. A colleague described them as “a kind of pornography of suffering”. (The Sunday Times ran the series last week in their Spectrum section devoted to the World Press awards. Many readers were outraged and appalled.)

Last week, in a blogpost for Foto8 magazine, the veteran picture editor, Colin Jacobson, wrote that “the rather disgusting pictures … raised some interesting ethical matters”, which is one – somewhat understated – way of putting it. More problematically, Jacobson said that “obviously there was collaboration between the photographer and those carrying out this gruesome death sentence”. Perhaps. But what kind of collaboration? Unlike the shooting of the Vietcong suspect, the dreadful execution of the Somalian man would seemingly have gone ahead at that time had the photographer not been present. (Other images from the series, not included in the World Press selection, show an audience of villagers who had gathered to witness the execution.) On that level, the photographer did not collaborate with the killers, though he almost certainly gained permission from someone to shoot the stoning. He also shot every stage of the killing in all its protracted and torturous barbarity. What it takes to do that, and at what personal cost, only he can say.

Images as extreme as these beg so many questions about the morality of reportage. Did the photographer, one wonders, have any communication with the victim in the time leading up to the event? Would our reaction to the photographs be different if we knew that the condemned man granted the photographer permission to bear witness to his dreadful death? Would it be different if we knew that the photographer risked his own life to travel though strife-torn Somalia to bear witness, which, as one of the respondents to Jacobson’s blog points out, was probably the case. Does such extremity diminish us or enlighten us? Or simply shock us into a kind of impassioned helplessness?

Part of the complex power of these photographs comes from what Sontag calls the “provocation” inherent in all images of real suffering. The first of many questions they ask is: “Can you look at this?” Perhaps Sontag comes closest to articulating the moral dilemma at the heart of extreme images of suffering when she writes: “There is shame as well as shock in looking at the close-up of a real horror. Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it … or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be.”

Tags: capital punishment, Death, Islam, Photography, stoning, Violence, voyeurism

ISRAEL’S ‘OPERATION MAKE THE WORLD HATE US

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

BRUCE. E. WILSON, “ISRAEL’S ‘OPERATION MAKE THE WORLD HATE US’ ENTERS BOLD NEW PHASE AS JERUSALEM POST EDITOR RELEASES VIDEO MOCKING DEAD FLOTILLA ACTIVISTS”
6 June, 2010 — MRZine

‘Israel does not need enemies: it has itself. Or more precisely: it has its government,’ writes The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier in a bitingly titled column, ‘Operation Make the World Hate Us: The Assault on the ‘Mavi Marmara’ Was Wrong, and a Gift to Israel’s Enemies.’

It’s not just an Israeli government initiative. Operation Make The World Hate Us has another valuable asset — the Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post Caroline Glick, who under the auspices of the US-based Center for Security Policy has just released one of the most gratuitously offensive (and on so many levels, it’s quite remarkable) video creations to afflict the year 2010, ‘We Con the World,’ which appears to mock the nine dead (or more — six are still reported as missing) activists killed on the Turkish Mavi Marmara when Israeli Defense Force commandos stormed the boat. According to a British eyewitness interviewed by UK-based The Press Association, 48 people aboard the ship received gunshot wounds.

Two notable organizational patrons of Glick’s video are the Center for Security Policy and Christians United for Israel. Glick’s industrial-strength polemics include claims that there is a ‘totalitarian jihadist ideology which is ascendant throughout the Islamic world.’ According to the Jewish organization Jews on First, Glick has advocated the unilateral bombing of Iran.

The Center for Security Policy is so proud of Glick’s video it’s up on the organization’s web site front page. Christians United for Israel website also has a front page link to Glick’s inadvertent anti-hasbara masterpiece. The video features, among other lyric elements, the line ‘Itbach el Yahud!’ (slaughter the Jews!) and claims that children in the Gaza Strip lack ‘cheese and missiles’ (according to a 2009 UN survey 65% of babies 9-12 months old in Gaza suffer from anemia).

It’s not especially surprising that Caroline Glick was inclined to produce ‘We Con the World’ given that in 1997 and 1998 she served as assistant foreign policy adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu. What’s astounding is Glick’s obvious pride in associating herself with the video, which features shaky production values, procession of anti-Islamic stereotypes, bad singing, and mockery of the dead. Not only has Glick posted it on her personal website but she acted in the video, which at the end identifies her as Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post.

As Caroline Glick Wrote on her blog post concerning her video,

This week at Latma — the Hebrew-language media satire website I edit, we decided to do something new. We produced a clip in English. There we feature the Turkish-Hamas ‘love boat’ captain, crew and passengers in a musical explanation of how they con the world.

We think this is an important Israeli contribution to the discussion of recent events and we hope you distribute it far and wide.

All the best,
Caroline

As described in her Wikipedia bio, Glick’s ‘writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Times, Maariv and major Jewish newspapers worldwide’ and she’s been on ‘MSNBC, Fox News Channel, Sky News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and all of Israel’s major television networks. She also makes frequent radio appearances both in the US and Israel.’

And in her spare time, Glicks’s a video auteur.

Lyrics to ‘We Con The World’

There comes a time
when we need to make a show
for the world, the web and CNN

There’s no people dying
so the best that we can do
is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on, pretending day by day
that in Gaza there’s crisis, hunger and plague
coz the billion bucks in aid won’t buy their basic needs
like some cheese and missiles for the kids.

We’ll make the world abandon reason
we’ll make them all believe
that the Hamas is Momma Theresa

We are peaceful travelers
with guns and our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh we’ll stab them at heart
they are soldiers no one cares
we are small and we took some pictures with doves

As Allah has shown us
for facts there’s no demand
so we will always gain the upper hand

We’ll make the world abandon reason
we’ll make them all believe
that the Hamas is Momma Theresa

We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
but you worry that it may not look so good

Well don’t you realize you just gotta call yourself
an activist for peace and human aid

We’ll make the world abandon reason
we’ll make them all believe
that the Hamas is Momma Theresa

We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
yallah, let me hear you!
we con the people
We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

Itbach el Yahud ! (slaughter the Jews)

We con the world
we con the people
We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper

All together now!
We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
yallah, let me hear you!
we con the people
We’ll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper

We are peaceful travelers
we’re waving our own knives
the truth will never find its way to your TV

This article was first published in the AlterNet blog on 4 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. According to Ayman Mohyeldin, this video was — ”inadvertently” — ‘distributed [to journalists] on Friday by the Israeli government press office (which belongs to the Israeli prime minister’s office and is responsible for accrediting foreign journalists)’ (emphasis added, ‘Israeli Government’s Media Madness,’ The Middle East Blog, Al Jazeera, 4 June 2010).

Reuters under fire for removing weapons, blood from images of Gaza flotilla

Tags: apartheid, exploitation, Gaza, Israel, Military, Occupation, terrorism, Violence

Drik: Photo power

By Satish Sharma

The shutting-down of two photographic exhibitions in Dhaka’s Drik Gallery in just the last few months proves that Bangladesh’s censors, unlike lightning, can strike at the same place more than once – especially where Drik’s photographic practices are concerned. But then, Drik seems to have become a lightning rod inviting censure, and this will not be the last time either. Not if I know Shahidul Alam and his commitment to pushing photography in what he calls “the majority world”. If actually being knifed has not stopped him, nothing will.

The British Council in Dhaka had once tried to shut down a Drik exhibition by Roshini Kampadoo because it “hurt the image of Britain”. And in November last year it was the turn of the Chinese embassy in Dhaka that wanted an exhibition on Tibet, also in Drik, to be closed. When a personal visit by the Chinese Cultural Counsellor and his cultural attaché bearing gifts (calendar, a silk tie and tea) didn’t work, they invoked worsening diplomatic relations and brought to bear the weight of the Bangladeshi government, Special Branch police and even parliamentarians. But Alam didn’t buckle, instead inaugurating the exhibition in the street after the gallery was locked up by the police. He shut it down the next day, however, as a protest against the interference.

Alam’s new exhibition and installation, “Crossfire”, should have been safer from threats of closure. It was not photojournalistic documentary or even an Americanised ‘documentary style’. It showed no dead or disappeared people. Much more conceptual, it allegorically invoked the disappeared through subtler and quieter means. But because it dealt with ‘crossfire’ deaths by specially raised Rapid Action Battalions (in India, one would call these ‘encounter deaths’), it drew fire – and closure, and protests against the closure.

There is something about photography that invites censorship. The power of the photographic image simply has to be controlled, it seems – one way or another. If ideas of aesthetics, beauty and spiritual values don’t work, governments pass and use anti-terror laws. And internationally applicable anti-terror laws, with the attendant globalised cultural control, are now beginning to have a universal presence, reach and influence.

Any critical photography is subtly suppressed by evoking ideas of photography as a ‘fine art’, and by inducing self-censorship before it is more pointedly and politically policed through action by the state’s security services. Self-censorship, I believe, was at the heart of the lack of any decent coverage, by Indian photographers, of the Emergency and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

The desire to control the photographic message is, however, universal. And that desire is as old as the medium itself. From colonial control of the photography during the 19th century to anti-terror laws in the era of the global ‘war on terror’ to control the photographic images of the 21st century, little seems to have changed. The power of photography to control and manipulate perception of the world’s raw realities is too important to be left unchallenged. It is noteworthy that these do not even have to be powers from one’s own country. Perception management is a global political strategy with a global reach; it is globally practiced.

In February, Uzbekistan convicted a photographer for “slandering the Nation”. Umida Akhmeddova had been documenting the daily struggles of ordinary people, and was accused of “portraying the people as backward and poor”. Her “photo album [did] not conform to aesthetic demands” and “would damage Uzbekistan’s spiritual values”, said the expert panel appointed to look at her work.

The Abu Ghraib photos were not shot by professional photojournalists, yet special laws were passed by the US Congress to prevent their dissemination. Most of the pictures and video footage still remain out of reach – legally secured, not only by the special acts of the US Congress, but also through the raising of issues such as the right to privacy of the ‘victims’ and their oppressors, and by wives of the soldier-photographers who raised issues of personal copyright to prevent these photographs from being seen more widely.

Anti-terrorism laws are also being used to prevent photography in Britain’s streets. Photographing the most well-known monuments has become suspect, with even professional press photographers being harassed by local police. Street photography, we have to remember, has a long and proud tradition, and the streets have a central space in the practice of urban photography. Even photography as a safely sanitised art form, a documentary style, is not a safe practice. But then, safety is not what should drive photography. It needs to recover and secure its critical spaces – its critical power.

Satish Sharma is a photographer, critic and occasional curator. He was a former tutor at Pathshala and currently lives in Kathmandu.

The article was published in Himal Southasian

Tags: Art, culture, education, extra judicial killing, painting, Photography, police, protest, resistance, Shahidul Alam, state repression, student, Violence

Land and people. De-colonising the national imagination

By Rahnuma Ahmed

I see no reason not to be worried.

For we have, over the years, begun mimicking our erstwhile Pakistani rulers when it comes to explaining what went wrong in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The `tribals’ want to secede. They want to breakup the nation. The loyalty of the `tribals’ has always been suspect, in 1947, they didn’t want to join Pakistan, they had wanted to be part of India. The Shanti Bahini was aided and abetted by anti-Bangladesh forces outside. It is an Indian conspiracy to destabilise the country. Agreeing to the `tribal’ demand for autonomy diminishes the sovereignty of the Bangladesh state.

And what had our Pakistani rulers said, both before, and during, 1971?

The Bengalis want to secede. It’s an Indian conspiracy. Our mortal enemy India, wants to break up Pakistan. These Bengalis began agitating from the word go, first they wanted their own language, 1949, 1952, and then, from 60s onwards, they began demanding regional autonomy. Those in the Mukti Bahini are India’s paid agents. The Bengali Muslims are Hindus, anyway. They listen to Rabindra sangeet, the women wear saris, they put teep on their forehead. Agreeing to the Bengali demand for autonomy will be a threat to the sovereignty of the state of Pakistan.

There are other reasons to be worried, too.

There are some similarities in the responses of both sets of rulers: a militaristic response. In the case of ekattur (our liberation war), this was accompanied by Lieutenant General Tikka Khan’s declaration, `I want the land, not its people.’ Tikka was the architect of Operation Searchlight, launched on the night of 25th March 1971. We will always remember him as the Butcher of Bengal. A military commander, deluded into thinking that his efforts would save the nation.

The Awami League government had initiated and eventually signed a peace treaty with the PCJSS (Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti) in 1997. A few weeks after the signing of the Treaty, Khaleda Zia, as leader of the opposition, had declared: it will lead to the setting up of a parallel government. Others said, it was signed to please the Indian government. Writ petitions have been filed since, challenging the validity of the Peace Treaty. During a recent court hearing, the petitioners listed some of the reasons: the former chief whip of Parliament had no authority to sign the Treaty. He was not authorised by the President. A treaty can only be signed between two governments, the CHT people are not only not a government (!), they are “controlled by an Indian intelligence agency.” They are not indigenous to the land, “they” are settlers etc., etc. (New Age, 17 March 2010).

As things stand, some may think that the Awami League, by virtue of having initiated and signed the Peace Treaty, want peace in the hills, while the BNP (and its bed-fellow, the Jamaat), doesn’t want peace in the hills. There may be some truth in it.

But there’s more truth in what Bhumitra Chakma, a Jumma academic who teaches politics at the university of Hull, says: the recent attacks, on 19 and 20 February 2010, carried out by Bengali settlers in Baghaichari, backed by the armed forces prove yet again that unless the Bangladesh state addresses the structural roots of violence, the “cycle of violence” will continue (Economic and Political Weekly, 20 March 2010).

“At the core of the problem,” writes Chakma, is the Bangladesh government’s “politically-motivated Bengali settlement policy” aimed at changing the “demographic character of the CHT, which inevitably leads to clashes over land.”

The Bengali settlement policy, in my mind, was diabolical. By selecting “landless” Bengalis, it seemed that the military government was concerned about the futures of those who are poor, it helped hide the fact that their landlessness and abject poverty made them more amenable to military direction and control; that, as far as the military leadership was concerned, they were civilian subalterns/canon fodder. The settlement policy whipped up populist sentiments in the rest of Bangladesh: `If someone from the CHT can settle in Rangpur, if he can buy land there, why can’t someone from Rangpur go and live and work in the CHT? It’s one country, after all.’

The settlement policy seeped into public discourse, it helped re-define Bengali nationalism on territorial lines—as all nationalism is, is bound to be—but the new sense of territory/ nationalism was not of the resisting kind, of the kind that grows out of an urge for self-defense (like 1971), but one which encroached.

I am persuaded that this newly developing form of nationalism was distinct to the nationalism of the Mujib era (1972-1975). When Sheikh Mujib had exhorted the indigenous peoples “to forget their ethnic identities,” to merge with “Bengali nationalism,” what lay behind his words was a heady cultural arrogance, deeply entwined with feelings of racial superiority.

Bengali nationalism as encroaching, in a territorial sense, one which could be implemented through the planned deployment of coercive power, came later. After 1975.

I am inclined to think that it was at this historical moment that we i.e., the Bengalis as a nation—began to sound like our erstwhile rulers.

The latter, according to us, were colonisers.

Colonial orientation to land, and its people

One of the greatest liberal philosophers John Locke, analysed English colonialism in America in terms of his theory of man and society. I present Locke’s arguments below, based on a discussion by Bhikhu Parekh (The Decolonization of Imagination, 1995).

Locke had argued that since the American Indians roamed freely over the land and did not enclose it, since they used it as one would use a common land, but without any property in it, it was not `their’ land. That the land was free, empty, vacant, wild. It could be taken over without their consent. The Indians of course knew which land was theirs and which was their neighbours, but this was not acceptable to Locke who only recognised the European sense of enclosure.

However, there were native Indians living by the coastline, who did enclose their land. English settlers were covetous of these lands, they wanted these lands for themselves as it would help them avoid the hard labour of clearing the land. They argued that the native Indian practice of letting the soil regenerate its fertility, to let the compost rot for three years, meant that the natives did not make “rational use” of it. Locke agreed with them. Even enclosed land, he said, if it lay without being gathered, was to be “looked on as Waste, and might be the Possession of any other.”

Some Indians, however, not only enclosed the land, they also cultivated it. But they were still considered guilty of wasting the land because they produced not even one-hundredth of what the English could produce. The trouble with Indians was, according to Locke, they had “very few desires,” they were “easily contented.” Since the English could exploit the land better, “they had a much better claim to the land.” It was the duty and the right of the English to replace the natives, and, as long as the principle of equality was adhered to, no native should starve, nor should she or he be denied their share of the earth’s proceeds, English colonisation was infinitely more preferable. It increased the inconveniences of life. It lowered prices. It created employment.

The culture of indigenous peoples the world over, as has been noted by many political theorists, is inextricable from their culture. Take away their land, and you take away their culture.

Land in the Chittagong Hill Tracts belongs to the paharis. It is their land. A refusal to understand this means opening us to the allegation of whether our nationalism is their colonisation.

Bhumitra Chakma speaks of the “cycle of violence.” It is a cycle that is embedded in larger cycles. Nationalism. Colonialism.

My Bengali sense of freedom surely cannot be paid for by the blood of others?

A genuine leap of the national imagination

George Manuel, Secwepemc chief from the interior of British Columbia (Canada), indigenous activist and political visionary whose work on behalf of indigenous peoples spans the globe, writes:

When we come to a new fork in an old road we continue to follow the route with which we are familiar, even though wholly different, even better avenues might open up before us. The failure to heed (the) plea for a new approach to ..[Bengali-pahari] relations is a failure of imagination. The greatest barrier to recognition of aboriginal rights does not lie with the courts, the law, or even the present administration. Such recognition necessitates the re-evaluation of assumptions, both about [Bangladesh] and its history and about [Jumma] people and our culture-…Real recognition of our presence and humanity would require a genuine reconsideration of so many people’s role in [Bangladeshi] society that it would amount to a genuine leap of imagination. (Cited by Paulette Regan, Canada, 20 January 2005, by making the replacements in square brackets I have taken a liberty for which I hope I’ll be forgiven).

Are Bengalis capable of making a genuine leap of imagination? However hard, however difficult, we must. For the sake of the nation. For the sake of ekattur.

First published in New Age 26th March 2010

Tags: aboriginal, Bangali, Bengali, CHT, conflict, Indigenous, Jumma, Military, Occupation, pahari, peace, peace treaty, politics, Rahnuma Ahmed, settlers, Violence

Traces of Absence

An exhibition of photographs by Shahidul Alam

There is a wall running along a street. The writing on it is fragmented and cannot quite be made sense of. The image was taken in the middle of the night and a yellow glare was allowed to invade the site, as the wall slipped away at an angle. A shadowy presence barely registered on the shot. This urban setting, one is tempted to say, could be nothing but the scene of a crime. The sinister, uneasy beauty of this work by Shahidul Alam informs other images that are part of his new series, again and again. Others are eerie, otherworldly; and others still, seem familiar yet are anguished, as if the common ground for existence was being subtracted from the picture altogether.

Photography is usually taken at face value and recognized as the construction of a factual world, and celebrated as such, for facts possess a no-nonsense value – or so we would like to believe – that will hopefully help us to get things crystal-clear in the mind. The printed image is envisaged and expected, by the many who support this view, to be self-evident, and self-explanatory, too.

To transform photography into the art of tracing an absence is not a method that is self-evident, and yet a case can be made for it: the print, which is an image on its physical support, is one more object added to the world and is often made to stand for what once was, never to be fixed or grasped in the same manner again. But in the images of this series, what is it we are missing that fills us with anxiety of some kind or another? When acutely perceived, an absence stops us in our speech, it wracks and unnerves us; it unsettles the mind. Absence, as a matter of fact, can be identified, can be lingered on and felt, but cannot be quantified and any attempts at giving a qualified description of the feelings involved are bound to fail.

Whatever one is led to believe should be expected of contemporary photographic work in the documentary mode, this series challenges starkly. Artificial lighting has been used throughout and its effect is not just strange but painful. The series offers no narrative to behold but the images hold together, perhaps because their author finds different ways to remind us that we will not find a place to rest our heads in them. These are nocturnal viewings in a sleepless night.

Jorge Villacorta

Curator

More at:

New York Times Review

Photo District News

Rights Exposure Review

Front Page Manob Jomin (Bangla)

Ex Ponto Magazine Netherlands

Lawyers protest

Tags: crime, curating, disappearances, extra judicial killing, governance, human rights, justice, Photography, RAB, Rapid Action Battalion, Shahidul Alam, Violence

My Sister’s Language

His eyes flitted forward and back, and having surveyed the scene for possible danger, it stopped. The head stooped, and that was how he stayed. Crouched on the floor of a bus full of Bangalis, the Pahari (hill person) amongst us, was living in occupied land. Keeping out of trouble was his best chance for survival.

It was only when the uniformed men with guns boarded the bus and prodded him that he raised his eyes. Scared, tired, hurt, angry eyes. But he knew enough to not express his anger. Meekly he obeyed the commands. His humiliation was also ours, but we did not complain. We were tourists in our own land, but the constitutional guarantees enshrined in our laws, while not fully respected anywhere, was particularly absent here. As well-connected Bangalis, we were far more safe than he was. But the rules of occupation are never generous, and they had guns. They left. We breathed more easily. He continued his journey with his head bowed. I took no photographs.

Walking through Rangamati as Bangali tourists was a disconcerting feeling. Many of the Bangalis here were also poor. Displaced from their homes in far away places, they had been dumped here with promises of a happy life. Left to fend for themselves, they joined the power chain well above the Paharis, but very low down all the same.

At the top of the chain was the military. Then the wealthy Bangalis, the ones who made the deals, then came the Paharis who had sided with the government. The Bangali settlers (the poor ones anyway), were quite a bit further down. The Paharis never dared to reach for the rungs of that ladder.

Rangamati was still a beautiful place. The homes buried beneath the lake when the Kaptai Dam was built, the tropical rain forests that had been destroyed, the hill people who were forced to leave their ancestral land, were things that never made it to our history books. The Hill Tracts featured in the picturesque postcards and tourism ministry books and the well rehearsed cultural programmes in the government Tribal Centre.

Occasional photographers from the lowlands came to discover the ‘authentic tribal lifestyle’. A bare chest woman bathing by a waterfall, backlit women with children strapped on their backs, a wrinkled old woman smoking a pipe and other photographic trophies were potential award winners.

As anticipated, the tiktikis (lit: geckos, local term for government spies, generally members of ‘Special Branch’) soon found us. They followed us everywhere. Asked stupid questions. Made notes. Questioned the people we had spoken to or visited. We consciously stayed away from friends. No point in getting them into trouble.

At a later visit, Drik’s printer Nasir and I had gone to Bandorban. Amongst the photographs I’d taken on that trip was this one of a mother weaving. Perhaps I was repeating what the trophy hunters had done, but the poster above the window, part of a UNICEF blindness prevention campaign, had words that seemed poignant. “hai re kopal mondo, chokh thakite ondho’.  (oh what irony we find, we have eyes but are blind.)

My eyes had shown me the military operations in the hill tracts. The deer being taken to the major’s home. The all Bangali military. The timber being taken to the military camp. While we did see Paharis, carrying loads, and doing odd jobs, most of the shop owners were Bangali settlers. It was Bangalis who had access to the government. They who obtained the local contracts. Menial labour was generally, all that Paharis could aspire to.

Kalpana Chakma’s abduction followed (12th June 1996). Friends got arrested. Some were released, but killed upon release. The violence continued, more murders, more rape, more displacement.

On 2^nd December 1997 the newly elected Awami League (1996) signed the ‘Peace Treaty’ with Jana Samhati Samiti (JSS). This had led to divisions amongst the hill people. Many felt that the core concepts of:

1.            Autonomy for the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

2.            Withdrawal of the Bangali settlers.

3.            Demilitarization of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

were being compromised. Others were more pragmatic. Even those who questioned the signing of the treaty by JSS, despite their demands not having been met, recognise that peace in CHT is the ultimate goal, and that the land disputes that resulted from the government aided settlement of Bangalis was the core cause of the conflict.

The sole purpose of a nation’s military is to protect the sovereignty of all of its citizens, not to suppress them. The need to protect a nation’s borders cannot justify the forced eviction of people from their ancestral land. The disregard for even the commitments made, exposed the government’s lack of sincerity to the peace deal. Imperfect though it may be, for those clinging to the flimsiest of promises, the treaty still held hope.

The irony of the military and the settlers – in the second term of the Awami League – choosing the month of February, to remind the Paharis of how brutal they could be, was not lost on the survivors of the massacre. Salauddin, Jabbar, Barkat, Rafiq and Salam had died in 1952 to protect our mother tongue. In February 2010 many Pahari names joined the list of people who died for their mother tongue. But these different sounding names would never make it to that official list.

These were names that probably didn’t exist anyway. Without rights to land, citizenship and protection of the state, they were second class citizens at best, fugitives to be hunted, raped and killed at worst.

matri bhasha (mother tongue), has a very different meaning when your mother is Pahari. Kalpana, I failed you as a brother, when they abducted you. I failed you as a friend, when they killed your brothers Mantosh, Samar, Shukesh and Rupan. I fail you now as a citizen, when my military and my government burn your villages, murder your families, take away your land. I fail you all as a human being, when you are prevented from laying flowers at the Shahid Minar in your village home. amar bhaier rokte rangano, ekushey february. ami ki bhulite pari. This month, red with your warm blood. I cannot, will not, must not, ever forget.

Shahidul Alam

Dhaka

28^th February 2010

A story in Croatia with similar concerns:

Tags: abduction, Army, Bangali, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Death, ethnic cleansing, forest, Hill People, Indigenous, killing, land, Migration, Military, politics, rape, settlers, Violence

IMPERIAL COWARDICE: Remote control killing in Pakistan

by Rahnuma Ahmed

WAR is, said Major General Smedley Butler, twice-recipient of the Medal of Honour (1914, 1915), ‘a racket’. He had seen it from close(st) quarters and had turned into an outspoken critic of the US military-industrial complex. Describing what his life’s efforts had been devoted to, he wrote: ‘I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents’ (War is a Racket, 1935).

Piloting a drone requires much less talent or experience than piloting a real plane. It is more like doing well in ‘a video game’

If Smedley Butler was living, he’d probably have agreed with Peter Ustinov the playwright, who said recently, ‘Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.’

If passions do not rage to transform hostilities into outright war, ‘false flag’ operations may be staged. The Japanese did not ‘sneakily’ attack Pearl Harbour. Their encryption codes had been broken and Washington knew what was going to happen. But the US president decided to withhold the information from his commanders at Pearl Harbour. One hundred and sixty-three American soldiers were killed, 396 wounded, 6 tank landing ships sank. Why? Roosevelt, so the story goes, wanted a piece of the war pie.

More recently, Iraq’s WMD myth was manufactured, packaged and presented. Aided by the Clinton administration’s deliberate sabotaging of UN weapons inspection in Iraq, it created the predictable western outrage needed to justify George Bush’s invasion of Iraq.The September 11 Twin Tower attacks have been dubbed the ‘New’ Pearl Harbour by the leader of the 9/11 Truth Movement, David Ray Griffin. The questions raised by the movement which remain unanswered in the government appointed committee report, speak of, at its best, the criminal negligence of the Bush administration; at its worst, complicity.

Obama’s expansion of push button execution
IN HIS recent West Point speech, US president Barack Obama announced his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, to fight al-Qaeda which had attacked the US on September 11th (in the words of Bush, it was a ‘faceless’ and ‘cowardly’ act), and is now operating in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Even though al-Qaeda’s members are now, according to James Jones, his national security adviser, as few as 100).

What Obama did not mention was another decision that was taken to ‘parallel’ the troop surge in Afghanistan: an expansion in the CIA-led killer drone campaign in Pakistan. An act which will lead to more drone strikes against militants. More US spies in Pakistan. An increased CIA budget for its operations. And thereby, more of what critics term, ‘push-button’ executions. A state of affairs where the US administration is, Guantanamo-style, judge, jury, executioner – all in one. These executions, or targeted assassinations, or extrajudicial killings are not executions, or targeted assassinations, or extrajudicial killings. The war on terror has changed all that. Terrorists are no longer criminals. They are combatants. Killing them is part of warfare. And the globe is the battlefield.

In a recent New Yorker magazine article and in several interviews, Jane Mayer who has extensively researched on Predator drones informs us, there are two drone programmes, one is part of the US military-run programme, the other, is run by the CIA. The former, she says, is carried out transparently. There are after-action reports, there is a chain of command. But the CIA’s drone campaign is a ‘secret targeted-killing program’, one that is executed in places where the US is not at war. ‘It’s a whole new frontier in the use of force.’ We don’t know, she says, who is on the target list? How do you get on the list? Can you get off the list? Who makes the list? And, eerily, Where is the battlefield? Where does the battlefield end?

President Obama had promised ‘change’, and there has been change in the drone attacks. In its first ten months his administration carried out as many drone attacks as did the Bush administration in its last three years. Drone strikes are a new hot favourite in US ruling circles for not ‘risking a single American soldier on the ground’ (Reuters), and less collateral damage than from an F-16. CIA director Leon E Panetta has called them ‘the only game in town.’ But reliable information on casualties is difficult to assess since the Zardari government does not allow anyone, neither journalists, nor aid groups into the area. According to a recently released New America study, ‘Since 2006, our analysis indicates, 82 U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan have killed between 750 and 1,000 people. Among them were about 20 leaders of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied groups, all of whom have been killed since January 2008.’ The rest of those killed? Footsoldiers in the militant organisations, or civilians.

Piloting a drone requires much less talent or experience than piloting a real plane. It is more like doing well in ‘a video game’, and is work that has been outsourced by the CIA to civilians, to those who are not even US government employees. While sitting at CIA headquarters in Langley (Virginia), a drone pilot can view and hone in on a target tens of thousands of miles away. Someone like, for instance, Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan, who was killed in a drone assassination on August 5th this year. Live video feed captured by the infrared camera of an undetected Predator drone hovering two miles away had relayed close-up footage of Mehsud reclining on the rooftop of his father-in-law’s house, in Zanghara (South Waziristan), on a hot summer night. The CIA remotely launched two Hellfire missiles from the Predator. ‘After the dust cloud dissipated, all that remained of Mehsud was a detached torso. Eleven others died: his wife, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law, a lieutenant, and seven bodyguards.’

But Mehsud — targeted and assassinated to elicit the Zardari government’s support for these incursions into Pakistan’s sovereignty — had not been an easy shoot. Mayer tells us, success came only after 16 strikes had been carried out over a period of 14 months, killing a total of 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders.

But who cares for native deaths? The less the (American) body bags, the less the (American) blood spilled, the more likely the public acceptance of war. As for the drone pilots, as former congressperson for New York, James Walsh (R) had said ecstatically, it allows them to be ‘literally fighting a war in Iraq and at the end of their shift be playing with their kids in Camillus.’
And, why not? Who says ‘gangster capitalism’ contradicts with Western family values?

‘Everything is permitted’

HONOUR and war are said to be inseparable.

I think, no longer. Virtual war is cowardly. For, as John Berger reminds us, there has never been a war in which disparity—the inequality of firepower—has been greater. On the one hand, satellite surveillance night and day, B52s, Tomahawk missiles, cluster bombs, shells with depleted uranium, computerised weapons. And increasingly, one sees the American dream materialise, a ‘no-contact war’. On the other, sandbags, elderly men brandishing the pistols of their youth, wearing torn shirts and sneakers, armed with a few Kalashnikovs.
What courage does the American warrior show through pushing his joystick while sitting in Langley? Should not the Medal of Honour be disbanded? Or better still, re-named Medal of Cowardice? For remote-control killings? Killings best-described in George Bush’s words, as ‘faceless’ acts?

And what about those who decide? Those who push the bigger joystick? In Shakespeare’s plays, says Stephen Greenblatt, the ruler serves as a model and a test case. ‘If his actions go unpunished, then, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, everything is permitted.’

Has everything already become permitted? For, as Macbeth had said, ‘I am in blood; stepp’d insofar that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as to go o’er.’

First published in New Age on 7th December 2009

Tags: Al Quaeda, Bush, Death, drones, Obama, Pakistan, politics, Rahnuma Ahmed, Taliban, US, Violence, War

Doctoral Complicity in State Terror

By rahnuma ahmed

I take liberties with English language as I write “doctoral” to indicate the complicity of doctors and hospitals, both public and privately-owned ones, in short, the Bangladesh medical establishment’s actions which aid and abet state functionaries who have committed acts of terror—whether those in the police force, or RAB (Rapid Action Battalion), or in any of the military intelligence agencies, such as the DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence)—to cover it up.

Doctoral, as an adjective, refers to a doctorate, the highest degree awarded by a university. But as a transitive verb, as in doctoring, it means to change something in order to make it appear different from the facts. From the truth. In other words, to deceive.

Is that what doctors did in the case of Anu Muhammad? Did they doctor the facts to cover up marks of police brutality? Anu, a well-known and widely-respected public intellectual and activist, also a professor of economics, was brutally attacked by the police on September 2. Did they also doctor the facts in the case of F M Masum, crime reporter of this daily, who was tortured by RAB officials just because he had asked them why they were beating up a woman? Did doctors in either, or both cases, work against the good of their patients, in violation of their Hippocratic oath? Did they utter or write down words, undertake actions that  were not to the best of their ability, ones that were intended to make grievous injuries appear harmless? Ones that prolonged their patients injuries instead of helping them heal?

Is medical ethics taught in the medical colleges? Do students see their teachers practise it?

Pretty Packaging Outside

I was busily working on my manuscript—the reason for having been absent from the pages of New Age for the last three months—when my mobile beeped: `Anu and other tel-gas cmttee leaders beaten up by police.’

I called and was horrified to hear that the police had targeted him, had charged at his head with batons, an attempt foiled by brave young members of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports. They had borne the brunt of the attacks as he fell down on the street. The thousand strong procession was heading toward Petrobangla headquarters—in Anu’s words, “a multinational company base that no longer represents the wishes of the people”—to protest against the government’s decision to award three offshore blocks to international companies.

Anu had been rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the nation’s most reputed public hospital. His legs were X-rayed before being put into plaster casts. We need to carry out other tests, said the doctors, as he lay on a trolley. But since the hospital was overfull and there were no empty beds, said Anu, my family and friends took me to Square hospital instead. They knew it was expensive, but a recent health insurance policy was expected to cover the costs. He added, they were concerned about whether I had suffered any internal injuries.

So, I prodded him, how was the treatment at Square? It is a hospital that is owned by the Square Group; Tapan Chowdhury, the managing director of the group was the power and energy adviser to the military-installed caretaker government (2007-2008); the hospital, as its website advertises, is affiliated to hospitals abroad (USA, India, Singapore). You had no broken bones, so why is it taking this long to heal, I asked. And I saw all these hotshots flocking to the hospital to see you, Khaleda Zia, government ministers. Why, I believe, even the health minister, an orthopaedic surgeon, went to see you, no? Yes, that was the problem. What on earth do you mean?

Well, you see, at Square they carried out a lot of tests, blood, urine, ultrasound, CT scan, but no one did a physical examination of my feet, legs, no one looked at the bruises, pressed or poked to see where it hurt, whether I could move my toes, during the four days that I was there. Yes, they changed the DMCH plaster casts, I was upgraded to fiber optic casts, they look prettier, but no physical examination was done.

And then, the health minister Dr Ruhul Haque came to see me on the 5th. I was planning to leave the hospital the next day, which I did, but the impression I had gotten from my doctors was that my legs would need to be in casts for a month or more, that I would need to come for regular check-ups. But the very next morning, after the health minister’s visit, the same doctor who had said I would need them for a month, came and got rid of them. And then, all these doctors disappeared. Very mysteriously.

The hospital issued a discharge certificate, it says, I had “improved satisfactorily.” I don’t know which tests demonstrated that. It also said I should use a walking stick. But that was pretty absurd, since I couldn’t stand up for the briefest of seconds. Not for a good fortnight after I left Square.

And what happened after you went home? Well, I couldn’t move, the pain got worse. Luckily, a doctor friend of mine dropped in regularly, he showed me some physiotherapy exercises, he told me how to move my body, how to avoid putting weight on my feet. You mean to say he did what the doctors at Square should have done? Anu grinned, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. And I hear there was pus?  Oh yes, my feet were heavily bruised because the police had kicked at my feet with their boots, they had nearly jumped on my feet, so they were all swollen. And then, another doctor friend got hold of two orthopaedic surgeons. They were pretty shocked when they came and examined me. They prescribed antibiotics immediately, which gradually got rid of the swelling and the pus, and that intolerable pain. If it hadn’t been for them I definitely would not have recovered as I have, now.

While listening to Anu, I riffled through his medical file, looking at his discharge certificate, his blood reports, other reports. A line caught my eye, Thank you for being with Square. Yes, I thought, but is Square with its patients?

Pretty packaging outside. Ugly politics inside.

Discharged in the Middle of the Night

F M Masum, crime reporter, New Age was tortured by RAB officials, first at his home, and then later at RAB-10 headquarters. Not only had he protested, he had dared to ask RAB officials to speak civilly. As they should, being employees of the state, paid by the public exchequer. In exchange, they barged into his house, beat him up, blindfolded him, rubbed salt into his wounds. The torture grew worse, said Masum, when I showed them my ID card. According to them, Nurul Kabir had made things difficult for them. They had “suffered” because of his outspoken views, that’s how they put it.

After Masum’s release was finally secured an excruciating ten hours later, with the intervention of the home minister, his colleagues took him to the DMCH. It was nearly midnight. Were you examined? Well, the DMCH X-ray machine was out of order so I was taken to a private lab, we returned to the hospital with X-ray and CT scan reports. And then? They said, everything was fine and I could be taken home.

Even though you were covered with torture wounds? Even though your body and feet were swollen? Even though you were said to be in severe pain and should have been examined for internal injuries? Well, yes.

Masum was admitted to the Dhaka Community Hospital at Maghbazar Railgate the next day. And how are you now? I asked. Well, my feet still hurt a lot. And your ears? Oh, it’s much better now. Once the blood clot has completely dissolved, the ENT specialist said he’ll be able to examine and see whether my eardrum has suffered any rupture.

But DMCH has had courageous doctors too. I remembered Dr Shamsul Alam, professor of surgery, who accompanied communist leader Ila Mitra to Calcutta in the mid-50s. She had been imprisoned, tortured and raped by the police after the Tebhaga movement flared up with peasants demanding two-third share of the produce from their landowners. While serving a ten-year prison sentence she had fallen ill, had been hospitalised. Embarassed at street protests at home and outrage abroad, the Pakistan government released a weak, frail and emaciated Ila Mitra on parole, agreeing to let her go to Kolkata for better treatment. `But your khalu had to pay the price,’ his widowed wife reminded me. `They transferred him to Chittagong. They didn’t give him the promotion that was due.’ There are still a few left, I thought, as I remembered the words of gratitude Bidisha (ex-wife of former president Ershad) had written of Dr Afzal of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical university where she had been hospitalised. She had been remanded, and allegedly tortured by DGFI officials. Hospitals too, since Dhaka Community Hospital had admitted Masum, and had continued to treat him despite receiving intimidating phone calls.

I am sure there are other instances too. But the rest? Too busy doctoring to be real doctors.

Published in New Age, 9 November 2009

Tags: complicity, corruption, governance, hippocrates, journalist, medicine, negligence, politics, Rahnuma Ahmed, state, torture, Violence

Lucifer in Mumbai

Babui / Arjun

2008 November 29th, Sat.
Brooklyn, New York

Mumbai, city of such wealth,
And of such poverty!
Today, the jet-set here have felt
A new anxiety.

And yet, when we have sorted through
The bodies bathed in red,
How many workers will we view
Among the ones now dead?

******

Be it from bombers in the sky,
Or gunmen treading earth,
It is the poorer ones, who die
The most, yet leave no dearth.

And even when he seeks out those
In Oberoi and Taj, *
The gunman, with his bullets, mows
The lowly of the Raj.

The ones, who went from Mumbai slum
To earn their few rupees,
Lie murdered. Who will forward come
To help their families?

Now death unites the ones, who were
By birth and wealth divided.
For just a day, has Lucifer
All privileges voided.

And she, who partied at the clubs,
And swam in bluest pool,
Now lies, and rusting shoulder rubs
With maid, as fires cool.

******

The firemen came, at last, to quench
Those fires that long had raged.
And now, we smell the awful stench
Of corpses that have aged.

Whence came those ones, so zealot eyed,
With guns that spewed out death?
They did not know, the ones who died,
In Mumbai’s horror met.

* The Oberoi and Taj are names of famous hotels in Bombay.
The Taj is in a historic building by the sea-front. The Oberoi is
in a modern one, and is part of a chain, with branches in major
Indian cities as well as elsewhere.
========================================

Unusual interview, on CNN, with the materialistic “guru” and physician, Deepak Chopra, regarding the recent horror in Mumbai (Bombay).

Video CNN – Deepak Chopra on Mumbai Attacks

Video CNN – Farid Zakaria on Mumbai Attacks

Tariq Ali in Counter Punch on Mumbai Attacks

Bangladesh Open Source Intelligence Monitors

Stills and videos from Mumbai

Tags: India, Mumbai, Oberoi, Taj, terrorism, Violence