Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

On March 1, 1971 Pakistani military dictator Yahya Khan postponed the National Assembly session that was to be held after the December 1970 elections. In doing so he had crossed the Rubicon. In the first 25 days of March 1971, while Yahya Khan negotiated with the Awami League (which won an absolute majority in the elections) and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Yahya’s military steadily moved arms and soldiers into East Pakistan. On March 25, 1971 Yahya Khan abruptly left East Pakistan and returned to West Pakistan. A few hours later the Pakistan army launched its campaign of genocide against the Bengali population of East Pakistan.

The following are newspaper reports from Dawn, the West Pakistani newspaper published from Karachi. The reports cover the period from March 1, 1971 to March 26, 1971. They chronicle the last days of united Pakistan, from a West Pakistani perspective.

[Note: This page will be updated as I am able to scan and upload the remaining articles. I will remove this note once the uploads are complete.]

[Cross posted at Daily Kos, Never In Our Names, Taylor Marsh, and Diatribune]

Cyclone Sidr battered Bangladesh last Thursday taking an yet unknown number of lives in its path. The latest official reports put the death toll over 2000.  No one really knows how high the death toll will climb since rescuers have not yet reached all of the devastated areas. The Bangladesh Red Crescent is warning that the death toll could top 10,000.

As Cyclone Sidr was killing the people of Bangladesh, a little baby was born in the southern district of Barisal - the district that took the brunt of the onslaught. The picture you see above is his proud grandmother holding the newborn in front of the debris of their collapsed home. They have named the child "Cyclone".

I could write today about the horrible destruction that has occurred in Bangladesh. I could write about the many stories of death, the loss of homes, of essential crops, of the destruction of the beautiful Sundarbans. But there is a more urgent need today.

That need is that little baby in his grandmother’s arms. That little baby needs food, water, medicine and shelter. By the cruel chance of nature, that baby was born into a world of unspeakable destruction. We can change that.

We have seen the power of the Internet in bringing the world together, of fighting oppression, of changing lives. I urge you today to use the power of the Internet to change the lives of our fellow human beings on the other side of this planet. The need is urgent and time is of the essence. The survivors of the Cyclone will soon face water-borne diseases, hunger and dehydration unless help reaches them. Unless relief reaches the most at need the initial tragedy of the Cyclone will have been multiplied many fold.

So today I ask you the reader to help the people of Bangladesh at their time of dire need. I ask you to consider helping my people.

Thank you,

Mash

The following are some of the ways you can donate online:

• Donate online at International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
• Donate online at Save The Children

NOTE: I want to thank the readers at Daily Kos for raising awareness by putting this post on the Recommended List. I especially want to thank Dallasdoc and smintheus at Daily Kos for rallying the readers.

Someone please explain to me why we bombed into the Stone Age the most secular Arab country in the Middle East while kissing and holding hands with the most backward ruling elite in perhaps the entire world.

Please justify this Mr. Bush:

A court in Saudi Arabia increased the punishment for a gang-rape victim after her lawyer won an appeal of the sentence for the rapists, the lawyer told CNN.

The 19-year-old victim was sentenced last year to 90 lashes for meeting with an unrelated male, a former friend from whom she was retrieving photographs. The seven rapists, who abducted the pair and raped both, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.

The victim’s attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, contested the rapists’ sentence, contending there is a fatwa, or edict under Islamic law, that considers such crimes Hiraba (sinful violent crime) and the punishment should be death.

"After a year, the preliminary court changed the punishment and made it two to nine years for the defendants," al-Lahim said of the new decision handed down Wednesday. "However, we were shocked that they also changed the victim’s sentence to be six months in prison and 200 lashes."

The judges more than doubled the punishment for the victim because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," according to a source quoted by Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.

Judge Saad al-Muhanna from the Qatif General Court also barred al-Lahim from defending his client and revoked his law license, al-Lahim said. The attorney has been ordered to attend a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Justice next month.

I was born in a country called Bangladesh - a country half a world away. I live today in the United States. I have never felt as disconnected from the land of my birth as I do today.

It is a cold sunny afternoon in the suburbs of Washington DC. The daily din of commerce is all around me, yet my mind is elsewhere. Yesterday it rained steadily all day here as I followed the news on the Internet. Half a world away, on the other side of our planet, my people were dying.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr struck the coastline of Bangladesh Thursday night Bangladesh time while it drizzled in Washington. The full force of the Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph struck a country which is mostly at or slightly above sea level. The storm made landfall at high tide with a massive storm surge coming ashore to the east of the eye. The latest reports indicate at least 1,100 people have lost their lives. That number is sure to rise in the coming hours, days and weeks as communications are restored to the affected areas and as rescuers reach the most devastated regions. All communications to the southwestern coast of Bangladesh are down. Power is down in most of the country, including the capital city of Dhaka, which is in the interior. My attempts at reaching my relatives by phone in both the capital city and the port city of Chittagong failed last night, perhaps due to downed utility lines or due to the volume of calls from outside the country flooding the international circuits.

I mostly blog about politics and foreign policy. We in the blogs often debate important issues of domestic and foreign policy. I often write about the dream of democracy in Bangladesh. But what I write about and what we in the blogs debate is fundamentally about the people. Last night in Bangladesh countless people - men, women, children, real families who laughed and cried, who shared happy and sad times - perished. We have not yet counted all who have died and we may never be able to count the families that have been taken by the sea. We will never know all of their names. Soon, as the death toll climbs, we will only remember them as part of a larger number - one part in a thousand or maybe tens of thousands. But we will know this. We will know that yesterday they were among the living, and today they are no more.

It is difficult sitting here in Washington to fathom what has happened on the other side of the planet. However, Bengalis are my people and I feel an unexplainable bond toward their human condition. Yesterday I was referred by an online friend to this post on the Daily Kos about the then aproaching Sidr. It was a post that was on the Recommended List at Daily Kos. The day before there was another post on Daily Kos about Sidr. The posts and the comments give me hope that there are those on this planet who genuinely care for others, even those that live in distant lands and seem so different. It gives me hope.

Earlier this year I wrote about the overwhelming American response to the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh. That response saved over 200,000 lives. It gives me hope.

Today I cannot write much about the facts and figures of the devastation that Sidr has wreaked on the people and the land of Bangladesh. In the coming days there will be many reports, each likely to be more horrific than the other. Today I write about losing a portion of humanity to the random brutality of nature. The relief work will soon begin and many survivors will have to be rescued and rehabilitated in the coming days. My thoughts today are with those who perished and with those who survived. Bangladesh to its people is known as Sonar Bangla, or, Golden Bengal. Many times before Bengalis have had to rebuild their Golden Bengal from the ravages of man and nature. That work again begins today.

[Note: Donations for cyclone relief can be made online at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies]

The following are newspaper reports on the Bangladesh Genocide from the Bangladesh Observer newspaper. The news reports chronicle the evidence of the genocide as they begin to emerge following the liberation of Bangladesh on December 16, 1971.

[Note: This page will be updated as I am able to scan and upload the remaining articles. I will remove this note once the uploads are complete.]

About two weeks ago I wrote about allegations against a Bangladeshi military government Advisor’s husband and company. At the time I wrote about the odd silence of the Bangladeshi media in (not) reporting on the story.

Today, all that changed.

The New Age reports:

A landlady named Farhana Islam on Wednesday lodged a criminal case against Nazim Kamran Chowdhury, husband of the industries adviser, Geeteara Safiya Chowdhury, and eight others for reportedly beating her.

Metropolitan magistrate Hemayet Uddin heard the case and asked the Gulshan police officer-in-charge to register the complaint as a first information report if the allegation on investigation is found true.

Farhana alleged Nazim Kamran had rented her building at Gulshan Circle 2 on condition that he would vacate it by September 30. The petitioner in a notice asked Nazim, who used the house for business purposes, to vacate the building after the rental agreement had expired.

As Nazim kept staying in the house illegally without paying rent and other bills, payment, the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority severed the electric connection to the house on the complaint of the landlady.

‘As Nazim tried to run generator at my house without permission, I protested at his doing so. Nazim and his men then on October 23 beat me with iron rods and tore my sari,’ Farhana told the court.

Others accused in the case are Geteeara’s younger brother Abu Rushd Tarek, Shamsun Nahar Tarek, Mukim Choudhury, Shakhawat Hossain Shahadat, Adit Bhagat, Ripon, Bipul and Yaar Ali.

As the police did not register the complaint, she moved the court, Farhana said.

In addition to the New Age, the Daily Star, The New Nation, and BDNews24 carried the story. The Bengali language papers Ittefaq, Amader Shomoy, Shomokal and Daily Dinkal also carried the story.

The media in Bangladesh have suddenly discovered this story after ignoring it for nearly three weeks. There are many strange happenings taking place in Bangladesh lately, not the least of which is the sudden disappearance of the military ruler of Bangladesh.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr, a powerful Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, is expected to make landfall late Thursday (Friday morning Bangladesh time) somewhere between Kolkata and the western coastline of Bangladesh. Millions of people along the coastline of Bangladesh and India are in the path of this massive storm.  The storm is expected to weaken somewhat before making landfall. Bloomberg reports:

Tropical Cyclone Sidr’s winds strengthened to 241 kilometers (150 miles) per hour as it moved across the Bay of Bengal toward Kolkata in India and the west coast of Bangladesh, the U.S. Navy’s typhoon center said.

The eye of Sidr, a Category 4 storm, was 667 kilometers south of Kolkata at 11:30 p.m. local time yesterday, according to the latest advisory on the navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center Web site. The storm is moving north at 17 kilometers an hour.

Bangladesh authorities ordered thousands of people to evacuate coastal areas around Chittagong, Mongla and Cox’s Bazaar and raised the highest alert, Associated Press reported. In India, authorities issued warnings to residents in Kolkata and nearby coastal areas, the Hindu Times said.

…

Sidr’s winds were gusting to 296 kilometers per hour and waves in the vicinity of the storm’s eye were 12 meters (40 feet) high, according to the advisory. The cyclone is expected to maintain strength today before weakening as it approaches Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, and Bangladesh late tomorrow.

Bangladesh has a tragic history of devastating cyclones. In 1970, the deadliest storm ever recorded, the Bhola Cyclone, struck Bangladesh and claimed up to 500,000 lives. Emergency preparedness has improved dramatically in independent Bangladesh since the Bhola Cyclone. I hope the evacuations and early warning systems will prevent a large loss of life from this storm as it comes ashore. I hope also that the forcasts predicting some weakening of this storm bear out and blunt the power of this cyclone.

My thoughts and prayers are with my friends and family and the entire people of Bangladesh as they once again confront nature’s wrath.

Update (11/15/2007 5:00PM):

Sidr made landfall along the western coastline of Bangladesh a few hours ago. It accelerated and did not lose any of its strength as it made landfall. It struck with maximum sustained winds of 150MPH as a very strong category 4 storm. The storm came ashore during high tide with potentially catastropic consequences. Damage is expected from the storm surge, wind and resultant flooding:

A powerful cyclone slammed into Bangladesh on Thursday night, tearing down flimsy houses, toppling trees and power poles, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in the low-lying nation. 

Tropical Cyclone Sidr swept in from the Bay of Bengal packing winds of 149 mph (240 kilometers per hour), buffeting southwestern coastal areas within a 155-mile radius of its eye with heavy rain and storm surges predicted to reach 20 feet high.

Sidr’s eye crossed the Khulna-Barisal coast near the Sundarbans mangrove forests around 9:30 p.m. (11:30 a.m. ET), the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said. It was centered over the Baleshwar River in Barguna district.

In the coastal districts of Bagerhat, Barisal and Bhola, residents said the storm flattened thousands of flimsy straw and mud huts, and uprooted trees and electric poles.

"We sitting out the storm by candlelight," resident Bishnu Prashad said by phone from Bagerhat.

At least 620,000 people had moved into official shelters and 3.2 million people were expected to be evacuated in all, said Ali Imam Majumder, a senior government official in Dhaka.

No casualties were immediately reported, but rescue teams were on standby, forest official Mozharul Islam said in Khulna.

Communications with remote forest areas and offshore islands were temporarily cut off.

The extent of the damage and loss of life will not be known at least until daybreak in Bangladesh. It will probably take several days beyond that to take stock of the devastation. I will update this post as news becomes available from Bangladesh.

Update (11/16/2007 2:56 am): Early reports state that at least 242 people have been killed by Sidr. Communications and electricity are down across Bangladesh. The real scale of the devastation is not yet known. MSNBC reports:

A cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh’s coast with 140 mph winds killed at least 242 people, leveled homes and forced the evacuation of 650,000 villagers before heading inland and losing power Friday, officials said.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr roared across the country’s southwestern coast late Thursday with driving rain and high waves. The storm left about 242 villagers dead from falling debris, said Nahid Sultana, an official at a cyclone control room in Dhaka.

By early Friday, the cyclone had weakened into a tropical storm and was moving across the country to the northeast, with overcast skies and wind speed falling to 37 mph, the department said.

"Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world" - Archimedes, 220 BC

On November 10, 1987 a young Bangladeshi man named Nur Hossain was shot and killed by the forces of Bangladesh’s part-time poet and full time dictator General Hossain Mohammad Ershad. On that day Nur Hossain had joined thousands of other Bangladeshis in protesting the dictator’s rule. The protesters demanded a return to democracy. Nur Hossain stood out amongst the protesters. He had the Bengali words "Sairachar nipat jak" painted in bright white letters on his bare chest, and the words "Ganatantra mukti pak" painted on his back. "Down with autocracy" on his chest; "Let there be democracy" on his back. He died for those demands and became a martyr for the democracy movement in Bangladesh.

Today, two decades after his death, we remember and honor him.

The dictator Ershad did not fall that day. Instead he talked tough:

President H. M. Ershad, declaring he would no longer tolerate anti-Government riots, vowed today that arsonists and looters would be shot on sight.

‘’So far I have not used any of my weapons,'’ President Ershad told foreign reporters in an interview after four days of sporadic unrest in this capital and other cities. ‘’I can be tough. Everyone in this country is asking me to be really tough. We are not going to tolerate any more of this nonsense.'’

But Nur Hossain’s death had galvanized the people of Bangladesh. The long march to democracy had begun.

A little over five years before Nur Hossain was murdered, General Ershad seized power in a coup in Bangladesh and declared he would "end corruption in public life.":

The nation’s new military ruler announced today that special courts would be set up to punish all guilty of corruption, with the power to impose heavy prison terms or even the death penalty.

Lieut. Gen. Hussain Mohammed Ershad, the army chief of staff, who seized power Wednesday to ‘’end corruption in public life,'’ issued martial-law regulations that said those facing prosecution could include former presidents, former Government ministers and members of the defense and police forces.

…

The regulations announced by the general as part of his drive to root out what he called the ‘’cancer'’ of official corruption said the courts would punish those found guilty of engaging in criminal misconduct.

The general said Wednesday that strikes, political meetings and processions would be banned, and today it was announced that the ban would apply to the parade that had been scheduled for tomorrow to mark the 11th anniversary of the independence of Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan.

General Ershad launched his "anti-corruption" drive and banned political activity so that he could remove the "cancer" of public corruption. Ershad promised to restore democracy within two years. He also declared that he had the support of the United States:

The army general who Wednesday imposed martial law in Bangladesh said tonight that he hoped democracy could be restored within two years and that political activity might be permitted again in six months.

This country’s new chief martial law administrator, Lieut. Gen. H.M. Ershad, said also that the United States had changed its stand since Wednesday, when the State Department said it regretted the coup. ‘’They changed their attitude later on,'’ General Ershad said without elaborating.

At a news conference tonight for foreign reporters he again said the coup had been in response to insufferable political corruption, bickering, lawlessness and ‘’confusion in the minds of the people.'’

He said the mostly Western aid donors that have helped keep Bangladesh afloat since the famine of the mid-1970’s ‘’will understand the situation'’ and continue the aid.

The General was right about the United States.

The General survived in power a little over three years after Nur Hossain’s death. At the end of November 1990, as the pro-democracy movement flared all around him, General Ershad’s forces once again fired upon pro-democracy demonstrators. This time they killed 50 Bangladeshi citizens. To retain his grip on power, the dictator again declared a state of emergency. But to no avail. Less then one week later the dictator was forced to resign.

About three months later, in February of 1991, the people of Bangladesh went to the polls to elect their next prime minister in a free and fair democratic election. General Ershad, the man on whose orders Nur Hossain was murdered, was charged and convicted of corruption and other related crimes and sent to prison.

Now, two decades after Nur Hossain paid with his life for a democracy he envisioned, Bangladesh is once again under a General’s grip. The story is the same. The new General, Moeen U Ahmed, is also fighting "corruption". The new administration in Washington supports him. Meanwhile the democracy that Nur Hossain earned with his blood lies beneath the boot of another usurper.

Sairachar nipat jak! Ganatantra mukti pak!

[Image inspired by and post via ShadaKalo]

Bangladesh’s military ruler, General Moeen U Ahmed, has dropped out of sight since returning to Bangladesh on October 28th. However, today the Harvard Crimson once again reported on him. This time the Crimson wrote about Senator Kennedy’s letter to the Bangladeshi military government protesting the detention of leading academics:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56 protested the arrests of 12 Bangladeshi academics in a letter to the nation’s government last Friday, just days after the chief of Bangladesh’s military spoke at Harvard and drew criticism for his regime’s crackdown on academic freedom.

Gen. Moeen U Ahmed, who participated in a Kennedy School of Government executive education course in 2002, has sent troops to quell protests and arrest professors at Rajshahi University and at the country’s flagship institution, the University of Dhaka. A military-backed provisional government has led Bangladesh since January 2007.

“I’m writing to express my deep concern about twelve prominent intellectuals from Dhaka and Rajshahi University who have been detained without charges,” Kennedy wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Bangladesh’s ambassador to the United States.

“I’m especially troubled by accusations that they have been tortured,” Kennedy added. “Holding these twelve men without charge for political reasons is a major assault on the integrity and independence of the academic community of your nation and calls into question your government’s commitment to human rights and the law.”

Moeen spoke at the Kennedy School—an institution named after the senator’s older brother—in a two-day session last week.

[Click to read the rest of the article]

It is safe to say that General Moeen’s recent trip to Harvard did not result in positive propaganda value for the military government. Instead it has focused attention at Harvard and in the United States Senate on the human rights abuses of the military government.

So let me tell you a story.

Back in 2002 you signed a lease to rent out your building to a number of businesses all owned by the same family. You sign a 5 year lease with the tenants. The 5 year lease expired on September 30, 2007. You have given notice to your tenants that you will not renew the lease. September 30, 2007 arrives and passes, yet the tenants do not vacate your building.

Twenty-two days after the lease has expired, on October 22 2007, your tenants are seen installing a diesel generator on the roof of the building you own, without your permission. When you and your wife arrive to prevent the tenants from making modifications to the building you own, you are punched by the tenant and, on his orders, his goons set upon you with metal rods. You end up in the hospital. Your wife tries to intervene and is slapped by the tenant.

Three days after the incident, you hold a press conference trying to get some justice. Reporters attend your press conference but only one newspaper in the country decides to publish your story.

The story above represents the allegations made at a press conference in Dhaka on October 25, 2007 by Dr. Mahbub Islam and his wife, the landlords. The tenants are three companies - Adcom, Signage and Magnavision. Adcom is owned by Geeteara Safiya Choudhury, a current civilian Advisor of the military government of Bangladesh. The other two companies are owned by her husband, Nazim Kamran Choudhury, a former member of the Bangladeshi parliament. Dr. Islam and his wife allege that Nazim Kamran Choudhury and others assaulted them on October 22, 2007 at their own building, twenty-two days after the lease expired and after the three companies failed to vacate the premises.

Mrs. Geeteara Choudhury, who famously said back in April of this year that "I’m not thinking about human rights at this time, but my own", is one of the civilian faces of this military government - a government that claims as its mandate an "anti-corruption" drive. This government claims that it is doing away with abuse of power and corruption as it jails top politicians and hundreds of thousands of citizens under draconian laws. Yet, Geeteara Choudhury and her husband now face accusations of using their power to forcibly squat on someone else’s property. Mr. Choudhury also faces accusations of violent assault. This is a story of the powerful forcing their will on the powerless. This is a story of corruption and abuse of power.

Every day the Bangladeshi newspapers are filled with stories of corruption by the politicians that are being locked away by this military government. Every allegation is given prominent billing. Yet, the Bangladeshi media remains oddly silent about this story and these allegations.

Bangladesh now has an unelected unaccountable military government, with 11 unelected unaccountable civilian "advisors", leading the country on an "anti-corruption" crusade. Bangladesh now has a frightened and compliant media.

Now that I have told you the above story, do you think Bangladesh is headed toward more corruption or less corruption? Do you think under these circumstances the common citizen has recourse to the law vis-à-vis the unelected unaccountable "leaders"?