Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Last week I received an email from a dear friend. The email came from Sweden, on Valentine’s Day. I have spent the better part of this week trying to craft a response. I have failed. This post is my attempt at a response.

This blog is anti-torture. There is a logo on the sidebar of this blog that declares the unequivocal position of this blog and its author. Being anti-torture seems to me to be a commonsense position to hold. It is however not a position that is universally held. There are torturers in this world and there are those who aid and abet the torturers. Then there are the victims. My friend, Tasneem Khalil, is a torture victim.

On May 10th of last year I received an urgent email from a friend. It was 4:04pm and I was at my mundane day job. Soon many other emails arrived with the same news. Tasneem Khalil, a Bangladeshi journalist and researcher for Human Rights Watch, had been picked just hours earlier by the Bangladesh military. Just before 1am on the morning of May 11 (Bangladesh time) members of Bangladesh military’s intelligence services, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), had taken away Tasneem from his home in Dhaka. Tasneem’s wife, left alone with their 6-month old baby boy, managed to get word out of his abduction.

Via email and SMS Bangladeshi bloggers from all over the world came together within minutes of hearing the news. Soon blog posts were going up everywhere. American and British bloggers joined in and the news spread quickly. Soon Human Rights Watch put out a press release demanding his release, and CNN and the Associated Press put the news out over the wire. After sustained pressure from human rights organizations, foreign diplomats, and the press Tasneem was released 22 hours later. He was alive, but he had been tortured.

After his release, Sweden offered Tasneem, his wife Suchi and his baby boy Tiyash, political asylum. Today they have begun a new life in Sweden, in exile.

On February 14th Human Rights Watch released a 44-page report  (PDF) entitled "The Torture of Tasneem Khalil: How the Bangladesh Military Abuses Its Power Under the State of Emergency". The report, in first person testimony, details how the DGFI brutally beat and threatened Tasneem during his 22 hour ordeal.

Tasneem was taken to one of the DGFI’s torture chambers known as a "black hole". The HRW report explains:

In Dhaka alone, the DGFI maintains at least three unofficial detention centers, known as "black holes." "Black Hole 1" is located in DGFI headquarters inside Dhaka cantonment near BNS Haji Moshin naval base. "Black Hole 2" is near Kachukhet, a civilian residential area inside Dhaka cantonment. "Black Hole 3" is maintained in the Uttara residential district near Zia International Airport.

 Of his ordeal Tasneem writes in the HRW report:

The Forum article made my interrogators furious. They started beating me again mercilessly, from all possible directions with hands and batons and kicks. I pleaded with them to give me one last chance. I said I would not do those things again. But one person said I had already "made the blunder." I think this was a reference to my lunch with the diplomats.

I started begging for mercy. The beating continued for some time. Then another person said, "We will think about giving you a chance, but you have to do as we say." He said I had to write a confession to the AIG [Additional Inspector General] of police, saying what they wanted me to say. Then I had to beg for his mercy.

…

There were two CCTV cameras in the corners attached to the ceiling. There was a fan. I was sitting in front of a table and three batons were on the table along with some stationery. One was a wooden baton, about a meter long. The other two were covered with black plastic. Poking out of the end of these were metal wires which appeared to fill the plastic covers. The plastic and wire batons were a little shorter than the wooden one. I assume these were the batons they tortured me with. When one guy saw that I was looking at them, he put them aside. I’m not sure if they used electricity on me. The pain often came like shocks, but they were hitting me so hard that I’m not sure whether it was just the force that hurt like this or if it was electricity.

They tortured Tasneem because he had dared to write an article critical of the Bangladesh military and he had just recently given an interview to the Washington Post. It was not a ticking bomb scenario. It was pure thuggery, as all torture is.

Tasneem’s torturers barked that he was "anti-state" because his journalism hurt the military’s "image":

And then the second voice said, "Baanchot [an abusive word], you have only reported on negative things. And you have fucked Bangladesh by your bloody anti-state reports. Whatever you have reported for CNN in all these years is all negative news. You shit on the same plate you eat, you are a traitor. You work for a foreign agency, and damage Bangladesh’s image outside."

Someone started punching the side and back of my head. I started crying out in pain. Then someone cried out an order, "Bring in salt and nails!"

Tasneem’s torturer was the military government of Bangladesh. It was the state torturing its own citizen. The most fundamental responsibility of a government is the protection of its own people. When a government not only fails to protect its own citizens but instead actively terrorizes and tortures them it has lost all legitimacy, moral or legal, to govern. It has become anti-state.

Yet there are defenders of Bangladesh’s military government. The defenders include elements of civil society within Bangladesh who see the military as their meal ticket to power and foreign governments such as the Bush administration and the British government who believe only the iron hand of the military can control 150 million people who are perceived to be unfit to govern themselves. To these defenders the minor inconveniences of torture, death in custody, extra-judicial killings, suspension of fundamental rights, and the occasional mass beating are the cost of doing business. Certainly to these defenders the torture of one man, Tasneem Khalil, does not matter.

To me it matters. It matters that my friend was tortured. It matters that, save for the overwhelming response to his detention, he would today be a statistic - a dead body as a result of the uniquely Bangladeshi opera known as "crossfire". It matters that the 150 million citizens of Bangladesh, who earned their freedom through blood and sacrifice, are today ruled by the gun.

So, this is my response to the email you sent me last week Tasneem. I was told over the weekend, in a harshly worded diatribe from a man with little regard for this "Virginia-based blogger", that we bloggers are cowards. That we don’t understand real life. That we hide behind our keyboards. That we are irrelevant.

Perhaps.

But I would not trade a thousand words that I write that fall on deaf ears for the one email that you sent me. I am glad you are here my friend. It is, in the sum total of my life, one of the facts I am most proud of.

The newspapers in Bangladesh fed us the party line. They declared that a "foreign body" had been provoking labor unrest in Bangladesh’s garment industry. Never mind that rising food prices and unpaid back wages have driven those who already live on the edge over the edge. The military government, faced with the fruits of its incompetence, has found the convenient foreign bogey man. The Daily Star tells us about this foreign hand:

Law enforcement agencies have confirmed that a foreign organisation and leaders of a section of garment workers were involved in provoking the recent unrest in garment factories in the city’s Mirpur area.

After investigation, an intelligence agency arrested Mehedi Hasan, Bangladesh representative of the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), at the Zia International Airport prior to his departure for Bangkok on January 24.

…

Court sources said Mehedi reportedly confessed to interrogators that he used to collect information about workers’ problems and send it by email to the WRC headquarters in Washington DC in the USA. He was also learnt to have disclosed that he incited garment workers to press for their demands and held several secret meetings with the leaders of a section of garment workers.

The Bangladesh military has arrested Mehedi Hasan, a man who works for Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). The job of WRC is to collect information about worker’s problems and report it to its affiliate schools. You see, WRC represents 178 American colleges and universities (including my alma mater, Vassar College) who buy garments from brands with factories in countries like Bangladesh. WRC defends the rights of garment workers against abuse. Its reports hold the garment factories’ feet to the fire. WRC’s affiliated colleges and universities use these reports to pressure garments companies to protect workers’ rights.

In short, the Bangladesh military has arrested a man and have accused him of doing his job. The Bangladesh military has discovered that a "foreign body" is working to improve the working conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry. So they have put a stop to it.

Bangladesh generates much needed income from the garments business. According to the Associated Press, the garments industry brings in more than $10 billion a year from exports to mainly the United States and Europe. Arresting a worker who represents WRC for doing his job can only raise concerns amongst American buyers of Bangladeshi garments. There are reports already in the American media of such concerns:

A labor rights investigator was arrested by the Bangladeshi government, prompting U.S. companies to lobby for his release.

Mehedi Hasan, an employee of the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), was arrested Thursday, according to the organization. The WRC said yesterday that he was arrested in retaliation for his efforts to protect the rights of workers in factories that sell U.S. brands.

Gap Inc. spokeswoman Melissa Swanson said the company is "looking into this situation, working with appropriate authorities and local organizations, and we are hopeful for a prompt and just resolution," she said.

Kazi Shamsul Alam, commerce counselor at the Bangladeshi Embassy, said yesterday that he received calls from the WRC, Nike and Gap expressing concern, but did not know the charges on which Mr. Hasan was being held.

The report further adds that Mehedi Hasan had been under surveillance by Bangladesh’ military intelligence and one of his colleagues was also harassed at the airport:

WRC Executive Director Scott Nova said, "There have been thousands of political arrests [in Bangladesh] and numerous reports of physical mistreatment of prisoners. We just hope that the attention the arrest has got will provide Mr. Hasan with a level of protection."

Mr. Hasan’s role was to scrutinize factories and their treatment of workers in Dhaka, ensuring that clothing was not produced under sweatshop conditions. WRC monitors conditions for 178 universities and colleges that lend their brands to Nike and Gap.

The WRC said yesterday that another employee was detained at the airport and subjected to "aggressive interrogation" earlier this month, during which his interrogators made clear that both he and Mr. Hasan were under surveillance by the security forces.

Tonight Human Rights Watch issued a press release citing Mehedi Hasan’s arrest and calling on the Bangladesh military to stop harassing labor rights activists. According to the press release:

“The interim government is abusing its emergency powers to target individuals who are trying to protect workers’ rights in Bangladesh’s most important export industry,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This should set off alarm bells among donors and governments who don’t seem to understand or care how the authorities are using the state of emergency to systematically suppress basic rights.”  

UK-based Labour Behind The Label has also called for his immediate and unconditional release.

In one year of emergency rule the Bangladesh military has presided over spiraling food prices, has tortured and killed its own citizens, has jailed nearly half a million people, has jailed students and professors, has created a climate of fear in the business community, and has now seen labor unrest in a key sector of the economy. Its fix to almost all problems has been to pull out the gun.

Today that gun points at Mehedi Hasan. However, behind him stand the millions in Bangladesh and around the world who say no to exploitation of workers, who believe in the right to a living wage, and who believe in humane working conditions. Behind him stand the foreign apparel brands that purchase Bangladeshi garments, the colleges and universities that buy those brands, and the organizations that ensure that human beings are not being treated inhumanely along the way. It seems to me that the Bangladesh military would serve Bangladesh, its people, and its economy best by putting down the gun.

Four Dhaka University professors and 11 students who have been held since last August by Bangladesh’s military government have just been freed. Four students who are absconding have been convicted of "crimes" and sentenced to 4 2 years imprisonment.

The four professors - Dr. Anwar Hossain, Dr. Harun-or-Rashid, Dr. Sadrul Amin and Dr. Neem Chandra Bhowmik - and the 11 Dhaka University students have been acquitted of "crimes" they were charged with. The professors’ "crimes" amounted to marching in a procession protesting the beating of students at Dhaka University by the military last August. For their "crimes" they were held without bail by Bangladesh’s military government for 5 months.

Under both international and domestic pressure, last week the military government rather comically announced that regardless of what the verdict from the court was the professors would be set free. Today we have the fruits of the military government’s continuing mockery of justice. University professors who never should have been imprisoned to begin with have finally been freed in a kangaroo court.

The farce in Bangladesh has now turned another page.

UPDATE (1/21/2008 1:40am): The professors have not yet been freed. Apparently there is another case pending against the professors. They have been acquitted in one case only. The "verdict(s)" in the other case(s) will not come until perhaps tomorrow.

UPDATE 1/22/2008 1:58am): In the latest twist in the continuing farce, three of the professors have now been convicted and sentenced to 2 years in prison. E-Bangladesh has the details and a message from Dr. Anwar Hossain. There are reports of protests at Dhaka University campus and at other universities in Dhaka. The situation is volatile. Expect the military government to now show its "kinder gentler side" by "pardoning" the professors. This is a fast developing story.

My German is rusty, but I think the saying goes something like this: So ist das Leben. Manchmal ist man in, manchmal ist man aus. Such is life. Sometimes one is in, sometimes one is out.

In an act of utter insensitivity, former Law and Information Advisor to the Bangladesh military government Barrister Mainul Hosein has denied me the opportunity to feature him in my upcoming post on the one year anniversary of the military coup in Bangladesh. The good Barrister, the erstwhile chief water carrier and slapstick comedian of this military regime, has suddenly and without regard to our feelings resigned today. He has driven many adoring fans to tears including Dristipat, who have resorted to Air Supply to ease the grief.

Along with the good Barrister, two other gaffe-prone Advisors also took leave of their unelected and unconstitutional positions. Geeteara Safiya Chowdhury, who lacked the common touch, decided to vacate her Advisor position long after her lease had expired. Tapan Chowdhury, who preferred that the common masses eat cake rather than rice, will now have plenty of time to ponder the interplay between irresponsible government statements and their impact on the lives of the commoners.

Another advisor, retired Major General Matiur Rahman, also resigned today. No one is really sure why.

A few weeks ago, another unelected steward of the nation, Ayub Quadri, resigned as Advisor after overseeing the theft and destruction of two priceless national treasures that had hitherto survived over 1500 years.

The buzz in Bangladesh is that the military has lined up five new advisors to take the place of the five that have been shoved out. It is good to see that they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There is also buzz that Bangladesh may be headed toward a "national unity government" - a tried-and-true formulation that is a pact between "civil society" and the military to horde power and guarantee that the people are denied their right to choose their own leaders and thus control the fate of their own nation.

Whatever happens, today the world at large has lost the comedy stylings of Barrister Mainul Hosein.

Remember these names and faces:

Moloy Bhowmik	Selim Reza Newton
Abdullah Al Mamun	Dulal Chandra Biswas

These men are prisoners of conscience.

These men are Rajshahi University professors. This week the Bangladesh military government, in a sham trial, sentenced them to two years rigorous imprisonment for participating in a silent procession last August protesting police and army brutality against Dhaka University students.

This is Bangladesh today.

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.

"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"?