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The president of the republic may have affixed his signature to the ordinance relating to a tapping of telephones nationwide. That still does not remove the conviction in the public mind that it is a bad law which can only have bad
   consequences for us in the future. A few days ago, we had argued (like so many others in the media world) that the authorities should desist from making such a move owing to reasons of people’s fundamental rights. We had made it a point to tell the government that a sweeping tapping of phones was contrary to the public interest and was a clear violation of the rules along which democracy conducts itself. It is now quite clear that the authorities have decided to ignore the sentiments of the country. Not even the fact that the telecoms act of 2001 has so far been a document that considers telephone tapping a criminal offence has shown the government the queer nature of its move in the opposite direction. All along, this entire story of the framing of an ordinance to tap telephones and the assent of the head of state to it has been a sad one, as sad as all the other bad laws which Bangladesh has suffered from in the more than three decades which have elapsed since its liberation.
   There are always the lessons of history to learn from. In our particular instance, it is apparent that history has by and large been a factor that has almost always been pushed aside. In the early 1970s, the promulgation of the Special Powers Act was a severe assault on democracy and the dignity of a people who had so bravely waged a war for national liberation only a few years earlier. In all the time that has gone by since the SPA came into force, successive governments have used it freely to promote a varied agenda definitely lacking the force or spirit of democracy. When one adds to that the subsequent, other bad laws —- indemnity ordinance, martial law regulations-turned-into-constitutional amendments and the like —- one can quickly recapitulate the bad mauling politics has received in this country. In the present instance of telephone tapping, the government would have the country believe that the measure has been necessitated by the rising spectre of religious extremism in the country. No citizen concerned about the future of Bangladesh will deny that a serious threat to national security exists at this point in the country. But those threats are expected, in any civilised scheme of things, to be tackled by professionalism on the part of the security forces. In our case, especially over the last four years, the police and other forces have spectacularly failed to stop crime or to nab the elements responsible for the commission of such crime. Their reputation has been on a bad slide and may have reached a point where the nation cannot really expect them to do something that can restore their reputation. The move to tap telephones, given the failure of the security forces in apprehending crime and criminals, is in a way of speaking punishing a whole society for the lapses of those responsible for ensuring its security.
   We believe there is yet time for the government to rethink the measure. No government should ever place itself in a position where citizens will begin to fear and tremble at its sight or because of its actions. The new ordinance holds ample scope for misuse, with the dark prospect of innocent people being harassed and punished for no reason or some innocuous reasons in the days ahead. It is one of those times when civil society and people in the various sectors of life need to launch a programme against such clear assaults on individual freedom as telephone tapping.

Frightened Ahmadiyyas in Khulna

At a time when the government is in a state of chaos regarding the on-going militant activities all over the country and the nation as a whole is suffering from a naturally high degree of fear, some other dark forces are trying to muddy the waters. The elements of the Khatme Nabuwat movement, never missing an opportunity to promote sectarian strife in the country, have once again reared their ugly heads against the Ahmadiyya community. Their provocative act of pulling down the signboard before an Ahmadiyya mosque in Khulna is a clear invitation to religious strife in the country. The government should lose no time in swatting down these peddlers of disorder.
   Exemplary action should have been taken against the Khatme Nabuwat a long time ago when its plans of hounding a religious community into a state of fright first became clear. That the authorities have so far stayed away from taking any action against these bigots out to undermine the state through destroying community relations is not only regrettable but outrageous as well. It remains a particular characteristic of the powers that be that they have always been in denial mode about the work some very organised groups of evil men have been doing all over the land. Their refusal to acknowledge the rise of Islamic extremism, until the bombs began to go off, has now brought all of us to a sorry pass. Likewise, if the government does not clamp down on the Khatme Nabuwat and hauls it before the law, much more than the future of the Ahmadiyya community will be at stake. A whole society may be left trying to deal with philistines unable and unwilling to accept decency and sophistication as part of the social fabric. There are enough examples from history to suggest that a failure to handle bigotry and a clear propensity to appease the forces of disorder have in time led to all-encompassing misery for nations.
   We expect the authorities in Khulna to take every necessary measure to protect the life and property of Ahmadiyyas in the city. At the same time, we expect that they will quickly round up all individuals who, overtly or otherwise, threaten to drive Ahmadiyyas out of their own country. These bigots are dangerous and they should be tracked down without mercy.

It is the season for remembrance in Bangladesh. Close to three and a half decades ago, the eastern province of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan found itself embroiled in a war to free itself from the parent country once it became clear that its political leaders would not be permitted to form a new government for the country. The frenzy with which the armed forces of Pakistan launched a systematic campaign of genocide was to have few parallels in modern history. By the end of the war in December 1971, as many as three million Bengalis would end up sacrificing their lives in a war that would result in the emergence of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.
   The Bangladesh crisis spawned, in that year of suspicion and cruelty, a bigger crisis in the international arena. What would have been politics as usual in one of the poorest countries of the world was soon to lead to a situation where the major political powers on the global scene would become involved. The country that was first affected by the outbreak of the crisis was India, whose prime minister told Tajuddin Ahmed, one of the senior leaders of the Bangladesh movement making his way out of occupied Bangladesh, that the formation of a government-in-exile was of the essence. Tajuddin had by early April 1971 travelled to Calcutta and then to Delhi. By 17 April, he and his colleagues had established a government for Bangladesh, the first in its history, in Meherpur, Chuadanga, a spot which has since come to be known as Mujibnagar. While the Pakistan army engaged itself in killing Bengali civilians and mopping up resistance put up by Bengali freedom fighters in occupied Bangladesh, international concern began to grow over the situation, especially after detailed reports on the army crackdown of 25 March began to appear in the international media. The first strongly-worded protest against the repression of the Bengalis was voiced by the Soviet Union in early April. President Nikolai Podgorny, in a message to President Yahya Khan, noted the nature of the crisis and appealed to him to create the conditions that would restore normalcy in Pakistan’s eastern province. Pakistan seethed with rage and predictably brushed aside Podgorny’s concern. Nevertheless, the Soviet move was the first sign of the world actually taking an interest in developments in occupied Bangladesh. At that point, the widespread belief still was that a solution to the problem could be found within the framework of a united Pakistan.
   
   Mascarenhas spills the beans
   Public opinion in the west slowly but certainly began to turn against the murder of Bengalis in East Pakistan. The weekly news magazines Time and Newsweek (the latter depicted Bangladesh’s leader on its cover) both carried extensive reports on the collapse of the negotiations between Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the military regime in Dhaka and the launch of military operations throughout the province. Their reports were accompanied by images of tanks patrolling the streets of Dhaka. Sometime in April, the Pakistani regime brought to East Pakistan a group of West Pakistani journalists, the goal being to have them paint a picture of restored normalcy in the province. Most of these journalists were horrified by all the signs of destruction they came upon in the areas they were taken to, with army minders in tow. Back in Karachi, however, they wrote things that pleased the military. Only one of them, the Christian Anthony Mascarenhas, quickly left Pakistan and made his way to London. Once there, he revealed through the Sunday Times newspaper the extent of the horrors he and his colleagues had witnessed in Dhaka and elsewhere. It was the first time that a Pakistani was providing the world with a first-hand account of the brutalities the army was committing in East Pakistan. Perceptions about Pakistan changed dramatically after Mascarenhas’ report, which included the chilling observation by a Punjabi military officer that the army would reduce the ‘bingos’ —- pejorative for Bengalis —- into slaves and ride it roughshod over them for the next thirty years.
   Publication of Mascarenhas’ report brought swift denunciation of the journalist from the regime in Islamabad. Pakistani diplomatic missions went into overdrive in denouncing the journalist and badmouthing him as a liar who had engaged in false propaganda. It did not help. Already, in the weeks and months following the crackdown of 25 March, media in the United States, Europe, India and Australia were systematically reporting, through news reports and editorial comments, the unfolding of a clear pattern of genocide the Pakistan government had set its mind to implementing. An added and extremely powerful reason behind these media reports was the gathering pace of Bengali refugee movement into India all along its northern, north-eastern and western frontier with occupied Bangladesh. Hindus and Muslims were literally on the run from a marauding Pakistan army, now aided in its mission of burn and kill by local collaborators who had formed so-called peace committees and established the goon squads that were to play an infamous role in the murder of leading Bengali intellectuals in the run-up to Bangladesh. The al-Badr and al-Shams murder squads, formed with young men drawn largely from the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami led by Moulana Abul A’la Moududi at the central level and Professor Ghulam Azam at the provincial level, complemented the army’s efforts to wipe out the leading lights of Bengali society over the nine months that were to pass before Pakistan would collapse in Bangladesh. By the time the war came to an end in December, ten million Bengalis out of a total population of seventy five million had crossed over to India.
   
   Diplomacy on the offensive
   After the despatch of President Podgorny’s letter to General Yahya Khan, events moved quickly for the Bangladesh cause on the international stage. Expatriate Bengalis in Britain and the United States, aided enormously by the presence of respected figures like Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury in their midst, shaped and launched a concerted movement to help their country’s struggle for liberation from Pakistan. Chowdhury, representing Pakistan at a human rights conference in Geneva when the army went into action against his fellow Bengalis in March, swiftly denounced Pakistan and joined the Bangladesh struggle. Much lobbying was undertaken on behalf of the Mujibnagar government in world capitals. There was clear evidence to suggest that the British government of Edward Heath, along with the opposition Labour Party of Harold Wilson, sympathised with the Bengalis. The government as well as a number of members of Parliament gave the Pakistani regime clearly to understand that a political solution had to be found to the problems in East Pakistan. In the United States, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was one of the most vocal of US politicians in their support for the Bangladesh struggle. In contrast, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, already exploring an opening to China through the helpful hand of the Islamabad regime, chose to refrain from coming down on the side of the Bengalis. The tilt towards Pakistan was only to get more pronounced over the months and not even Indira Gandhi’s visit to Washington would sway the Nixon-Kissinger team towards an understanding of the crisis in Bangladesh. Official policy in Washington throughout the war was to prevent the collapse of Pakistan. When in mid-December East Pakistan finally crumbled, the US administration moved to ensure that the rest of Pakistan in the west did not disappear under a continuing Indian juggernaut. It was Mrs. Gandhi’s decision to have a ceasefire in place on the western front on 17 December that saved Pakistan from breaking into pieces altogether.
   In the course of the conflict, the French statesman Andre Malraux, then in his seventies, offered to take part in combat against Pakistan in the Bengali guerrilla war for independence. His was one of the more powerful of voices which clinched the argument for Bangladesh in the west, though the government of President Pompidou clearly adopted a more cautious attitude to the developing situation. The Chinese, long-time friends of Pakistan, were obviously unwilling to hurt the sentiments of their friends by adopting a pro-Bengali stance. Not even a letter sent to Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou En-lai by their Bengali friend Moulana Bhashani detailing the atrocities committed by the Pakistan army could sway them in favour of Bangladesh. A most curious position was that of Pakistan’s ambassador Khwaja Mohammad Kaiser in Beijing at the time. Hailing from the Nawab family of Dhaka, Kaiser was torn between having to opt for Bangladesh or sticking with Pakistan. Zhou asked him to hang on. When, four years after 1971 Beijing accorded diplomatic recognition to Dhaka, Kaiser would go back to China to serve as Bangladesh’s ambassador there. In November 1971, though, he was on hand to receive a delegation sent to the Chinese capital by President Yahya Khan to gauge the measure of Chinese material assistance to Islamabad should things come to the worst for Pakistan. Led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the team included the armed forces chiefs of Pakistan and also had on board a Bengali in the Pakistani foreign service, Tobarak Hossain. In later years, Hossain would rise to the position of foreign secretary in the Bangladesh government of military ruler Ziaur Rahman in the late 1970s.
   In the early phase of the war, the Mujibnagar government despatched a delegation led by senior Awami League politician Abdus Samad Azad to a number of eastern European capitals to solicit support for the struggle against Pakistan. In September, a delegation led by Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury turned up at the United Nations in New York to present the case for Bangladesh but was not permitted to speak before either the General Assembly or the Security Council. Bengali diplomats posted at various Pakistani missions in 1971 made the difficult decision to sever their links with Pakistan all the way from April to November. Men like Hossain Ali, Shah AMS Kibria, Abul Fateh, AH Mahmood Ali, Humayun Rashid Chowdhury and MM Rezaul Karim provided a huge boost to the liberation struggle by defecting from the service of Pakistan and declaring their allegiance to Bangladesh. There were scores of other Bengali diplomats and employees engaging in similar exercises in defence of the national cause. Even a senior Pakistani diplomat, Iqbal Athar, appalled by his country’s policy of genocide, defected to the Bangladesh cause. He later came by Bangladesh citizenship and served as the country’s ambassador in a number of capitals. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, subsequently to be finance minister in Bangladesh before linking up with Awami League politics, carried on a spirited movement towards popularising the Bengali cause in the United States.
   
   Bhutto’s UN drama
   A rout of Pakistani forces began in Bangladesh through the entry of Indian forces in the war and the continuing offensive of the Mukti Bahini in early December. The Indian government announced its diplomatic recognition of the state of Bangladesh on 6 December, followed soon after by Bhutan. The Pakistani delegation at the UN Security Council, led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who had just been appointed deputy prime minister and foreign minister in a Yahya Khan-decreed cabinet with the Bengali Nurul Amin as prime minister), resorted to melodrama. As the Yahya regime in Islamabad and the outnumbered Pakistani forces in Dhaka sued for peace, Bhutto walked out of the council chamber in a huff. Hours later, in the afternoon of 16 December, the 93,000-strong Pakistani armed forces led by General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi capitulated before the Joint Command of Indo-Bangladesh Forces at the race course in Dhaka.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk
   (Talleyrand will be back next week)