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The government’s decision to inquire into the matter of the extra-judicial killings by the Rapid Action Battalion must be taken with a grain of salt. That is because the authorities still do not seem ready to accept the fact that there has been much violation of human rights by RAB where the killing of suspected criminals in alleged encounters is concerned. That the pattern of the killings has been one and the same has regularly aroused the worry of citizens, to a point where questions have arisen as to whether RAB has been working as a body independent of the government machinery. If it has not, there then comes up the more ominous question of who or what powerful organisation is behind its operations. When, therefore, the government informs the country that it will launch an executive inquiry, whatever that means, into extra-judicial killings (if any!!!) by the elite force, one is somehow not convinced that such an inquiry will lead to any positive result. We say that because it is fairly obvious to people that this entire move for an inquiry seems to have been influenced by the concerns expressed by outsiders, especially the foreign diplomatic community in Bangladesh, about RAB operations. The matter is now one of the government’s trying to refurbish its reputation in the global community.
   The country is of course happy that people outside have been sufficiently alarmed about the killings committed by RAB personnel as to warn our authorities about the implications of such operations. Indeed, their concerns have also been ours, for quite a few reasons. In the first place, the manner in which people taken into RAB custody have systematically been murdered — always in the midst of an ‘encounter’ where no member of the elite force or no associate of the arrested individual seems to have been injured or lost his life — has always made a mockery of people’s intelligence. In the second place, that such means of eliminating people are a violation of the due process of law has never entered the imagination of many of our ruling politicians, to the extent that some ministers have even offered the obtuse explanation that killing a criminal (without of course proving that he is a criminal) is considerably more important than ensuring his rights as an individual before the law. The point here is that no matter how we look at the issue, the clear thought is that the ways in which the RAB personnel have been going around (and the police too appear to have been taking a cue or two from them lately) dispensing of men they take into custody throws up the frightening prospect of an organisation operating beyond and above the constitution of the country. It is in such light that the government’s stated intention to inquire into the extra-judicial killings takes added significance. On an equally serious plane, the very idea that the government has now chosen to go for the inquiry, so many months after people first began to voice their apprehensions about the modalities of RAB operations, raises the question of whether the inquiry will turn out to be a meaningful affair. When even the minister of state for home tells the country that there are no godfathers or bosses of crime in the country now, we wonder if the authorities are inhabiting a world of make-believe.
   The facts are clear before us. Any inquiry into RAB operations must take into account the objective realities, which essentially is a questioning of the way in which ninety six individuals have so far died in ‘crossfire’. The inquiry will not amount to much if it does not take into account the sentiments of the families of the dead men as well as the feelings of human rights bodies over the issue.

Politicians and swollen eyes

Must politicians weep when they lose a political game? You might say that politicians are human too, which is why if they break into tears when they lose an election they are only doing what is normal for all of us. And you would be right, up to a point. So when the defeated four-party candidate at the Chittagong mayoral election was observed in tears among his similarly weeping followers on the morning after the election, he was only demonstrating to people that there were human qualities in him too.
   And yet we must think again. Politicians are supposed to be made of sterner stuff than what we generally come by every day. When we watched John Kerry concede the election to George W. Bush last November, we thought for a moment he would break down, though we knew he would do no such thing. Indeed, he looked remarkably poised for a man who had just come to within a stone’s throw of the White House. He merely upheld the dignity of the political being through that concession speech. If you go further back in time, you might recall the many knocks that Richard Nixon took in his career. He was miserable when he lost the race for California governor in 1962, but he did not cry. In 1974, he kept a brave face even as he waved goodbye from the helicopter carrying him away from the Rose Garden. He was a broken man, but he knew he could not weep in public. Indira Gandhi wept copiously in the privacy of her home when son Sanjay died in a plane crash. In public, she hid her swollen eyes behind dark glasses. In contrast, the two women who happen to be our leading political figures were both visibly upset, emotionally, when they lost, in turns, the elections in 1991 and 1996.
   Anwar Sadat wept as he announced Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death in 1970. It is said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto wept in jail as the day for his execution neared in 1979. Something of a sad sparkle, the result of suppressed tears, was spotted in Margaret Thatcher’s eyes on the day she moved out of 10 Downing Street. This question of teary-eyed politicians, well, it all depends.

There are departures that almost break the heart in you. Or, in a less emotional way of saying it, there are individuals who when they go away into the twilight leave you feeling rather dispirited. When Oona King, the beautiful young woman who has been a Labour Member of Parliament in Britain over these past eight years, lost her seat to George Galloway last week, there were many who could not resist the temptation of feeling sad at her plight. For some of us who have had cause to know her or to have come in brief contact with her, it was quite painful knowing that she had lost. By all accounts she should have won. But then again, there have been the very good reasons that went into contributing to her defeat. She was a popular politician, especially in the Bengali-dominated Bethnal Green constituency she won in the elections of 1997. There have been the times when in her insatiable desire to make her constituents happy she went around meeting people in a saree. That certainly did not give her the appearance of a Bengali woman. But with her dark skin and her schoolgirl smile, topped with that vermilion mark on her forehead, she looked quite exotic as a person.
   But Oona King did not lose the election because of her love for her people. She lost because she upheld a cause that turned out to have been less than dear to her constituency. It was Iraq that sank her. She had no role in the making of Iraq policy. Maybe she had little idea of what Iraq was all about. But, as one of the young women famously described as Blair’s babes, she convinced herself that a defence of her prime minister in the matter of Iraq was the proper thing to do. She could not quite comprehend the idea that there were people around, even among her own supporters, who did not really relish her enthusiasm for Tony Blair. To a very large number of Muslims around the world (and let it not be forgotten that for all their British-ness, for all their background in secular Bangladesh, her constituents in east London have essentially remained Muslims to the core), the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a morally wrong act on the part of the British prime minister. He has paid a price for it, as the election results have so patently demonstrated. For all one knows, Blair might be moving out of Downing Street sooner rather than later, his popularity dented to no small measure. If he hangs on, only because he would like to have his place in history, in that positive manner of speaking, assured, it may well be that he will push his party to electoral defeat the next time Britain’s people choose a government for themselves. So that is the reality. It is one that Oona King, the beautiful young woman who had a future before her, chose to ignore, or failed to see. If there is one thing politicians must never lose sight of, it is the facts swirling around them. There are the ground realities that cannot be pushed away.
   What kind of future does Oona King now have before her? The man who has beaten her expects her to make a return to the centre of politics someday. That was one of the few gentlemanly sentiments George Galloway gave vent to on the night he took away King’s seat in the House of Commons. The rest of his speech was ungracious, for it was not the sort of speech delivered by British politicians, in either triumph or defeat. He seemed like a rabble-rouser, a man on his way to heckle his colleagues in Parliament. He was angry, almost in the mood to humiliate people. But when he showed his kindness to Oona King, when he told everyone that she still had a role to play in politics, there were people who felt touched by the gesture. That plus our own belief in the ability of some politicians to come back from the arid lands of defeat leads us to think that Oona King will someday, maybe four or five years down the road, make it back to Westminster. A bright young woman like her ought not to waste her time wallowing in depression over defeat. At the same time, we expect that she will have learned a lesson from her loss. For a young politician with ambition, it is always important that she be discerning in her articulation of policy and propaganda. It is hugely important that a young politician, new on the national stage, make it a point to be loyal to her leaders, those under whose tutelage she has risen to the heights of parliamentary office. And yet there must be the caveat that a young politician must know where to draw the line between her support for her leaders and her future among her voters. In the bigger sense, it must be the preoccupation of a young politician to embrace certain principles of morality if she means to survive in the cannibalistic world of politics. For Oona King, therefore, the recognition must dawn that her unquestioned support for her prime minister on Iraq was a sign of the approaching end for her. And then also the quite unparliamentary way in which she went about berating Galloway took a good deal of the shine away from her. A sober, chastened Oona King will be expected to rehabilitate herself through considerable introspection of the self.
   Losing Oona King is cause for deep sadness. Not having her return in reinvented form five years later will be a disaster.
   E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk