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Hartal, which was once used to be regarded as a useful means to ventilate grievances to the rulers or government or to the concerned authorities regarding democratic rights and legitimate claims, has nowadays turned into a key political weapon used sometimes to gain even petty political advantages. Now, it appears to have become a part of our political culture.  As it is a political issue, we cannot reasonably expect that the whole nation will come to a consensus decision regarding the place of hartal in our political culture. But one must pay due attention to the issue as hartal not only uses coercion against the common people but also threatens the interest of the state. Hence, this write-up intends to investigate how and why hartal was introduced in our society, to assess to what extent it is permissible, and to examine whether it has outlived its purposes.
   Theoretically speaking, in every normative society there exist some ways and styles to demonstrate grievances collectively. These ways and styles differ from system to system, from age to age, depending on the status of the society and the mode of governance. Hartal is such a way to protest in the Indian sub-continent. Hartal, which is originally a Gujarati expression meaning closing down of shops and warehouses with the object of realising a demand and was essentially a mercantile practice, acquired political significance in the 1920s and 1930s when MK Gandhi institutionalised it by organising a series of anti-British general strikes by the name of ‘hartal’. In Bangladesh, hartal is a legally recognised political method for articulating political demands.
   The phrase ‘political demand’ once upon a time connoted a broader meaning, ‘public demand’. This political demand suggested a demand which was actually a demand of almost all the people of a society or a community or a geographical area. For example, Nawab Murshid Quli Khan’s Chakla system, which put all smaller Zamindars and Talukdars under the revenue jurisdiction of the newly created territorial chakladars, met collective resistance from all landholders. They demanded that they would not recognise any intermediate authority between themselves and the Hukumat (government). Similarly, in 1783, the Raiyats of Rangpur organised a ding (a style of protest) against the oppressive revenue farmer Raja Devi Singh and others. The supporters of ding expressed their loyalty to the government, but not to the local revenue farmers appointed by the government.
   What was ding to the Rangur raiyats was danka to the indigo cultivators of Bengal districts in 1859-60. All peasants unwilling to cultivate indigo combined against the European planters. Again, the members of the Faraizi sect in the 1850s and 1860s refused to pay many illegal abwabs (tax etc) imposed by zamindars and other landholders, and made an extreme movement called ‘Faraizi Movement’ to force them to accept their demands. In the same way, the organisers of the famous Pabna Peasants Uprising (1873) insisted that they would never pay any rent beyond the rates established by customs and usages.
   As a matter of fact, demonstration of protest is nothing new in the Bengal society, and we have many more events like these. If we look back to the history of last century, we will notice some other events where agitations for articulating political demands stood for ‘public demand’.  Influenced by European trade union movements, the industrial workers of India had been observing occasional ‘dharmaghat’ [industrial strike] from the first quarter of the twentieth century. The industrial strikes were conveniently extended to the political arena, and political strikes styled interchangeably as hartal or dharmaghat was called to oust the British colonial rule. During the period between the 1920s and 1950s, innumerable hartals were called against the British rule.
   From the 1960s, political activists in our country were increasingly organising hartal, which by then appeared to them to be a stronger political weapon.  There had been hartal for days together on the eve of the Bangladesh War of Liberation. Indeed, politics of hartal had played a decisive role in mobilising people on behalf of the Liberation War.
   In every event mentioned earlier, the movement or agitation was to meet a political demand which was actually the overwhelming public demand of a society or community. But after the independence, the words ‘political demand’ were used in a narrow sense. There began the use of ‘political demand’ as the demand of a political party comprising a portion, big or small, of the people. And different political parties began to resort to hartal to meet their particular political demands.
   Hartal became a very frequently used political tool for agitations from the 1980s. In the face of recurring hartals, called mostly on the issue of legality, the regime of Hussain Mohammad Ershad (1982- 1991) collapsed. The government of Khaleda Zia was put under tremendous pressure by relentless call of hartals by the Awami League-led opposition. Similarly, the government of Sheikh Hasina was also not free from the politics of hartal.
   Hartal, when called for the greater public interest, does not raise any question regarding fundamental rights of the citizens or economic loss of the nation. Because, public then voluntarily and spontaneously suffer the financial or other losses to make a hartal successful. At present hartal is called by one or more political parties who are only a portion of the community. So, the other members of the community or the parties against the hartal usually raise questions regarding the violation of their fundamental rights and the financial loss they may suffer due to the observance of hartal. Hence, the question arises whether hartal, which is otherwise a political right, should be stopped because it allegedly violates some other civil and fundamental rights of the citizens.
   However, call for hartal per se is not illegal; rather, it is a historically recognised democratic right. Indeed, where an act is meant to be nothing but an expression of protest such an act cannot be said to violate the fundamental rights of the citizens. The calling for hartal, not accompanied by any threat, will be only an expression guaranteed as a fundamental right under the Constitution. And, therefore, any political organisation may call ‘hartal’ by calling upon the people in general or to a particular class or group of people to observe it. But the freedoms as enunciated in the constitutional provisions cannot be construed as a license for illegality or incitement to violence and crime. Hence, any attempt to enforce it or ensure that the hartal is observed makes the call illegal, resulting in interference with individual rights. At the same time, any kind of provocation, instigation, intervention and aggression by anti-hartal activists to foil the hartal is also unlawful. In a word, hartal, as a democratic right, should be observed as well as should be allowed to be observed peacefully without resorting to any illegal activities. (Khondoker Modarresh Elahi Vs The Govt of Bangladesh, 21(2001) BLD (HC) 352).
   But the actual scenario is that during hartal citizens are prevented from attending to their avocations and the traders are prevented from keeping open their shops or from carrying on their business activities. Also, the workers are prevented from attending to their duties in the factories and other manufacturing establishments leading to loss in production causing nations loss. And after every hartal, with our painful eyes and heartbreaking sighs, we have to see in the newspapers the pictures of wanton acts of vandalism like destruction of government and private properties, transport vehicles, private cars and three wheelers as well as rickshaws. These illegal acts in the name of hartal cannot be recognised as political rights protected by the Constitution.
   In this respect, High Court of Kerala, in the case of Bharat Kumar Palicha and another Vs State of Kerala and others, AIR1997 (Kerala) 291, held that the calling for and holding of bundh (hartal) by political party or organisation involves a threat expressed or implied to citizens not to carry on their activities or to practise their avocations on the day of bundh. It violates the fundamental rights of the citizens. The Supreme Court of India by its judgment reported in AIR 1998 (Supreme Court) 1984 upheld the judgment saying there was no right to call or impose bundh which interferes with the fundamental rights of freedoms of citizens, in addition to causing loss in many other ways.
   Nevertheless, hartal should not be banned by enacting law, because it will be a futile exercise for some practical reasons. In fact, it must be allowed to be exercised in the greater context of the nation as a whole for political and social development as a democratic culture. What is necessary is to ensure that it is not resorted to unless there is a genuine cause for agitation for the welfare and greater interest of the people, the government refuses to respond to the demands or grievances raised by the common people or by the opposition, and there is an overwhelming public support in favour of hartal.
   Another point is that the rights of assembly, meeting and processions, which give the right to call hartal, are not absolute but rather regulated by law. Reasonable restrictions may be imposed in the observance of hartal in the interest of public order. Again, when a call for hartal is accompanied by threat, it amounts to intimidation, for which any aggrieved person or party may take legal action against the caller for hartal under the ordinary laws of the land. Besides, citizens, who think their fundamental rights are encountering threats due to hartal, can take resort to article 44(1) and 102 of the Constitution to have their fundamental rights protected, and can thus restrict destructive mood of hartals to some extent.
   But what about the financial loss suffered by the nation? A UNDP report (ref: New Age, 11 March 2005) revealed that hartal had cost Bangladesh 3/4 per cent of its GDP on an average every year between 1991 and 2000. And the calculation will be more or less same when it is 2006. The same report contained an opinion poll on hartal that covers 3,000 respondents from different walks of life. 55 per cent of the respondents perceived hartal as an ineffective political tool against 38 per cent who believed it is somewhat or very effective. Again, a recent “TARA AC NIELSEN ORG MARG PEPORT’ (ref: The Daily Star, 17 December 2006) shows that 90 per cent of the public interviewed in the opinion poll opine that hartal should be stopped.
   Hence, it is high time our politicians decided whether they will make wanton use of hartal any more. They should realise that the common people do no longer get amused by ‘thanks for making hartal a success’. They must realise that hartal or oborodh in the way it is exercised now-a-days can never be a way to protest against the activities of government or other organisations in a democratic and civilised society. There are numerous civilsed ways to ventilate grievances. Human wall, human chain, signature campaign, silent procession or procession with black scarf on faces of persons therein, burning the party or organisation flags, burning effigies, arrangement for musical proptests on streets, staging drama or play in public places, holding public assemblies at the foot of Shaheed Minar are the ways which the people of this country have accepted and appreciated.
   The writer is a law and governance researcher currently working for Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). He can be reached at: mandizpodetho@yahoo.com. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the organisation he serves.

NEW YORK: Ban Ki-moon was sworn into office as the new United Nations Secretary General on December 14. Soon he will be sworn at, when once again the UN fails to obey US orders. Any secretary general’s honeymoon in Washington is likely to be short. Who now remembers that outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan was a US nomination back in 1996, or that he managed to persuade Jurassic Jesse Helms to cut a deal on paying off Washington’s debt to the UN?
   As Annan leaves, it gives him some wry satisfaction that John Bolton, the US ambassador who thought he was a viceroy, has been sent off the field by the new Democratic Congress. After spending his first term perceived almost as a secular saint, Annan spent much of his second being reviled by Bolton’s soulmates as a global kleptocrat.
   It was mostly in the United States that the sustained neocon Swift-boating, through the alleged ‘Oil for Food Scandal,’ muddied Annan’s reputation. Fortunately, the rest of the world took little notice of those furious and hyperbolic exaggerations. Annan’s historical position is now clearer, and it is not just customary valediction to say that he has been one of the most effective secretary generals in UN history. Successes in Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, Lebanon and Congo’s first free elections in four decades are no mean vindication of Annan’s principled pragmatism.
   Bill Clinton pushed Annan’s appointment because of a misapprehension that he would be a reverse of his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali: more secretary than general. Clinton and his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, did not want someone with big ideas and a big mouth engaging in public debates with their Administration. They thought they could count on the reserved UN bureaucrat to deliver.
   They were right about the big mouth, wrong on the big ideas. Annan is not a great orator. Audiences have to strain to hear his softly spoken phrases, whose content has usually been carefully polished to remove any language that would be too confrontational. Yet the big ideas kept coming.
   As a cog in the UN juggernaut hijacked by the great powers, Annan was implicated in the bloody failures in Bosnia and Rwanda, and on taking office he tried to make ‘Never Again’ more than an empty slogan, beginning with an unprecedentedly open report on the UN’s role in those events. Human rights, development and global responsibility were his constant refrain over the years, and he reclaimed a role for the UN as a standard setter, making development a global issue.
   Annan’s quiet authority and palpable decency made him a perfect standard-bearer both for the organisation and for these values. It was precisely those strengths that the xenophobic wing of the US media tried to undermine in his second term, when he stated the obvious truths about Washington’s disregard for international law and human rights, most notably in Iraq.
   However, there is a built-in contradiction in combining the roles of peacemaker and tribune of the world’s peoples. The secretary general cannot bad-mouth perpetrators too strongly, since he may have to negotiate with them. Even some close aides wish that Annan had been more stentorian in his statements. Annan admits that sometimes he may have been too low-key, but he argues that ‘particularly when it comes to human dignity and individual rights, some of the positions I have taken...are also intended to empower others, particularly the civil society. In some countries people can quote the secretary general...and not go to jail. If they say it themselves they will be in trouble.’
   When Annan took office, the UN was still reeling from decades of Congressional assault––culminating in the US putsch against Boutros-Ghali. The organisation had few friends in Washington. Annan realised the importance of engaging the United States actively––not just for the sake of his own survival but for that of the organisation itself. That predicated cultivating a US constituency, and Annan was remarkably successful at it for most of his tenure. In particular, he engaged American Jewish organisations and worked hard to end the isolation of Israel inside the world body, at the risk of alienating key international constituencies. This led to criticism––some of it from supporters and close associates––that he was forgetting the Palestinians. However, Annan has consistently restated and emphasised the UN’s legal and humanitarian positions on Israel, and he condemned the Israeli attack on the UN’s Khiyam outpost in Lebanon during the summer war.
   Annan had built enough trust from both sides for the resolution of this summer’s war in Lebanon, which was perhaps the best vindication of his principled pragmatism. Once again, the UN had to cope with the consequences of Washington’s refusal to listen to others. Annan called for a cease-fire when two permanent members, the United States and Britain, regarded it as ‘premature.’ While the Security Council was tied down by a threatened US veto, Annan had the UN pre-emptively preparing a solution––an expanded and reinforced peacekeeping force, which allowed the Israelis and their allies to climb down from the pole up which they had clambered. Ten years ago it was a major plank of Israeli, and consequently US, Middle East policy to exclude the UN from any role. Following ten years of Annan’s tightrope diplomacy, the Israelis pleaded for the UN to step in.
   While the Bush White House did not overtly join the assault on Annan’s integrity during the so-called Oil for Food Scandal, it certainly did not try to curb the rabid right when they were calling for his resignation. Annan admits, ‘There have been times when it has been tough, particularly when some people on the Hill or the right wing begin attacking the UN and the Secretary General, and no one pulls them back.... If you undermine the organisation to that extent, your own population may ask you, Why are you going to this organisation that you’ve discredited so much?’
   For fifteen years the US perception of the UN has revolved around the issue of Iraq. The organisation was a convenient scapegoat for US policy failures, which ricocheted catastrophically from insufficient resolution to too much. Washington expected the UN to follow faithfully every wobble. Saddam Hussein did consistently violate the terms of UN resolutions, but Washington’s positions, not least in treating weapons inspectors as a branch of US intelligence, succeeded in giving his defiance quasi legitimacy. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations made it plain they would veto any lifting of sanctions until regime change––even though this was not in any way a part of the UN resolutions. First Boutros-Ghali and then Annan had to negotiate compliance from Baghdad, even though Washington’s veto insured that they could offer no ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ Iraqi civilians paid the price for the obduracy of both Baghdad and Washington. In 1998, after negotiating with Saddam, Annan himself pointed out, ‘You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.’ That was never consistently forthcoming.
   Annan is deeply conscious of the collateral damage of the Iraq War on the global community: ‘It led to a major division in this organisation and in the world. And it has not healed yet.... At the early stages the leaders themselves were quite divided, and they were very vocal about it.... They are trying to mend fences and work together, but we are not there yet.’
   In his typically oblique way, Annan lodges a criticism of the invasion: ‘The member states debated it fully here, and you noticed that the majority of the members in the Council could not bring themselves to vote for the military action. The US and others decided to go outside the Council to take action, and of course individual governments are free to take decisions that they wish to. But I think it was appropriate that the Council took the decision it did.’ True to form, even at this late stage, when he is beyond the reach of Rush Limbaugh and Norm Coleman, he persists in a nonconfrontational correction.
   Following the UN’s laudable but ineffective refusal to authorise the invasion, neocon warrior Richard Perle, a member of George W Bush’s Defence Policy Board at the time, crowed over the organisation’s troubles in an article headlined, ‘Thank God for the death of the UN.’ It wasn’t long before triumph turned to quagmire, with Washington calling on the UN for its services.
   The war was also to have profound consequences for Annan’s media image in the United States, as it allowed all the obsessive UN-baiters out of their kennels. Hitherto the perception of him had been of one who was Teflon-coated and unassailable, exuding moral authority. No longer. One of the postwar responsibilities the UN accepted was the transition from occupation to Iraqi self-government, and the officials involved were well aware that the neocons’ man, Ahmad Chalabi, was a self-promoting carpetbagger with a bigger constituency in Washington think tanks than in Baghdad. Chalabi and the think tanks bitterly opposed UN involvement, not least for that reason. He came to New York and threatened Annan’s office with consequences––with the Oil for Food Scandal, in fact.
   At the time Annan described the imbroglio as ‘a bit like lynching.’ A distressing number of American media assessments of his tenure are still presenting it as a taint on Annan’s reputation rather than a blot on their colleagues’ integrity for joining in the malicious Swift-boating. In fact, by any rational standards Oil for Food was a success, so much so that Washington asked that it be continued in the year after the invasion. The Volcker Commission inquiry alleged that the OFF director had received $140,000 over four years in kickbacks from perfectly legal, if unethical, oil trades. The rest of the money allegedly transferred to Saddam was the result of oil sales in breach of sanctions but condoned by Security Council members, or from companies whose behaviour was overlooked by member governments.
   Still bemused by the media battering, Annan suggests that publicity during the inquiry was ‘patently unfair. What was interesting was the way they handled it, with rogue investigators leaking information and leading people astray. When the full story came out and they discovered that the scandal was not here but in the capitals, with the 2,200 companies involved in kickbacks, the story died.’ No part of the scandal was more dead than the $10 billion from the programme that was given to US occupation authorities––spent lavishly and with very little paper trail. Representative Henry Waxman has been a lonely voice in Washington following the trail from OFF to GOP crony contractors. So far Annan’s media persecutors have shown little interest.
   Those who do not read or watch the Murdoch media will probably note that Annan’s biggest historical legacy will be the ‘Responsibility to Protect.’ Rather than try to amend the UN Charter, in 2005 he manoeuvred the heads of state at the UN’s sixtieth-anniversary World Summit to reinterpret it. From now on, the threats to ‘peace and security’ that the Security Council is chartered to fight include governments’ failures to protect their own people, thus overturning the centuries-old principle of absolute national sovereignty accepted by the Charter.
   Annan reminisces about the initial reaction to his raising the subject: ‘When I said, back in 1999, ‘We cannot accept that governments can hide behind the shield of sovereignty and brutalise their people or allow these violations to go on,’ quite a lot of ambassadors were very upset that I was encouraging interference in their internal affairs. And yet five, six years on, we have the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ as a principle accepted by all heads of state.’ It has taken several millennia for an accepted principle like ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to be implemented, so we should not be too disappointed if the continuing carnage in Darfur casts doubt upon the sincerity of many of those heads. At least the concept strips the defenders of mass murder of any spurious legal or ethical defence based on national sovereignty.
   Even if it is unfinished business, Darfur is certainly not Annan’s failure; he has been remarkably outspoken about the culpability of Khartoum. ‘When I hear heads of state get up and say, ‘The UN must act in, say, Darfur,’ who is the UN here?’ he asks. ‘We need to hold governments to the solemn pledge they made in the General Assembly. Most people believe that Darfur is a sort of test, so we need to remind them that they made this solemn pledge and we want them to redeem it. What’s even more important is that peoples around the world can use this to push member states to action.’ He adds, ‘Without pressure from the population and civil society, I don’t think they would do it.’
   Annan has done more than any predecessor to insure that those invoked in the opening words of the UN Charter, ‘We the peoples of the world,’ have a serious place on the UN agenda. Under very difficult circumstances, one of which was the negative role of US administrations, he has done remarkably well.
   The Nation/US Online, December 20, 2006.