Editorial
Entire nation needs to be mobilised
for cyclone relief operations
The country has been struck by another devastating force of the elements. The deadly cyclone Sidr swept through the coastal districts of the country Thursday evening with an omni-destructive wind speed of up to 240 kilometres an hour and 20-foot high tidal surge. A Doom’s Day scenario reminiscent of 1970 was virtually unfolding, barring the difference in the scale of deaths. The full magnitude of devastation is not yet known and fresh reports of deaths and depredation keep pouring in. By the latest tally, two hundred people are reported to have been killed but, as always happens, the toll will keep rising as more bodies are recovered and those missing are given up for dead. It can thus be anticipated that on final count the toll will exceed 500. The loss to property too is gigantic and the dwellings of hundreds of thousands have been razed.
In the face of natural disaster the top urgency is the rescue of victims. Although advance warning was given and some evacuation was carried on, the number of deaths suggests that these operations were far from foolproof. In our country disaster warning generally means that the people are just warned and left to their own devices to move and find a shelter. And it is doubtful how thorough was the warning. People also died from boat capsize; why should boat capsize occur at all if the alert was persuasive and universal? After the rescue comes relief and rehabilitation. To this end the entire national effort must be mobilised. Distribution of relief should not be made into a mediagenic or personality-enhancing exercise and should be directed to concrete goals. The government must involve the political parties which have experience of dealing with calamities and are able to reach out to the people in remote areas. We trust the present government has learnt its lesson from its experience in handling flood relief only four months ago. At that time there was no reported misuse of relief materials but that was immaterial because adequate amounts of relief materials did not reach the victims either. This time, it is hoped, the government will shed its unilateral approach to a natural disaster and launch a concerted national effort to help the victims, especially the poor, to begin a new life.
Many people who had moved to the cyclone shelters were returned as there was no more room for the fresh influx. This means the shelters are sardine-packed, a condition which invites every kind of medical problem. Medical teams should be rushed immediately. Rehabilitation of the homeless will have to be a sustained activity and government assistance for rebuilding houses must be forthcoming. This time we should resist the temptation of appealing for international assistance. We should raise ourselves by our bootstraps to put together the necessary resources. For whatever reason natural calamities have become more frequent and many countries are themselves strained for dealing with disasters.
Predictable DU probe report
The findings and recommendations of the one-man judicial commission, which was formed to investigate the August 20-22 campus protest, seem to be as predictable as its constitution was. In the wake of each and every episode of student-teacher protest on campus of Dhaka University in the past, the government of the day – elected or unelected, democratic or despotic – instituted an inquiry and every time the inquiry committee returned an identical recommendation, i.e. party-political activities on campus, especially by students, should be banned. The objective seems to have been taming the inherently dissenting nature of students. The Justice Habibur Rahman Khan Commission has not been an exception.
The one-man commission is seemingly not against student politics per se; it only wants student politics de-linked from party politics and thus suggests that the Dhaka University Ordinance, 1973, which ‘does not forbid teachers from being involved in direct party politics,’ and the Political Party Regulations, 1976, which ‘has allowed political parties to form student organisations at the universities,’ should be amended. Given the widespread literacy and poverty in the country, there is no denying that students form an enlightened and politically conscious section of society. It is in the interest of the country that students should analyse and develop their own opinions on how the country is and should be run. In other words, students should be encouraged to develop political awareness and be allowed the space for manifestation of such awareness. The convergence of their political sensitivity with the political agenda of one party or the other cannot be ruled out. In such a case, students would naturally express solidarity with the political party and channel their activism to carry its agenda forward, with or without being members of their front organisations. It is worth mentioning here that at the height of the student movement, which was the precursor to the nation’s independence struggle, student leaders were in close contact with the leaders of the different political parties; they did not need affiliation with any political parties or their front organisations.
The commission has kept silent on certain critical issues related to the August 20-22 protest. For example, it has not made any observation or recommendation about the atrocities perpetrated by the police on the students. Also, it has preferred silence on the role of the army, with Justice Khan saying, ‘It is beyond my jurisdiction to mention anything about the army’s involvement in the incident.’ His reticence may very well be construed as his fear for retribution.
Finally, the commission’s observation vis-à-vis the genesis of the protest is again not revealing. The students protested so strongly because their sense of dignity was hurt and their anger was eventually directed at the emergency rule because they regarded it as the reason for the temporary army camp being on the campus in the first place. While Justice Khan refused to categorically say who the ‘aggrieved’ people who instigated the protest, he presumably meant the political parties. Here, we would like to point out that the political parties do have a number of reasons to feel aggrieved and that it will be unjust to brand such grievances as criminal. Most importantly, such grievances are directly related to the state of emergency and the subsequent ban on political activities. Until and unless the state of emergency is withdrawn and the right to political activism restored, the grievances will simmer on, waiting for an opportunity for yet another large-scale outburst.
Overlooking the obvious
When the lives and livelihoods of the poor are destroyed in drives against illegal occupation of government land, and roadsides and pavements, and when prices of essential commodities keep climbing upwards, beyond the means of the poor, there will undoubtedly be an increase in crime rate. Increased anti-crime activism cannot, therefore, be the only remedy for deterioration of law
and order, Sonia Kristy
ON NOVEMBER 10, robbers looted valuables worth Tk 40 lakh from the house of an expatriate Bangladeshi, Monsur Ahmed, at Khilkhet, Dhaka.
On October 27, in Maddhya Uttarkhan, extortionists set fire to the residence of a businessman, Apu Sarkar, who refused to pay them tolls. On the same day the decomposed body of a 12-year-old schoolboy, Injamamul Haque Suman, was recovered from near an under-construction building in Tongi. Suman was kidnapped on October 17 and later murdered for a ransom of Tk 10 lakh.
On October 31, muggers shot dead a young singer, Nasiruddin Shraban, at Khilgaon, taking away Tk 15,000 from him.
On September 26, a teacher of North South University was killed by druggers also known as ‘oggyan party’ at Banani.
These are only a sample of the innumerable criminal events that have been inundating the print and electronic media making the citizens worried and insecure, and doubtful about the capability of the government and the law-enforcement agencies. They may have expected a significant improvement in the overall law and order scenario once the Fakhruddin Ahmed-led military driven interim government took over after declaration of a state of emergency. After 10 months or so of emergency rule, the people’s expectations have been belied as the situation has deteriorated with the crime curve steadily creeping upwards. All sorts of crimes and criminal activities – from petty crimes like theft to new and innovative ones like mugging by the so-called ‘oggyan party’ to gruesome murders to infamous ‘crossfire’ deaths by the Rapid Action Battalion – seem to have gotten a free rein.
The human rights organisation Odhikar’s October report is enough to reveal the prevailing law and order scenario. According to the report, 14 people were killed by the law enforcing agencies across the country, among whom 12 were slain in what the law enforcers called ‘crossfire’, ‘encounter’ or ‘gunfight’; one allegedly tortured to death and one was shot in questionable circumstances. During the same period, 13 women and 21 girls were reportedly raped, seven of whom were killed after rape. Nine women, three children and a man became victims of acid violence.
The same organisation’s report on the overall human rights situation of the past eight months (from January 1-September 30) raises questions about the role of the government and its law-enforcing agencies. The report reveals that a total of 157 people were reportedly killed in those months, among them 107 in ‘crossfire’, 29 allegedly tortured to death, three in jail custody and police station. Then there were 118 victims of acid attack and 352 cases of rape.
When the scenario is so grim and the situation so alarming, the Fakhruddin government, instead of taking note of it and making all-out efforts to curb crime, was busy eulogising its ‘achievement’. On May 23, the commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Naim Ahmed, reportedly claimed at a news briefing at the DMP headquarters that law and order had improved in the city and that the law enforcers were much more efficient in terms of identifying and arresting the criminals. The chief of army staff, Moeen U Ahmed, made similar comments at a meeting with editors of different newspapers on the same day. Moeen, in fact, claimed that one of the major achievements of the military-driven interim government was the improvement of law and order.
Things cannot be farther from the truth. After analysing its initial six-month performance, it appeared that law and order scenario was not only disappointing rather all types of criminal activities continued unabated. The official records showed that 1,932 killings, on an average 322 every month, took place during the period. Although the incidence of muggings, with 580 cases lodged with different police stations, decreased slightly, robberies were reported from all over the country. Petty crimes such as burglary and theft also increased during this time as the records show – 1,965 incidents of burglary and 5,889 of theft (New Age, July 11).
A more prudent and sensible government might have initiated swifter measures to address the deterioration in law and order. The incumbents should have taken much more active interest in the matter, particularly since the rise in crime may have been partly their own doing. Ever since the declaration of a state of emergency, the law-enforcement and security forces have been on the so-called ‘anti-crime drive.’ The army-led joint forces detained some two lakh people for their suspected involvement in crime and corruption. Yet, street crimes continued to take place meaning more people were taking to crime. The latter seems more plausible. And the reason is not too difficult to trace.
One of the first few things that the Fakhruddin government did, upon assumption of office, was to initiate a drive against the hawkers and slum-dwellers and evict them from their homes and their livelihoods. According to reports, the demolition and eviction drive, in a bid to clean and beautify the city, made tens of thousands of people homeless and jobless. While gleefully uprooting the hawkers in a bid to clean the city, the authorities overlooked, or perhaps ignored, the small matter of their rehabilitation. Life, especially in the city, is usually costly and in recent times when the prices of essential commodities have increased manifold going out of the reach of even many middle-class families, imagine the hardship and desperation of those whose sole source of earning was dismantled and gone.
There are about seven to eight million hawkers across the country who along with their families are dependent on the small businesses on footpaths (New Age, January 26). The authorities did relocate some of the evicted hawkers setting up what have euphemistically been called holiday markets at 12 different locations in the capital but these could accommodate and support a very few. Though the government has recently taken a decision that no street hawkers would be evicted anymore from their present sites, which is in a way an admission that what the government did previously was wrong, it is far from compensating for the initial impact on their livelihoods.
With their previous source of income gone and the possibility of fresh employment increasingly remote, it is only likely that some of these people would resort to desperate measures such as street crimes. Regrettably, the government seems oblivious to the direct correlation between unemployment and crime. Instead of creating, or at least attempting to create jobs, it appears intent on cutting more jobs. The government sacked the entire staff of a state-owned jute mill in Khulna without paying their pending wages or termination benefits and more than 3,000 people and their families found themselves looking at an uncertain future overnight. Similar job cuts in a number of jute mills and different public-sector enterprises also took place. Clearly, the number of desperate people in the city and elsewhere is increasing at an alarming pace.
This is where the government needs to concentrate if it is really sincere about improving law and order. When the lives and livelihoods of the poor are destroyed in drives against illegal occupation of government land, and roadsides and pavements, and when prices of essential commodities keep climbing upwards, beyond the means of the poor, there will undoubtedly be an increase in crime rate. But, the government is yet to even acknowledge that the rise in crimes is to a large extent a result of some of its anti-poor measures, let alone begin to address these issues. The media and the saner section of society has tried to attract the attention of the government over and over to pay due attention to deteriorating law and order. This paper as well has published a number of articles voicing similar concern in this regard. It doesn’t appear that the authorities concerned have paid any heed to it.
Until and unless the government wakes up from their slumber and discard its ostrich-like mentality, no matter how many law enforcers it deploys on the streets, how many anti-crime drives it carries out, how many people the police detain, how many special units like Rapid Action Battalion are formed, the conditions will surely deteriorate and the crime rate will climb leaving the citizens in an insecure and chaotic condition and with lesser hope of things getting better any time soon.
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