Editorial
Let not the memory of Yasmin fade
If the custodial rape and murder of 14-year-old Yasmin Akhtar by policemen in 1996 represents one of the most shameful moments in this nation’s history, it is a tragic revelation that, more than a decade later, such violence against women continues to be one of our society’s most telling and commonplace realities. Women in Bangladesh are no more safer, on the streets or at home, from violence perpetrated by their male counterparts, with state actors not only continuing to fail in providing security to female citizens but often becoming the perpetrators of such heinous crimes.
The public protests ignited by Yasmin’s rape and murder in 1995 made her one of the potent symbols of violence against women, of the violence of the powerful perpetrated on the powerless. But the public backlash to Yasmin’s murder also became a potent symbol of social resistance to such violence. Make no mistake: it was a battle between the powerful state and the seemingly powerless sea of ordinary citizens. And yet, it was the citizens who emerged victorious, with two policemen who raped and killed that young girl sent to the gallows by a court in 1997.
But if we won that battle in 1995, today we are losing the war. The fact that a handful of cases related to the Yasmin murder are still undergoing trial more than a decade on is a damning testimony against a justice delivery system seemingly rigged in favour of the powerful. It was perhaps always so, but by easing the pressure on the government to act decisively, we have also become complicit. In failing to be outraged and outspoken as countless young women face rape and violence every day in the country, we have become complicit. In perpetuating, or failing to resist, male supremacist mindsets and male chauvinism in society, we have become complicit.
In short, we have allowed the memory of Yasmin and the spirit of resistance she ignited in our public consciousness to be buried. This is borne out no better than by the fact that as the day of her murder passed on August 24, the mainstream media and the mainstream of society largely failed to observe it as a day of resistance against repression on women, a recognition that has had widespread currency since 1996. This year, in Dhaka, the National Forum to Resist Repression on Women was perhaps the lone organisation which observed the day with a public function. The press and civil society seemed largely to ignore the day’s significance.
We must recognise that the struggle for rights, even those that seek to end tyrannical mores of society, is essentially a political struggle. There are few examples in the world, where rights have been awarded and not earned, the struggle to establish the rights of women in this country will likely be no exception. Yasmin’s death can be symbolic of the depravity of the society we live in, or the way collective action ensured justice in her case can become a greater symbol of the strength of the powerless against their oppressors. It is a latter that we must transform into reality.
Curfew and shooting will not
bring peace on the border
A PEACEFUL border between the two neighbouring countries of India and Bangladesh has become an imperative in view of the unceasing periodic killings of Bangladeshi nationals along the border by India’s Border Security Force. The repeated protests by the Bangladesh authorities in general and the Bangladesh Rifles in particular and regular flag meetings have failed to put an end to these killings. The BSF chief has offered an apology for the killing of two Bangladesh border guards on July 18 and gave an assurance that India would take stern action against those responsible. This possibly well-intentioned apology acquired an ironical twinge when the apology was synchronised with the shooting down of two more Bangladeshis by the BSF on the Satkhira border last Saturday.
Another irony of the whole situation is that night-time curfew on border areas has not been clamped by Bangladesh, whose citizens are the victims of border killings, but by India. Imposing night-long curfews on inhabited villages along the border is neither a normal course of action nor one conducive to promotion of peaceful living among border-sharing neighbours. According to reports, India has ordered night-time curfew on most areas along its border to stop smuggling and ‘infiltration’. According to the BSF chief, India has been forced to take such measures to stop illegal movement of people and informal trade. This is a unilateral action by India. Border management being a bilateral concern, any measure in this direction should be taken after due consultation with the other side. In any case, punishing hundreds of thousands of poor villagers for the crime of a few who, in all probability, do not live in the border areas is absolutely unacceptable.
For decades, the villagers dwelling in the border areas have lived in fear. Many have adverse possessions of their lands and crop fields spilling across the border. They cannot pursue their normal activities of farming or tending animals if they have to live in constant fear of setting foot on the wrong side and being fired on as a result. This is true of people on both sides. In many cases, efforts to secure straying farm animals have invited tragedies. Odhikar, a human rights watchdog, estimates that in the first quarter of the current year, the BSF has killed 21 unarmed Bangladeshis by firing. Obviously, the victims were all poor villagers.
While we agree that cross-border smuggling needs to be addressed, much more urgent is the ceasing of cross-border shootings which result in the deaths of innocent villagers. Therefore, we would urge the Indian authorities to take all possible steps to cease cross-border shooting of Bangladeshi citizens and take up any grievances that they may have through proper, official channels.
Landslides, deaths and more
exercises in futility
The government needs to realise that demarcation of vulnerable hillside areas with red lines, demolition of shacks and eviction of slum dwellers after every landslide tragedy is not the solution; it may just be part of the problem, writes Mir Ashfaquzzaman
AS IN the case of every human tragedy in Bangladesh, the death of 11 people, including six of a family, in a torrential rain-triggered landslide at Lalkhan Bazar in Chittagong city entailed quite an intense debate. Relentless hill-cutting was once again identified as the primary reason for the landslide and the relevant agencies of the government were once again blamed for their failure to effectively fight rampant hill cutting. The Greater Chittagong Development Action Committee, a citizens’ group, alleged that none of the recommendations of the probe committees formed after the June 11, 2007 series of landslides in Chittagong city and adjacent areas, which killed more than 120 people and injured as many, had been followed to the letter.
The official line was predictably defensive. The acting mayor of the Chittagong City Corporation claimed that some ‘disaster management programmes have been initiated as landslides become a major issue during monsoon every year’. The divisional commissioner of Chittagong talked of ‘short-, medium- and long-term programmes’ in line with the recommendations of the probe committees. ‘Already we have evacuated several hundred families from the vulnerable locations in the city and given Tk 15,000 to each family to enable them to settle in safer places,’ he said. The deputy commissioner of Chittagong claimed that some of the slum dwellers ‘return to the previous locations on the hill slopes despite our drive to evacuate them. We find it difficult to motivate them to move to safer places or evacuate them totally.’
The June 11, 2007 landslides created quite a stir. The chief adviser and the chief of army staff flew into the port city within a few hours of the disaster, visited the affected areas and talked about ‘stern measures against land-grabbers to put an end to this dangerous trend [hill cutting]’. Subsequently, two committees were commissioned to identify the cause of the landslides and recommend measures to prevent recurrence of such tragedies. The committees, in turn, came up with 36 recommendations, including tough punishment for hill cutters, restriction on dwellings within five kilometres of hills, and ban on installation of brickfields within 10 kilometres of hills.
There are reasons to believe the allegations of the Greater Chittagong Development Action Committee that none of the recommendations has been followed to the letter in the past one year or so to be substantive. As reports in the national media in this period indicate, the incidence of hill cutting may have decreased but the ‘dangerous trend’ has not quite been put to an end. It is hardly surprising, though. The people behind the ‘dangerous trend’ are usually the high and the mighty – individuals with formidable influence, social, financial, political and otherwise. So, apparently, the government officials have gone after a much less benign target – the poor dwellers of hillside slums.
By the admission of the government officials, the plan is not, however, working. The slum dwellers keep coming back and setting up their shanties on the hillside despite the looming fear that, come another monsoon, big chunks of earth may slide down on their tin roofs and bury them alive. The observation of the Chittagong deputy commissioner is quite revealing in this regard – it is ‘difficult to motivate them to move to safer places or evacuate them totally’.
One wonders what the governmental agencies actually did to motivate the slum dwellers to move to safer places. Surely, the Tk 15,000 handout for each family was not the only means. There are reasons to believe that it followed or accompanied intimidation and even coercion. Yet, the stimuli did not work and one needs not be a genius to figure out why. The slum dwellers keep coming back to live in vulnerable hillsides because they have nowhere else to go.
According to the chairman of the Greater Chittagong Development Action Committee, no steps were taken to ensure rehabilitation of the slum dwellers after their evacuation from the vulnerable hillsides. ‘Without proper planning and measures for rehabilitation of the people living in flimsy houses at the bottom of cut hills, it will be difficult to avert the landslide tragedies here,’ he said.
Such a realisation, regrettably, is yet to dawn on the authorities. They seemingly fail to understand that driving the slum dwellers away from the hillsides is not any solution; in fact, the way they have gone about the eviction is another problem. It seems that the government is not aware of the concept of rehabilitation.
In the first few weeks since its assumption of power, the interim government plunged headlong into a demolition drive. It engaged the law-enforcement and security agencies to pull down slums on government lands and remove makeshift shops from roadsides and pavements. The end result was that thousands of people became homeless and jobless overnight. Not before the problem had snowballed into a crisis did the government start talking of rehabilitation of the displaced lot.
In case of Chittagong, the government seems to have trodden the same path. Since the June 11, 2007 tragedy, so preoccupied has it been to remove slums and shanties from vulnerable hillsides that rehabilitation of the displaced lot has hardly figured in its thought process. Predictably, once the intensity of the eviction drive waned, the displaced people worked out their own solution; needless to say, a dangerous solution. Only 11 people died in August 18 landslide; it could have been so many more.
Unfortunately, however, the government seems to have once again decided to tread along the fringe of the problem. The day after the August 18 landslide, at a meeting, chaired by the commerce and education adviser to the military-controlled interim government, the authorities decided to launch a drive to demarcate vulnerable spots with red lines and move the people from such spots by dismantling their houses on the hill slopes. Officials claimed that the drive was aimed at averting further landslides. A five-member committee was assigned to identify people who had grabbed government land on the hill slops, erected shacks and rented those out to poor people.
The question that remains unanswered is where these people will go after they are evicted. Probably, they would hope the intensity of the government’s action will die down in a few days or weeks, land grabbers will once again grab government land, erect shacks and rent those out. If past incidents were any indicators, their hopes would not be belied.
Come next monsoon, torrential rain might trigger yet another landslide and more shacks will be buried with their occupants inside. The government will once again intensify their action against hill cutting and occupation of government land, demolishing slums and evicting their dwellers.
Someone in the government needs to realise that unless the poor people are provided with a viable housing alternative, they will keep coming back to the shanties on the vulnerable hillsides, not because they do not treasure their life but because they have nowhere else to go.
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