Editorial
Govt should immediately
reduce fuel prices
WHILE it may be heartening that the government is in a position to make profits from one of its enterprises or activities, particularly given that most of them are beset by problems of inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption, news that the military-controlled interim government stands to profit from a crucial agricultural input gives rise to serious misgivings. According to a New Age report, the incumbents stand to profit as much as Tk 12 per litre of diesel and retain a similar margin in the case of kerosene, presumably because international oil prices have plunged below $50 per barrel. The incumbents have repeatedly pledged their wholehearted and unflinching support for agriculture publicly. They have stressed on the need for increasing agricultural production severally and committed full support to ensure Bangladesh’s food security, particularly after two bouts of floods and a devastating cyclone last year and in the context of a global food crisis which saw cereal prices rising significantly. Given the decline in international fuel prices on the international market, it would have been expected that the government would seriously consider subsidising agricultural inputs, especially diesel, firstly to ensure that farmers do not face a prohibitive cost of production for their produce and secondly to keep food prices low.
But comments of high officials in relevant government offices indicate that the incumbents are not giving the matter due consideration. Comments of M Tamim, currently in charge of the energy ministry, as reported in New Age on Sunday, do not provide any clear pointers in this regard either. Simply stating that the government is monitoring the situation is not good enough, particularly given that the boro season is advancing and farmers will soon begin to feel the pinch of costly diesel, which was much lower during the last boro season.
Keeping the prices of diesel and kerosene are of particularly importance for the poorer sections of the people, as diesel is used for agriculture and transport and kerosene is used for household purposes. Given the current scenario, the incumbents could well consider reducing diesel and kerosene prices to a break-even point, as even that would provide substantial benefits for the people at large, without going into the question of subsidies. The report indicates that the incumbents have not only failed to ensure that market trends reflect their recent decision to reduce fuel prices by up to 13 per cent, which took effect when oil was around $70 per barrel early last month, but they have also accepted their failure to regulate transport fares in any way. Furthermore, the incumbents appear to be citing this failure as an excuse for not reducing fuel prices since the reduction would fail to benefit the poor. Such an attitude is unacceptable and essentially ignores the larger and a more direct interest of the people. It is expected that the incumbents take necessary measures to reduce diesel and kerosene prices significantly so as to relieve the poorer sections and be prepared to subsidise them regardless of international prices.
BRAC founder’s words carry
a powerful message
AS THE world economy continues to unravel from the turmoil of the global financial crisis, the established mantra that unfettered and unregulated markets solve economic problems better than governments do, has suffered a body blow. For over two decades the ideological founders of the economic mantra, often described as the ‘Washington Consensus’, have seen to the dismantling of public services across the least developed world, on the idea that the self-interest-driven market forces create a greater sum of social benefits than their state-run counterparts do. But even as the world economy has doubled and redoubled its aggregate wealth over this period, millions of people have descended into dehumanising poverty, unable to enforce their right to development because of systemic failures. It is this ‘right’ to development, a legal entitlement, through which the poor ‘can get decent work, [a] fair share of property, [a] right to information and voice, so that they too can affect the decisions and activities of the state’ that formed the thrust of this year’s Syed Ishtiaq Ahmed Memorial Lecture given by BRAC founder Fazle Hasan Abed on Saturday.
Abed underscored the need for legal empowerment of the poor as a holistic strategy to tackle the poverty they face, not just in terms of wealth, but also in terms of their opportunities and their basic rights. In his vision of a strategy to tackle this poverty, Abed focused on four crucial pillars he sees as central in national and international efforts to give the poor protection and opportunities. They are access to justice and rule of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights. We cannot overemphasise the value of the premise that development is more than just a lack of poverty, but also defined by the political, economic, social and cultural freedoms exercised by an individual or society.
We also laud the BRAC founder for underscoring the need to enforce the ‘moral obligations’ of providing food, shelter, clothing and healthcare to all its citizens, especially in an era when the breakdown of public services and the effectiveness of NGO interventions has often been used as a rationale to undermine this moral obligation. Side by side with the legal safety nets that Abed talks about, we cannot ignore the importance of recognising the political nature of the systemic deprivations that the poor face, and the need to transform the right to development into a political entitlement – which as Abed has pointed out – is inextricably linked to the prevalence of freedom and democracy in a society.
‘The immense problems created by inequality and poverty can be addressed by adopting a redistributive strategy to empower the poor to fully enjoy their right to resources, and fight the hegemony of unregulated free market enterprises,’ said the BRAC founder. Coming from a man whose life’s work has largely been in service of citizens that the state had failed, these words carry a powerful lesson for those who preach the dogma of unfettered laissez faire.
Violence against women and
girls: breaking taboos
In the nation’s recent history of popular struggles, Yasmin’s death helped to characterise the police force as a masculine institution, it gave new meanings to the Bangla proverb, ‘jey rokkhok shei bhokkhok’, he who claims to protect women is the usurper, the aggressor. A taboo, sanctioned by state powers, was broken, writes Rahnuma Ahmed
SHE jumped down from the police van and tried to escape. It stopped; they hunted her down by torchlight, dragged her back and drove off. Men, gathered around the tea stall, wondered why the car had stopped. Curious, they walked up to the spot. A golden-coloured sandal, a handkerchief, and broken bits of bangle lay there.
Yasmin: raped and murdered
by the police
She was only fourteen years old, her death was brutal. Gang-raped by policemen, and later, killed. Yasmin, a domestic wage worker, employed in a Dhaka city middle-class home, longed to see her mother. Leaving her employers home unannounced, she caught the bus to Dinajpur, got down at Doshmile bus stoppage, hours before dawn on August 24, 1995. A police patrol van driving by insisted on picking her up. Yasmin hesitated. One of the police constables barked at those gathered around the tea stall, ‘We are law-enforcers, we will drop her home safely. Don’t you have any faith in us?’
Hours later, a young boy discovered her bloodied dead body, off the main road. The police who came to investigate stripped her naked. Bystanders were outraged. Recording it as an unidentified death, they handed over her body to Anjuman-e-Mafidul Islam for burial.
The dead girl was the same girl who had been picked up by the police van, when this news had spread, a handful of people took out a procession. In response, the police authorities held a press conference where a couple of prostitutes turned up and claimed that the dead girl, Banu, was one of them, she had been missing. District-level administration and local influentials joined in the police’s attempts to cover up.
Spontaneous processions and rallies took place demanding that the police be tried. Yasmin’s mother recognised her daughter from a newspaper photo, lifeless as she lay strewn in an open three-wheeled van. As a people’s movement emerged, police action, yet again, was brutal. Lathi charge, followed by firing, killed seven people. Public outrage swelled. Roadblocks were set up, curfew was defied, police stations were besieged, arrested processionists were freed from police lock-ups by members of the public. Outrage focused on police superintendent Abdul Mottaleb, district commissioner Jabbar Farook, and member of parliament Khurshid Jahan (‘Chocolate Apa’), the then prime minister Khaleda Zia’s sister, perceived to be central figures in the cover-up. Sammilita Nari Samaj, a large alliance of women’s organisations, political, cultural and human rights activists, joined the people of Dinajpur, as Justice for Yasmin turned into a nationwide movement.
In 1997, the three policemen, Moinul Hoque, Abdus Sattar and Amrita Lal were found guilty. In 2004 they were executed.
Yasmin of Dinajpur is, for us, an icon symbolising female vulnerability, and resistance, both her own (she had tried to escape), and that of people, both Dinajpur and nationwide. She serves as a constant reminder that the police force, idealised in state imaginings as protector of life and property should not be taken for granted, that women need to test this each day, on every single occasion.
In the nation’s recent history of popular struggles, Yasmin’s death helped to characterise the police force as a masculine institution, it gave new meanings to the Bangla proverb, `je rokkhok shei bhokkhok’, he who claims to protect women is the usurper, the aggressor. A taboo, sanctioned by state powers, was broken.
Bidisha in remand: sexual abuse
‘Go and get a shard of ice. Insert it. It will all come out.’
In her autobiography, Bidisha, second wife of ex-President Hussain Muhammad Ershad, later divorced, writes, I wondered, what will they do with that? Insert it where? (Shotrur Shonge Shohobash, 2008).
Under the influence of what she assumes was a truth serum, injected during remand at a joint interrogation cell housed in Baridhara, Bidisha writes, the pain was unbearable. A horrible burning sensation coursed through my body, my eyes threatened to burst out of their sockets. If I opened them, it felt like chilli powder had been rubbed in. If I closed them, balls of fire encircled my pupils. My breathing grew heavy. I felt like I was dying, but I couldn’t, I was falling asleep, but I couldn’t. My tongue grew thick. I wanted to say everything that I knew, and things that I didn’t. Questions flew at me from all directions, some of them pounded me from inside my head.
But, Bidisha writes, I stuck to what she knew. I stuck to the truth. Her interrogators got tired. One of them ordered the ice, and ordered someone to leave the room. Was it the policewomen, Bidisha wonders. A strong pair of hands gripped her shoulders, another climbed up her legs, up her thighs, ‘like a snake.’ But they stopped, disappointed. ‘I don’t think we can do it. She’s bleeding.’
She writes, but my periods had ended days earlier, why should there be blood? I remembered, it must be the beatings at the Gulshan police station, by the officer-in-charge Noore Alam. She was pushed and as she fell, someone grabbed hold of her orna. Pulled and pushed, her orna soon turned into a noose, she could no longer breathe, her tongue jutted out. She was hit hard with a stick on her lower abdomen, through the daze she could see that he was uniformed. I fell on the floor like a sack. I was barely conscious. I was kicked and trampled with boots on my chest, head, back, and lower abdomen.
During interrogation, the chief interrogator Joshim had repeatedly shouted at her, Do you know who I am? Do you know what I can do to you? Ten-twelve men had been present when the truth serum was injected. Well-dressed, fashionable clothes, expensive watches. Whiffs of expensive after-shave. Trim hair, cut very short. As she repeatedly stuck to the truth, Joshim threatened to hang her upside down, like Arman, he said, who was being tortured in the next room. She was threatened with rape, by members of RAB (Rapid Action Battalion). During another round her left thumbnail was prised open and torn away, by something like a pair of pliers. They held my eyelids open so that I could see. Relief came only when the call for prayers sounded, she writes, as the men scuttled away to pray.
Interrogation sessions were video-recorded, each interrogator had an audio recorder. I remember hearing, be sure to get all the details on camera. I remember someone adding, Who’ll think she’s had three kids? What a figure! The cassette’ll make him happy. Make who happy? she wonders. Toward the end of the three-day remand, one of the men entered and said, It’s over. I’ve talked. To who? asked one of the interrogators. One of the Bhaban men. (I presume, Bidisha means Hawa Bhaban). She was forced to declare on camera that she had not been tortured, to sign written declarations, and also blank sheets of paper.
She was in custody for 23 days in June 2005, because of two cases filed by her husband, and two by the government. What were the allegations? Her husband, the ex-president, first accused her of stealing his cell phone, money from his wallet, and vandalising household furniture. Then she was accused of having different birth dates on two different passports. And lastly, of having stashed away large amounts of money in foreign bank accounts.
Interested quarters tried to make light of the incident, they said, it was a ‘purely family affair.’ Those in the political know, for instance Kazi Zafarullah, Awami League presidium member, claimed that the ruling BNP had masterminded the event to prevent Ershad from forging unity with opposition political parties since elections were due next year (New Age, June 6, 2005). I was repeatedly asked during interrogation, writes Bidisha, why had I said that the Jatiya Party should form an alliance with the Awami League? Why not with the BNP? (`because they were unable to govern properly, people were furious, Jatiya Party popularity was bound to fall’). Bidisha was expelled from Jatiya party membership, she lost her post of presidium member.
Parliamentary elections under the present military-backed caretaker government are scheduled to be held in December 2008. The Jatiya Party has joined the Awami League-led grand alliance for contesting the elections. According to newspaper reports, Ershad is eyeing the presidency.
Pahari women: rape under occupation
Even after the signing of the 1997 Peace Treaty between the government and the PCJSS (Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti), the Chittagong Hill Tracts remains one of the most militarised regions of the world. During the period of armed conflict, according to international human rights reports, sexual violence was inflicted on indigenous women and their communities as part of military strategy. Bangladesh Army personnel have been accused by paharis of having committed extrajudicial killings, rape, torture and abduction. In August 2003, over 300 houses in 7 pahari villages of Mahalcchari were razed to the ground by the army, aided by Bengali settlers. Paharis claim, ten Chakma women were raped, some of them gang-raped. This includes a mother and her two daughters, aged 12 and 15, and two daughters of another family, aged 14 and 16 years. Victims allege, armed personnel along with Bengali settlers took part in the rapes. Paharis claim, state-sponsored political and sexual violence still continues.
There is no public evidence that the Bangladesh army has investigated those claims in any way. Nor do we know if the Bangladesh army has charged any soldier as a result of the alleged assaults. Nor is there any public evidence that any military personnel has been punished for any of the alleged rapes.
Tomorrow, November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. We need to break more state-sanctioned taboos.
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