Main Page «
Front Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

THE prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s realisation that the nation needs to be united to protect the country’s interests over the Tipaimukh Dam issue is welcome. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, she was quoted by the official spokesperson of the ruling Awami League as telling a party forum that the ‘nation should not be divided for political reasons’ with regard to the Tipaimukh issue, which she said ‘is a national problem’. Indeed, the unity of all social and political forces in Bangladesh is one of the prime prerequisites for effective resistance to the unilateral Indian move to construct a dam at Tipaimukh and a barrage at Fulertal on the upstream of the trans-national river Barak, which, according to experts in both India and Bangladesh, will cause desertification of vast tracts of land downstream. However, her encouraging words, coincided as they did with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia’s call to the government to ‘[act] boldly to protect the country’s interests’ and assurance that her party ‘will be with you [the government] if you uphold national interests’, could well be construed as a tactical statement to outsmart the leader of the opposition in political one-upmanship. That it is not so is up to the prime minister and her government to prove, which is why, we believe, her words need to be followed up with a number of specific actions.
   First and foremost, the prime minister should immediately call an all-party meeting on a specific agenda whereby the government will present a working paper, explaining its position on the Tipaimukh issue and outlining its strategies to face India, and seek support from not only the opposition parties but also its ruling allies, some of whom have already voiced their opposition, in public, to the controversial Indian project. Second, as we have commented in these columns before, the treasury bench should initiate a move to form a parliamentary standing committee to exclusively deal with the Tipaimukh issue, which is too sensitive to be left up to the parliamentary committee on the water resources ministry alone to handle. This parliamentary committee, in its turn, should send a team of parliamentarians and experts to Tipaimukh and Fulertal for inspection of the project site and assessment of the possible environmental impact the proposed dam and barrage may have on Bangladesh, and ask it to submit its findings and recommendations so that they can be debated in the parliament. Third, the government should ask its Indian counterparts to share with it whatever information they may have on the proposed project – schematic designs, work plans, structural details and especially environmental impact assessment reports. It should also request New Delhi to commission a joint environmental impact assessment by a team comprising experts from both Bangladesh and India. Fourth, while the government must keep the diplomatic channel with India open, it should nonetheless be prepared to take the case to the international forum, if needed, to safeguard the country’s rightful shares of the trans-boundary rivers, as defined by international laws and conventions.
   Simultaneously, the government needs to keep the people aware of the development at every step of the way. The people, as the ultimate sovereign in a democratic dispensation, reserve the right to know what its elected government is doing to protect and promote their interest – nationally, regionally and internationally. They need to be told what information the government currently has about the controversial Indian project and what position it has taken in this regard. Here, it is imperative that the government should speak in one voice, which it has thus far failed to do. We have seen ministers contradicting each other in public on the Tipaimukh issue. Ultimately, it is the people’s interests that the entire political class is expected to protect and promote; here, there is no scope for equivocation or double talks.

Regulating transport
fare the right way

THE Rajshahi City Corporation in response to public demand is preparing a fare chart for rickshaws plying the city. It is widely alleged that rickshaw pullers even for short distances demand unreasonably high fare. To prevent the rickshaw pullers from charging arbitrary fares the Rajshahi mayor said the city corporation was planning to prepare a fare chart, as mentioned in a New Age report on Friday. Any dispute arising over the fare will henceforth be settled by referring to the approved fare chart.
   If the mayor wants to tame the rickshaw pullers who overcharge the public, he will certainly be fulfilling his responsibility so far as it relates to providing low-cost transport to city-dwellers and improving civic life. While we appreciate the move we would like to remind the mayor and the authorities concerned that the transport sector has many other players, most of whom are more clever, affluent and greedy than the poor rickshaw pullers. Has the mayor given any attention to the rapacity of the owners of the rickshaws? Even if the fare chart is prepared in consultation with rickshaw pullers or their representatives, the point remains valid. Allowing the rickshaw owners to charge extortionate amounts of rent from the rickshaw pullers and forcing the rickshaw pullers to stick to a prefixed chart is not fair.
   What is true of Rajshahi is also true of the capital. Vehicle owners are under no control. The rent they charge on their vehicle amounts to unearned income. Yet, they are allowed a free hand. The compressed natural gas-powered three-wheelers have fare meter fixed but seldom is this the basis of determining fare. The passenger must either agree to pay a certain percentage over and above the meter reading or travel on contract basis. Bitter altercation often follows. But are the CNG drivers alone to blame? Are they getting rich quick? When the CNGs were introduced it was learnt that under the rule the vehicle owners could not charge a rent of more than Tk 300 per day. But on questioning any CNG driver the true picture will be clear. The owners charge as much as they can. And as for owners of private bus services, the less said the better. If some regulation could be enforced on the vehicle owners, the fares would come down and both drivers and passengers would be protected.

...the [Nigerian] nationalist leader Nnamdi Azikiwe urged Africans and other colonized peoples to prepare their own blueprint of rights themselves instead of relying on those who are too busy preparing their own.
   Bonny Ibhawoh, Imperialism and Human Rights, p 155
   
   Forced marriage, says a British High Commission press release, is a crime (Dhaka, March 28, 2006). As opposed to arranged marriages, forced marriages – by dint of not being based on consent – are a form of domestic violence and human rights abuse.
   To increase awareness, both in Britain and abroad, the British home ministry, and the foreign ministry, jointly formed a Forced Marriage Unit in January 2005. The unit was tasked with launching a publicity campaign: radio and press adverts, TV fillers and poster campaigns, and providing information. To those at risk, those affected, and those who are survivors.
   The British government, said the state minister for home, Baroness Scotland QC, is determined to protect young people’s ‘right to choose’ their spouses. A determination backed by the state minister for foreign office Lord Triesman’s assurance that ‘help is available’ for its victims.
   And so it was. Humayra Abedin, a 32-year old Bangladeshi and London-based doctor, was told her mother was very sick (http: //abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6496897). She returned to her parents home in Dhaka in August 2008 only to be locked in a room, have her passport, ticket and other documents taken away. Before her cell phone was taken, Abedin managed to send text messages, much later, secret e-mail letters, to people in Britain seeking help. On August 13, she was forcibly taken to a psychiatric clinic, held and medicated against her will for nearly three months.
   A court injunction issued in Britain was soon followed by a Bangladeshi court order. It instructed her parents to let her return to England if she so wished. She was escorted to the British High Commission, they arranged her return. Back in London, the British High Court issued an order preventing her from being removed from Britain without her consent. She had been forced to marry a man of her parents’ choice, said her lawyer, seeking its annulment as Abedin is a UK resident. Marriage without consent, declared High Court Judge Paul Coleridge in his ruling, was ‘a complete aberration of the whole concept of marriage in a civilised society.’
   The British High Commission in Dhaka had been just as prompt several months earlier when 19-year old Nasrin Begum, a British citizen, had telephoned the British consular office in Sylhet (http: //www.news.com.au/story/0,,24075405-401,00.html). About to be forced into marriage, Nasrin had ‘begged’ the consulate staff to intervene. And that they did, aided by Bangladeshi police. Forced marriage rescues, says Toafiq Wahab, head of consular services, can be ‘very challenging’ (Asian Image, January 20, 2008). According to a British High Commission spokesperson in Dhaka, between April 2007 and March 2008, the embassy staff had provided assistance in 56 such cases. But he added, we think there are ‘more out there.’
   The official website for the British High Commission in Dhaka has a Help for British Nationals page. Relatives and friends of those unfortunate enough to be detained or imprisoned are provided information about local prison conditions, the local legal system. Subject to prison approval, the high commission even passes on money sent to buy ‘prison comforts’. For victims of crime, the high commission provides much more: a list of local lawyers, interpreters, help in contacting a local doctor, and, in very exceptional cases, a loan from public funds. For those who have lost their passports, emergency travel documents, on occasions, even a passport. The website displays a customer feedback form inviting viewers to contribute ideas for improving their services.
   I wonder how Jamil Rahman would have filled it.
   Rahman, 31, a former civil servant from south Wales, settled in Bangladesh in 2005 after marrying a woman from Sylhet (Ian Cobain, Guardian, May 26, 2009). On December 1, 2005, says Rahman, police came to his wife’s family home to take him away. Two men, wearing balaclava masks towered over the police, peered at him through the slits and nodded their heads. Rahman and his wife were taken to the DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence) headquarters, and held in separate cells. He was stripped naked and beaten. He was told that his wife would be raped and murdered, that her body would be burned. He agreed to confess to a number of terrorist offences, to being the mastermind of the July 2005 underground and bus bombings in London. Released nearly three weeks later – after receiving strict instructions that he should not tell anyone of his experiences, nor contact any lawyers, or members of the media, or the British High Commission in Dhaka – he was frequently summoned for interrogations and repeated beatings for a period of more than two years.
   Rahman alleges, two well-spoken Britons, who said they were MI5 officers, that their names were Liam and Andrew, would be present during the interrogations, only to leave the room when he was tortured. When he told them of his torture, of being forced to make false confessions, ‘help’ was not forthcoming. Instead they would leave the room, they ‘needed a break.’ Andrew reportedly added, ‘They haven’t done a very good job on you.’ He would be beaten, extreme pressure exerted on his testicles, threatened that his wife would be raped. After the questioning resumed, Andrew reportedly said, ‘That’s good, you’ve learned your lesson.’ Rahman was shown maps, instructed to copy these on to pieces of paper, which were taken away by the MI5 officers. He was shown hundreds of photographs, including surveillance pictures of UK friends, and asked to identify them. If he did not cooperate, MI5 officials would leave the room, the beating would resume. Senior DGFI agents would utter words of caution. His head should not be marked. His bones should not be broken.
   ‘We are not torturing you, are we?’ MI5 officers asked Rahman during many an interrogation session. Once, says Rahman, he was told to repeat ‘no’ in a louder voice. All sessions were recorded. During this period, he was also questioned by three men who said they belonged to Scotland Yard, and an American woman named Mary. His passport, says Rahman, withheld by officials of the high commission, was returned two and a half years later. In other words, it had been withheld by the very high commission that prides itself on ‘rescuing’ British nationals from emotional and physical abuse. Abuses, obviously, are only those that conform to Britain’s image of itself as civilised.
   After Rahman’s return to the UK in May 2008, he was not questioned by the police nor was there any attempt to arrest him – largely assumed to be indications of innocence. His wife and son joined him a year later, and soon after, he embarked on legal proceedings, filing a damages claim against home secretary Jacqui Smith alleging that she was complicit in assault, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and breaches of human rights legislation.
   His case is one of the latest in a growing number of cases – 29, at last count – in which British intelligence services have been accused of colluding in the torture of British nationals and residents: Rangzieb Ahmed, Salahuddin Amin, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Rashid Rauf by the ISI, Binyam Mohamed in Morocco, Alam Ghafoor in Dubai, and Azhar Khan in Egypt. Rahman’s case provides the clearest indication so far, of torture outsourced.
   Not to be outdone by the current public debate in America on whether it condones torture, the British, too, seem to be catching up with increasing calls for an independent enquiry into allegations of MI5 complicity. Contradictions appear as the UK foreign minister David Miliband keeps mouthing, ‘Torture is abhorrent. Britain never supports or condones it’, while simultaneously insisting that the interrogation policy at the heart of the allegations should not be made public (June 2009). Nor is the court injunction (February 2008) gagging Ben Griffin, an ex-SAS trooper, who had revealed extensive British collaboration with US rendition and torture, removed.
   And what about us, at the insourced end? A Bangladeshi intelligence officer reportedly told Rahman, they were ‘only doing this for the British.’ This seems to be well borne out by what is known. But who authorised it? Was a memorandum of understanding signed? Rahman’s two-year long ordeal began during the BNP-Jamaat coalition rule and continued into the Fakhruddin-led emergency period. Two governments needing to be held accountable. I would include the current one as well as I read the UK state minister for security and counterterrorism Lord West’s recent speech in Dhaka, ‘we have worked to build the capacity of Bangladeshi agencies involved in counterterrorism work.’ Is capacity-building a polite euphemism for out-sourced torture? Is there something sinister behind his words, ‘the UK could further assist Bangladeshi law enforcement counterparts in improving their capabilities’? Does it mean more out-sourcing? Support from the metropole for the culture of impunity that protects our home-grown torturers, and ‘crossfire’ killers?
   There are more victims of forced marriages out there, the high commission spokesperson had said. I’m sure. But are there more Rahmans as well?