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AMIDST a steady surge in the killing of suspected criminals and/or operatives of underground ultra-left political organisations in so-called crossfire and encounter, the reassertion of the prime minister that she is personally and her government ‘is strictly against any type of extrajudicial killings’, and that if any law enforcers were found guilty of perpetrating such killings they would be given stringent punishment is indeed encouraging. If an elected government truly pursue a ‘zero tolerance’ policy with regard to extrajudicial killings, as the foreign minister said at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on February 4 that the Awami League-led administration would, there may hardly be any reason why such a serious violation of human rights and undermining of the rule of law by the law enforcers would not come to an end. Regrettably, however, since the foreign minister’s assertion, not only has the government done very little to curb extrajudicial killings by members of the Rapid Action Battalion and other law enforcement agencies but several key ministers, including the prime minister herself, have sought to justify such killings to have resulted from ‘self-defence’ by the law enforcers. Against such a grim backdrop one may be forgiven for taking the prime minister’s reassurance with a grain of salt. Moreover, given that ‘if found guilty’ being the operative part of the prime minister’s assertion, the question remains as to what constitutes guilt in the eyes of the government, especially when it has thus far appeared only too eager to condone extrajudicial killings by law enforcers as acts of ‘self-defence’.
   Importantly still, the phrase ‘if found guilty’ predicates that the killings in so-called crossfire or encounter should, if not would, be investigated. Here, too, there is the space for incredulity; after all, the government did previously promise that every suspected case of extrajudicial killings would be investigated but visibly made very little effort to live up to the promise. Furthermore, it makes little sense to have the police investigate these cases simply because the police are perceived to be a party in these. Similarly, any investigation by the home ministry or, by implication, the government would lack in credibility since several ministers have publicly denied perpetration of extrajudicial killings by law enforcers. Obviously, then, if there were to be any investigation of extrajudicial killings by members of the law enforcement agencies, it needs to be by a judicial commission.
   The government needs to realise that regardless of what it wants the people to believe, the politically conscious and democratically oriented sections of society and media are convinced that what has thus far been officially termed deaths in crossfire and encounter were extrajudicial killings by some trigger-happy members of the law enforcement agencies. As we have written in these columns many times before, extrajudicial killings not only undermine human rights and the rule of law but also weaken the state from within. Indeed, criminals need to be arrested, prosecuted and punished but their arrest, prosecution and punishment need to be within the ambit of law. The rule of law demands that even the vilest of criminals deserve the chance to be defended in the court of law against charge brought against him or her. Hence, as we welcome the prime minister’s assertion that everyone is entitled to legal protection, we hope she would arrange for a judicial inquiry into the many cases of extrajudicial killings where such entitlements of the victims were so cruelly trampled by some trigger-happy law enforcers.

Govt needs to stop getting
in ACC’s way

THE allegation by the Anti-Corruption Commission that the Awami League-led government was out to weaken the commission, albeit shocking, is hardly surprising. Successive political governments have hardly, if ever, tried to ensure complete administrative and financial autonomy of the commission or, for that matter, its predecessor, the Bureau of Anti-Corruption, without which the fight against corruption, especially by powerful and influential sections of society, would neither be efficient or effective. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Thursday, quoting its chairman, the commission’s operations and investigations have virtually grinded to a halt, thanks to sustained non-cooperation from the government. The commission currently suffers from lack of logistics, resources, funds and personnel. The report states that the commission could not even proceed with its cases because it does not have sufficient and qualified lawyers at its disposal. Furthermore, its activities have come to a standstill since the current government took office. The commission’s chairman quite plainly suggested that the government lacked sufficient political will necessary to actually take the bold step and allow a truly autonomous anti-graft body operate freely.
   Although the commission chairman did not directly relate to how the watchdog was being weakened, the report indicates that he might have been referring to the recommendation of an inter-ministerial committee. That recommendation stipulates that this theoretically autonomous agency would be obliged to ask for permission before initiating investigations any measures against certain people, which would presumably include ministers and bureaucrats among others. Such a recommendation, if implemented, would certainly weaken the commission significantly. At the same time, this also indicates how this agency, although autonomous in theory, could be rendered crippled in reality. There is little room to believe the recommendation of the inter-ministerial committee was merely a result of a few individuals’ lack of foresight. This must have been the result of wide consensus not only among the committee but among the higher levels of the ruling establishment.
   The commission chairman’s comments in this regard can only be endorsed. The recommendations stipulating the commission to ask for prior permission should not be incorporated into this agency’s operational procedure because that would be detrimental to successful investigation of corruption charges. Furthermore, the ruling party has pledged to strengthen this commission further and infuse dynamism here. According to the report, the government has only done the opposite. The government would do well to turn this into a well-functioning, well-meaning anti-graft body and allow it to investigate the instances of possible corruption it deems appropriate.

THE Awami League-led government on October 12 set a new timing for non-government offices, financial establishments, educational institutions, etc, in an attempt to ease traffic congestion in the capital Dhaka. The decision, arrived at the weekly meeting of the cabinet and scheduled to take effect once the establishment ministry issues a gazette notification in this regard, is in line with the August 31 directive of the prime minister for an action plan towards instituting separate timetables for government and semi-government offices, schools, banks and markets in view of the worsening traffic situation in the city. The decision received mixed reactions from different sections of society, some welcoming it as the government’s sincerity in tackling the problem while others dismissing it as yet another exercise in futility. To what extent, the latest crack at easing traffic congestion would be successful remains to be seen.
   Much has been said and written about traffic congestion in the city and its implications, economic and otherwise. There have been reports, features and editorial comments in the print media, and dedicated talk-shows on the private television channels. There has also been one government plan after another to ease congestion, the cost for some of them running into crores of takas. Yet, at the end of the hullabaloo, the problem has remained as intractable as ever. In fact, there are some who believe, perhaps not unjustifiably, the problem has worsened with every instance of intervention by the government. The prime reason, they claim, again not unjustifiably perhaps, is that none of these projects has been effectively implemented.
   There is, however, little doubt that traffic congestion in the capital has over the years become a major headache for those who occupy the helms of the affairs of the state. Sadly for them, perhaps, the problem cannot be simply swept under the rug as, say, makeshift shops on roadsides and pavements, or slums, to which the attitude of the successive governments has been more or less the same – demolish them. At the same time, traffic congestion has proved to be a boon for many in the corridors of power since different projects to ease it has allegedly in the end lined up their pockets. Maybe, such easy and lucrative return has been a major reason why some people have come up with lofty plans to ease traffic congestion during the tenures of different governments. That is, however, a completely different story.
   At this point in time the facts and figures about the city’s traffic system are quite disheartening, if not alarming. Experts have severally said the existing road network is simply inadequate for a burgeoning mega-city that Dhaka has become. The solution that they have suggested involved expansion of the road network, i.e. constructing more roads. The flipside of this solution is Dhaka does not have that much area to have new roads built. Hence, the suggestion of multiple flyovers and underpasses has been put forth. Interestingly, with every suggestion, the projected cost of redress to the city’s traffic problems has multiplied. Suggestions have, however, come from every direction – fast and furious.
   Yet, there has hardly been proper emphasis on one factor in the whole equation, i.e. enforcement of traffic rules, although its absence is too obvious to overlook. Thankfully, at the October 12 cabinet meeting, the prime minister has highlighted the issue. She was quoted by her press secretary as asking the relevant authorities to take necessary measures so that everyone, drivers and passengers of vehicles as well as pedestrians, properly follow traffic rules and regulation. She also instructed them to display and demonstrate traffic guidelines and provisions in all avenues, streets and crossings in the capital for better understanding of the people. The prime minister also identified shortage of traffic police personnel as a reason for the worsening traffic situation and asked the authorities concerned to ‘recruit additional traffic policemen so that they can play an effective role in reducing traffic tailback.’ So far so good.
   What may have evaded the prime minister’s attention is the fact that, while personnel and logistics inadequacy surely affect traffic management, the police men and women that the traffic department of the metropolitan police now has do not always try hard enough to enforce traffic rules and regulations. One needs not be a Sherlock Homes to ascertain that they don’t. Just go out there and spend a few hours on the road, and there will be instances aplenty to substantiate such a conclusion. In fact, there is a joke in circulation that the more traffic police personnel there are on the road the more possibility there is for traffic congestion.
   There seems to as much apathy in drivers of different vehicles to go by traffic rules and regulations as it is in traffic police men and women to enforce them. One can be guaranteed that he or she will come across traffic sergeants and constables, and even community policemen, a new addition to traffic management, chatting away while vehicles violate one traffic rule and after another, contributing to traffic disorder. At times, it seems that the traffic police personnel themselves do not believe in traffic rules and regulations. They do sometimes spring into action, pulling over aberrant vehicles to the side of the road; however, many people suspect that they do so only to exact bribe from the drivers of vehicles concerned.
   One glaring example of the traffic police personnel’s apathy, if not antipathy, to traffic rules and regulations pertains to their actions with regard to traffic lights. A few years ago, when automated traffic signals were installed at 50-odd points in the capital city, the traffic management authorities simply went gaga over the multi-crore taka project under the Dhaka Urban Transport Plan, implemented with assistance from the World Bank. The top brass of the traffic department of the metropolitan police then gave the impression that, at last, they had been afforded the magic wand to bring about discipline in the traffic system. For the first few days, the officials of the department were very active in making sure people go by the traffic lights, fining those who did not. The euphoria did not last long, however. Soon, the traffic police were back to their old ways, resorting to green and red flags to control the traffic. What’s worse, the traffic sergeants overrode the traffic signals at will, making people stop at green light and go at red. So much for smooth traffic management and automated signals.
   The government may invent and reinvent ways to ease traffic congestion, and so they must. However, what the authorities need to realise that unless and until they are ready to implement whatever plans they come up with and enforce whatever rules and regulations there are, however promising their plans may seem initially would eventually prove to be exercises in futility. In the end, it will be the taxpayers’ money that will go down the drain.

TURKISH Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accomplished a unique feat, with help from his Armenian counterpart Serge Sarkisian and Europe and the United States, in engineering an agreement with his neighbour burying the nearly century-old feud on whether the killing of Armenians towards the end of the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide. Historical memories run deep, and the commemoration of a tragic event had become a matter of faith and nationalism for Armenians and their powerful diaspora of 1.5 million in the United States. Turkish analysts are hailing the accord, signed in Switzerland, as an event of the century, but it is the most significant development since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
   In 1993 Armenian troops went to the aid of ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno Karabach. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in solidarity with Azerbaijan and set two conditions: withdraw the worldwide campaign on declaring the tragedy of 1915 as genocide and withdraw troops around the enclave. Armenia has therefore had to live with closed borders on two sides, using Georgia as a transit route. It also became over-dependent on Russian goodwill to survive.
   Enter Mr Erdogan and his assertive good-neighbourly policy, recognising that the ambitious wider role he envisages for his country required a friendly neighbourhood. He encouraged a new push to resolve the fractious division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish Cypriots, made overtures to the restive Kurds in the eastern region of Turkey and set about meeting criteria for membership of the European Union. In fact, making peace with Armenia was also an EU condition for membership.
   There were last-minute hitches before the signing of the agreement, with a posse of high-level personages, including US secretary of state and the Russian and French foreign minister and the EU envoy Javier Solana, choreographing the event. Apparently, the US objected to a Turkish post-signing statement, the solution being that neither side would make such a statement. In essence, the agreement envisages the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the opening of the shared border in two months. The genocide issue has been set aside by the appointment of a joint commission of historians while the Nagarno Karabakh issue will continue to be mediated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
   Armenia’s President Sarkisian, on his part, has shown courage in accepting the deal although he was under intense Western pressure, particularly after his crackdown on opposition supporters protesting against the allegedly rigged presidential election in 2008. His laconic comment on the agreement was: ‘There is no alternative to the establishment of relations with Turkey without any precondition. It is the dictate of the time.’ In fact, opposition to the treaty led to protests from the diaspora from Beirut to Los Angeles and at home. One party withdrew from the ruling coalition.
   Mr Erdogan, who blotted his copybook recently by slapping a $2.5 billion fine on a media mogul’s empire being critical of his government for alleged unpaid taxes, has shown yet again that he is an astute politician who has his eye on the larger picture. Turks have traditionally viewed themselves as a regional superpower, but the prime minister’s contribution has been to translate this vision into a coherent and consistent policy of wooing neighbours the earlier ostentatiously secular military-dominated regimes fought shy of. The Islamic orientation of the ruling Justice and Development Party has, of course, helped, but Mr Erdogan was quick to grasp the central fact that relying on the United States and NATO was good but had its limits. Although Turkey’s prospect of membership of the EU seems bleak in the short term, the prime minister has used the membership issue to loosen the grip of the powerful military establishment by employing EU guidelines.
   In view of ethnic Turkish links to at least some of the Central European countries, Ankara has always viewed the region, particularly after the break up of the Soviet Union, as a natural area of influence. Normalisation of relations with Armenia would give it a new opening to the region. If Russia considers its ‘near abroad’ as an area of privileged interest, Turkey feels that the ethic and linguistic linkages do provide the platform for maintaining special relations. For Armenia, the opening of the border with Turkey will come as a godsend in term of economic and trade relations and access to the considerable Turkish market and level of development.
   President Sarkisian discovered for himself during his recent tour of countries with a large Armenian diaspora that descendants of the victims of those killed towards the end of the Ottoman Empire have neither forgiven Turks nor forgotten the tragedy. A website has already opened (KEGAHART.com) seeking support under the rubric: ‘We condemn the Turkish-Armenian Agreement’.
   And one Armenian has reacted to the signing of the accord with the comment: ‘The point is that the issue of the genocide is a natural demand, which should not be made an axis of state policy.’
   The agreement needs parliamentary approval in the two countries although both are expected to complete it on time. But the actual opening of the border will be the biggest symbol of change, if it does not get entangled in violent nationalist protests in Armenia. Obviously, Armenia has had to make greater concessions even though they relate to addressing issues of psychology that have blended into the Armenian psyche. It is danger time for President Sarkisian till the border opening. Once trade starts and people visit each other, the benefits will dull the pain of historical memories.