Bangladesh army: victims and victimizers
By Rater Zonaki
March 18, 2009
Source: UPI Asia
Hong Kong, China — The bloodshed at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Rifles, who protect the country’s borders, on Feb. 25 and 26 was initially labeled a mutiny. Since then more information has unfolded, and the media have termed it a massacre and a mass assassination. The BDR soldiers killed around 60 army officers, from the rank of captain to major general.
The death toll is reportedly 73, which includes six soldiers of the BDR, three pedestrians, the wife of the director general of the force, and a retired colonel along with his wife. The rest of the victims were officers, and one soldier, of the Bangladesh army. Four officers are still missing since the incident.
Separate civilian, police and army investigations are ongoing, some including experts from the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time the nation is busy commenting and analyzing the reasons behind the killings. As political parties debate the causes and consequences, measuring the success and failure of the authorities in accordance with their own interests, the government has launched “Operation Rebel Hunt” to catch the culprits.
The public image of the armed forces has been very mixed. Whenever there are floods, cyclones or other devastating natural disasters, the government calls on the army to conduct relief work and engage in disaster management. During such times soldiers and officers are perceived as diligent and brave, helping to restore calm and hope.
The people have applauded the army’s humanitarian efforts for decades, because they have helped the common man. Other than that, as the day-to-day functions of the armed forces are not directly related to the public, people do not see the army at close quarters.
However, many Bangladeshis have experienced the bitter side of the army, which is far different. People have witnessed their crackdowns on political opponents, social activists and human rights defenders and read of their arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings. They have also observed that such offences have not been thoroughly investigated and that the perpetrators have not been brought to justice.
For example, on Oct. 16, 2002, the government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia deployed the army across the country in the name of "Operation Clean Heart," which continued until Jan. 9, 2003, to crack down on illegal arms and criminals.
During the 86-day crackdown, around 11,200 people were officially arrested and detained in custody; 2,500 people were listed as criminals and about 300 as suspects by the police. Around 2,000 different types of arms and 29,700 rounds of ammunition were recovered. Although more than 50 people died in the custody of the armed forces, their deaths were officially termed as "heart attacks."
In reality, an additional 8,000 people were arrested and detained, and all who were detained were seriously tortured. Who was responsible for such illegal actions, which affected the ordinary people financially, socially and physically? What kind of affinity could people have with the army in the light of their brutal actions?
The past two years under emergency rule have created new records of brutality at the hands of the armed forces, which have illegally arrested, detained and tortured thousands of people. Officers of the Bangladeshi army were the dominant perpetrators in almost all cases.
Allegations of extortion by the army have also surfaced where businessmen and industrialists were kidnapped and ransoms demanded. Such people were allegedly detained on fabricated corruption charges, intimidated and tortured in custody till the ransoms were paid.
Compared to the army, the BDR soldiers are more closely in touch with the public, at least in the cities they protect along the more than 4,000-kilometer-long border, under the leadership of the army.
Still there are corrupt BDR soldiers who allegedly allow smugglers to transport goods in and out of Bangladesh for personal benefit. While the beneficiaries of such illegal trade appreciate the soldiers' “supportive" role, the majority of the common people believe that the BDR protects the territory well.
Following the tragic killings on Feb. 25 and 26, the government immediately announced it would give one million takas (US$14,620) as compensation to each of the families of the army officers that were killed. Yet it completely ignored the civilians that died, for more than a week.
Only after the media reported the slip-up did the authorities announce they would give 200,000 takas (US$2,924) to the families of the civilian victims. Such discrimination, which has prevailed for decades, makes people wonder why civilians are considered less human than the armed forces.
The government must reconsider the fairness of such decisions. The armed forces should also rethink their actions during "Operation Clean Heart” and similar crackdowns, when politicians provided them impunity at the cost of huge grievances to the people.
The army officers should also reflect on their image as brutal giants during the state of emergency. The military should understand and accept that the Parliament has the right and responsibility to discuss such issues openly. They should accept that they are not above the laws of the land.
It is easy to vilify the BDR soldiers for the violence of the February killings. But one must not forget that this force represents at least 67,000 Bangladeshi families. It is important for the nation to look beyond political games and find the truth behind the February massacre.
___________________________________
(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong, working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national who has worked as a journalist and human rights activist in his country for more than a decade, and as editor of publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues.)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Terrorism in eastern South Asia
Book review: Terrorism in eastern South Asia —by Khaled Ahmed
Armed Conflict in South Asia 2008: Growing Violence
Edited by D Suba Chandran & PR Chari
Routledge 2008
Source: Daily Times
The book deals with the unpleasant side of the significance of South Asia. It has two articles on Pakistan, one on sectarian violence, the other on violence in the Tribal Areas. It has one article on Afghanistan and its luckless population who has been given to understand they have never been conquered, while, looking at their suffering, one would have wished they had been.
There are two articles on India’s internal movements gone haywire and one on Bangladesh’s vulnerability to Islamic terror. Nepal nurses its communist violence and Sri Lanka struggles with its long-gestation ethnic war.
In the northeast of India, a cluster of small states (Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya) have been convulsed with ‘freedom movements’ become violent. Out of the five, the first three are giving trouble still and violence there has actually increased after a ceasefire agreed by the Indian army in 1997.
If Pakistan had been watching, it would have learned that ceasefires with terrorists only give them time to regroup and form bigger armies. Also there are some other lessons that Pakistan and Afghanistan should have learned from India’s experience with terrorism since the 1950s.
One big lesson is not to glamorise the misfortunes of tribal nations gone wrong after suppression. One myth that Pakistanis are guilty of fabricating is that the Pakhtun never give up fighting and have never been conquered. They mouth this obscenity while standing in front of camps where Pakhtun women and children go through history’s worst brutalisation.
Listen to what the article Northeast: Island of Peace and Ocean of Conflict by Bibhu Prasad Routray says: ‘The Naga separatist movement, which had begun before Independence, is based on the premise that Nagas have been historically independent, unconquered by anyone and, therefore, India has no right to subjugate them’ (p.153). The rest of India should be grateful that it has been conquered.
The British had kept the tribes in the northeast as areas under special dispensation, but that arrangement became the trigger for Naga National Council (NNC) in 1947 asking for independence, greatly encouraged by a referendum in 1951 that had 99 percent of the Naga population saying that wanted to be independent under their leader AZ Phizo. New Delhi jibbed and sent in the army. Phizo fled to London never to return. After much fighting, in 1975, the Shillong Accord got the Nagas of NNC to accept the Constitution of India, but the NNC split and formed Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) to continue fighting. Later this too split and the splinters became even more radical.
Insurgency in Assam, the source of much of India’s oil and gas, began in 1979 under United Liberation Front (ULFA) demanding a sovereign socialist Assam that would stop refugees from Bangladesh from coming in and upsetting the population balance in favour of the Bodos in Assam.
After ULFA went terrorist it liaised with the Naga terrorists nextdoor, but the Indian army hit back and the ULFA leaders fled into Bangladesh where they fell under the spell of ISI and DGFI of Bangladesh and ULFA got itself well supplied materially and financially (p.155). (India got RAW to meddle in a similar ‘liberation’ movement in Balochistan as a tit for tat ‘signalling’ to Islamabad.) The Bodos too are struggling since the 1980s for Bodoland in Assam and often become nasty.
Manipur is also convulsed because the centre delayed making Manipur a state in 1947. The terrorist outfits here, including an Islamic one protecting Muslims, pose as liberators and have joined up with the rest of the north-eastern rebels. Manipur is a bad case with 20 such outfits operating. The state of Tripura, not so violent, is a victim of migration from unstable Bangladesh; and Meghalaya would be called peaceful if it wasn’t a conduit for terrorists to-ing and fro-ing into Bangladesh.
It is shocking how like Pakistan Bangladesh is when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Smruti Pattanaik in her paper “Bangladesh: Islamic Militancy and the Rise of religious Right” reveals the pattern in events that flowed from the August 17, 2007 bombings in the country. Terrorism was the work of Banglabhai in the north who wanted to create a Taliban-like state under Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Sheikh Abdur Rehman of Jamiat Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), both erstwhile members of the student wing of Jama’at-e Islami. The Bangladesh National party (BNP) of Begum Zia took the Jamaat-produced radicals under its wing and denied they existed.
JMB’s Rehman visited Pakistan in 1999 to take training in Azad Kashmir. Banglabhai was already said to be a veteran of Afghan jihad wanting to recreate it in Bangladesh. When they began killing people, as in the case of poet Shamsur Rehman in 1995, the BNP denied it vociferously, blaming the killings on India and America. This BNP did despite the fact that Jama’at warriors had rebelled against the Jama’at acceptance of women as leaders. The other spinoff from Afghan jihad was Harkatul Mujahideen Islami (HUJI) which was funded by the Arabs whom the state allowed to have linkages with the two above rising stars of Islamic violence.
The BNP just wouldn’t own up to terrorism in the country till foreign pressure got it to catch and prosecute Banglabhai and Rehman, only to see them condemned to death by a court. Then neither of the two mainstream parties would support the call for their execution. This was somewhat like Pakistan’s parties who don’t want to even acknowledge the reality of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorism in Pakistan. It was the caretaker government, supported by the army in 2001, that finally executed the two mass killers of Bangladesh.
BNP leader Begum Zia’s son Tariq Rehman was running his own shadow government in Dhaka and gave protection to the killers. Needless to say, the Islamic killers hated Awami League and India with equal fervour. Later some BNP leaders, including a minister Aminul Haq, were put under trial and got long sentences in jail for killing opponents through Islamists.
The money for Islamic terror comes from the Arabs in the Gulf. There are 15 local Islamic NGOs and 34 foreign Islamic NGOs in Bangladesh. They give no one any accounts, receive their money through hundi and are supposed to dispose of 200 crore takas (p.196).
London Muslim terrorists gave JMB £10,000 for killing innocent people back home; and terrorist Rehman got big money from Rabita al-Islam, Kuwait, for doing the same job (p.200). Religious leaders who run these dangerous organisations regularly visit the Middle East for Zakat and collect huge sums which they often embezzle, but their Arab benefactors don’t seem to mind that too much.
Bangladesh has actually completed the transition from being a moderate Islamic state with strong local cultural tinge of tolerance and is now more like Pakistan, strongly Deobandi and Wahhabi in its new intolerant and violent character. Like Pakistan its politicians don’t want to mess with the madrassas and mullahs and risk their lives.
Pitifully, when the people at large were asked who was doing terrorism in a country crawling with 12,000 active killers, the survey showed 80 percent saying it was an unnamed ‘neighbouring country’ (read India); and, just like Pakistan, responded unreliably according to their politically divided civil society credentials.
Armed Conflict in South Asia 2008: Growing Violence
Edited by D Suba Chandran & PR Chari
Routledge 2008
Source: Daily Times
The book deals with the unpleasant side of the significance of South Asia. It has two articles on Pakistan, one on sectarian violence, the other on violence in the Tribal Areas. It has one article on Afghanistan and its luckless population who has been given to understand they have never been conquered, while, looking at their suffering, one would have wished they had been.
There are two articles on India’s internal movements gone haywire and one on Bangladesh’s vulnerability to Islamic terror. Nepal nurses its communist violence and Sri Lanka struggles with its long-gestation ethnic war.
In the northeast of India, a cluster of small states (Manipur, Assam, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya) have been convulsed with ‘freedom movements’ become violent. Out of the five, the first three are giving trouble still and violence there has actually increased after a ceasefire agreed by the Indian army in 1997.
If Pakistan had been watching, it would have learned that ceasefires with terrorists only give them time to regroup and form bigger armies. Also there are some other lessons that Pakistan and Afghanistan should have learned from India’s experience with terrorism since the 1950s.
One big lesson is not to glamorise the misfortunes of tribal nations gone wrong after suppression. One myth that Pakistanis are guilty of fabricating is that the Pakhtun never give up fighting and have never been conquered. They mouth this obscenity while standing in front of camps where Pakhtun women and children go through history’s worst brutalisation.
Listen to what the article Northeast: Island of Peace and Ocean of Conflict by Bibhu Prasad Routray says: ‘The Naga separatist movement, which had begun before Independence, is based on the premise that Nagas have been historically independent, unconquered by anyone and, therefore, India has no right to subjugate them’ (p.153). The rest of India should be grateful that it has been conquered.
The British had kept the tribes in the northeast as areas under special dispensation, but that arrangement became the trigger for Naga National Council (NNC) in 1947 asking for independence, greatly encouraged by a referendum in 1951 that had 99 percent of the Naga population saying that wanted to be independent under their leader AZ Phizo. New Delhi jibbed and sent in the army. Phizo fled to London never to return. After much fighting, in 1975, the Shillong Accord got the Nagas of NNC to accept the Constitution of India, but the NNC split and formed Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) to continue fighting. Later this too split and the splinters became even more radical.
Insurgency in Assam, the source of much of India’s oil and gas, began in 1979 under United Liberation Front (ULFA) demanding a sovereign socialist Assam that would stop refugees from Bangladesh from coming in and upsetting the population balance in favour of the Bodos in Assam.
After ULFA went terrorist it liaised with the Naga terrorists nextdoor, but the Indian army hit back and the ULFA leaders fled into Bangladesh where they fell under the spell of ISI and DGFI of Bangladesh and ULFA got itself well supplied materially and financially (p.155). (India got RAW to meddle in a similar ‘liberation’ movement in Balochistan as a tit for tat ‘signalling’ to Islamabad.) The Bodos too are struggling since the 1980s for Bodoland in Assam and often become nasty.
Manipur is also convulsed because the centre delayed making Manipur a state in 1947. The terrorist outfits here, including an Islamic one protecting Muslims, pose as liberators and have joined up with the rest of the north-eastern rebels. Manipur is a bad case with 20 such outfits operating. The state of Tripura, not so violent, is a victim of migration from unstable Bangladesh; and Meghalaya would be called peaceful if it wasn’t a conduit for terrorists to-ing and fro-ing into Bangladesh.
It is shocking how like Pakistan Bangladesh is when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Smruti Pattanaik in her paper “Bangladesh: Islamic Militancy and the Rise of religious Right” reveals the pattern in events that flowed from the August 17, 2007 bombings in the country. Terrorism was the work of Banglabhai in the north who wanted to create a Taliban-like state under Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) and Sheikh Abdur Rehman of Jamiat Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), both erstwhile members of the student wing of Jama’at-e Islami. The Bangladesh National party (BNP) of Begum Zia took the Jamaat-produced radicals under its wing and denied they existed.
JMB’s Rehman visited Pakistan in 1999 to take training in Azad Kashmir. Banglabhai was already said to be a veteran of Afghan jihad wanting to recreate it in Bangladesh. When they began killing people, as in the case of poet Shamsur Rehman in 1995, the BNP denied it vociferously, blaming the killings on India and America. This BNP did despite the fact that Jama’at warriors had rebelled against the Jama’at acceptance of women as leaders. The other spinoff from Afghan jihad was Harkatul Mujahideen Islami (HUJI) which was funded by the Arabs whom the state allowed to have linkages with the two above rising stars of Islamic violence.
The BNP just wouldn’t own up to terrorism in the country till foreign pressure got it to catch and prosecute Banglabhai and Rehman, only to see them condemned to death by a court. Then neither of the two mainstream parties would support the call for their execution. This was somewhat like Pakistan’s parties who don’t want to even acknowledge the reality of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorism in Pakistan. It was the caretaker government, supported by the army in 2001, that finally executed the two mass killers of Bangladesh.
BNP leader Begum Zia’s son Tariq Rehman was running his own shadow government in Dhaka and gave protection to the killers. Needless to say, the Islamic killers hated Awami League and India with equal fervour. Later some BNP leaders, including a minister Aminul Haq, were put under trial and got long sentences in jail for killing opponents through Islamists.
The money for Islamic terror comes from the Arabs in the Gulf. There are 15 local Islamic NGOs and 34 foreign Islamic NGOs in Bangladesh. They give no one any accounts, receive their money through hundi and are supposed to dispose of 200 crore takas (p.196).
London Muslim terrorists gave JMB £10,000 for killing innocent people back home; and terrorist Rehman got big money from Rabita al-Islam, Kuwait, for doing the same job (p.200). Religious leaders who run these dangerous organisations regularly visit the Middle East for Zakat and collect huge sums which they often embezzle, but their Arab benefactors don’t seem to mind that too much.
Bangladesh has actually completed the transition from being a moderate Islamic state with strong local cultural tinge of tolerance and is now more like Pakistan, strongly Deobandi and Wahhabi in its new intolerant and violent character. Like Pakistan its politicians don’t want to mess with the madrassas and mullahs and risk their lives.
Pitifully, when the people at large were asked who was doing terrorism in a country crawling with 12,000 active killers, the survey showed 80 percent saying it was an unnamed ‘neighbouring country’ (read India); and, just like Pakistan, responded unreliably according to their politically divided civil society credentials.
Friday, March 13, 2009
More than a mutiny
More than a mutiny
Saurabh Shukla
March 7, 2009
Source: India Today
The plot of senseless blood letting in Dhaka is thickening. And as the two-month-old Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina battles to bring stability to the country following the barbaric killing of over 140 top Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officers along with their family members in Dhaka on February 25, reports of a Pakistan-sponsored plot to assassinate her are gaining credence.
Increasingly intelligence is uncovering that the original plan was to assassinate Hasina and army chief Moeen U. Ahmed on February 24, but due to lack of coordination, the required ammunition couldn’t be smuggled into the Durbar area at the BDR headquarters where Hasina had gone a day before the mutiny. The plan was reportedly hatched at the behest of the ISI which is concerned with Hasina’s moderate outlook.
On February 25, a group of BDR junior commissioned officers, lined up the top brass of Bangladesh’s border guards and killed them. The brutality of the killing was shocking as the bodies of the officers and their families were dumped into manholes and mass graves. While some of the ringleaders of the coup and their accomplices have been arrested, over 1,000 BDR personnel have been charged by the Hasina Government.
A confidential report prepared by South Block suggests that Pakistani intelligence was behind the mutiny. The report claims “both Indian and some international intelligence agencies have received indisputable proof of the involvement of Salauddin Chowdhury—an influential BNP MP and a long standing Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent of influence in Bangladesh with a strong criminal mafia nexus—in the entire episode”.
Chowdhury, a prominent shipping magnate, was a close associate and parliamentary secretary to former premier Khaleda Zia. His name also figured in the Chittagong arms haul in 2004, in which a lethal cargo of arms was unloaded for terrorist activities in India. But Chowdhury has denied such charges.
However, exclusive details available with India Today suggest that intelligence agencies had intercepted a telephone call from Pakistan’s defence attaché in Dhaka, Sajaad Rasool, to a contact in the Pakistani consulate in Dubai. Another intercept revealed Rasool was in contact with Chowdhury.
According to sources, the Pakistani defence attaché monitored the situation from the Gulshan area of Dhaka and was in constant touch with his handlers in Pakistan.
In fact, on February 25 he knew the precise details about the plot unfolding inside the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana. At 12.30 pm, Rasool made a call to the ISI headquarters in Islamabad reporting that DG BDR Major-General Shakeel Ahmed had been killed.
The big question is, how the Pakistani defence attaché knew what was happening inside when even senior officers of the Bangladesh Army and the Government were in the dark. Other intercepts that confirm the involvement of the ISI, include a series of phone calls made by some key Jamaat-e- Islami (JeI) leaders to their ISI contacts in Dubai, London and Islamabad updating them on the operation.
According to the report, the BDR was used by the plotters because resentment has been brewing in the lower ranks. Besides, the aim was to ensure a takeover by pro-Pakistan elements in the Bangladesh Army. So smooth was the planning that no intelligence agency got a whiff of the plot. Chowdhury allegedly used a former DG of BDR, Major-General Fazlur Rehman, as a frontman to instigate the troops.
Chowdhury is suspected to have paid Taka 40 crore (Rs 30 crore) to Fazlur Rahman, who in turn is said to have paid Taka 5 crore to four deputy assistant directors of BDR. While almost 400 sepoys were paid Taka 5 lakh, the key among them were paid Taka 50 lakh each, according to the report.
For India that has a vital stake in the stability of a moderate regime in Dhaka, the developments were worrying. In fact, on February 28, India had begun preparations to evacuate Hasina. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was in touch with Hasina and assured her of Indian support. Sources say New Delhi alerted Dhaka.
Following this, Hasina was taken to a Bangladesh Army safehouse. Two teams of commandos were kept ready at a forward air force base in Tripura and another one in Kolkata. But when the situation turned around with the Bangladesh Army backing Hasina and the mutiny quelled, the plan was shelved.
But the big question is why the ISI plotted to destabilise the Government. The reason is, compared to the fundamentalist regime of Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s government is considered to be moderate and has cracked down on Islamists. Sources say Pakistani intelligence fanned the conspiracy as it feared that many of its key assets could be tried for war crimes committed in 1971.
The Hasina Government had moved a resolution in Parliament last month to punish criminals of the 1971 war, something her party had promised in its election manifesto. Sources say JEI leaders Amir Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mujahid, who are alleged war criminals, provided logistical support to the mutiny.
The ISI plotted to kill Hasina as Islamabad has been uneasy with the Hasina regime’s policies and it’s perceived proximity to India. In fact the crisis in Dhaka should be another reason why India and Bangladesh should work together closely, especially on security issues. Besides, India has to align with the international community to ensure the stability of Hasina’s regime which is pivotal for India’s security concerns.
Experts say that New Delhi and Dhaka should use this opportunity to sensitise the world that Pakistan is the fulcrum of terrorism, and till its agencies, like the ISI, are neutralised, the world, beginning with our neighbourhood, cannot be free of terrorism.
Saurabh Shukla
March 7, 2009
Source: India Today
The plot of senseless blood letting in Dhaka is thickening. And as the two-month-old Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina battles to bring stability to the country following the barbaric killing of over 140 top Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) officers along with their family members in Dhaka on February 25, reports of a Pakistan-sponsored plot to assassinate her are gaining credence.
Increasingly intelligence is uncovering that the original plan was to assassinate Hasina and army chief Moeen U. Ahmed on February 24, but due to lack of coordination, the required ammunition couldn’t be smuggled into the Durbar area at the BDR headquarters where Hasina had gone a day before the mutiny. The plan was reportedly hatched at the behest of the ISI which is concerned with Hasina’s moderate outlook.
On February 25, a group of BDR junior commissioned officers, lined up the top brass of Bangladesh’s border guards and killed them. The brutality of the killing was shocking as the bodies of the officers and their families were dumped into manholes and mass graves. While some of the ringleaders of the coup and their accomplices have been arrested, over 1,000 BDR personnel have been charged by the Hasina Government.
A confidential report prepared by South Block suggests that Pakistani intelligence was behind the mutiny. The report claims “both Indian and some international intelligence agencies have received indisputable proof of the involvement of Salauddin Chowdhury—an influential BNP MP and a long standing Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent of influence in Bangladesh with a strong criminal mafia nexus—in the entire episode”.
Chowdhury, a prominent shipping magnate, was a close associate and parliamentary secretary to former premier Khaleda Zia. His name also figured in the Chittagong arms haul in 2004, in which a lethal cargo of arms was unloaded for terrorist activities in India. But Chowdhury has denied such charges.
However, exclusive details available with India Today suggest that intelligence agencies had intercepted a telephone call from Pakistan’s defence attaché in Dhaka, Sajaad Rasool, to a contact in the Pakistani consulate in Dubai. Another intercept revealed Rasool was in contact with Chowdhury.
According to sources, the Pakistani defence attaché monitored the situation from the Gulshan area of Dhaka and was in constant touch with his handlers in Pakistan.
In fact, on February 25 he knew the precise details about the plot unfolding inside the BDR headquarters in Pilkhana. At 12.30 pm, Rasool made a call to the ISI headquarters in Islamabad reporting that DG BDR Major-General Shakeel Ahmed had been killed.
The big question is, how the Pakistani defence attaché knew what was happening inside when even senior officers of the Bangladesh Army and the Government were in the dark. Other intercepts that confirm the involvement of the ISI, include a series of phone calls made by some key Jamaat-e- Islami (JeI) leaders to their ISI contacts in Dubai, London and Islamabad updating them on the operation.
According to the report, the BDR was used by the plotters because resentment has been brewing in the lower ranks. Besides, the aim was to ensure a takeover by pro-Pakistan elements in the Bangladesh Army. So smooth was the planning that no intelligence agency got a whiff of the plot. Chowdhury allegedly used a former DG of BDR, Major-General Fazlur Rehman, as a frontman to instigate the troops.
Chowdhury is suspected to have paid Taka 40 crore (Rs 30 crore) to Fazlur Rahman, who in turn is said to have paid Taka 5 crore to four deputy assistant directors of BDR. While almost 400 sepoys were paid Taka 5 lakh, the key among them were paid Taka 50 lakh each, according to the report.
For India that has a vital stake in the stability of a moderate regime in Dhaka, the developments were worrying. In fact, on February 28, India had begun preparations to evacuate Hasina. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was in touch with Hasina and assured her of Indian support. Sources say New Delhi alerted Dhaka.
Following this, Hasina was taken to a Bangladesh Army safehouse. Two teams of commandos were kept ready at a forward air force base in Tripura and another one in Kolkata. But when the situation turned around with the Bangladesh Army backing Hasina and the mutiny quelled, the plan was shelved.
But the big question is why the ISI plotted to destabilise the Government. The reason is, compared to the fundamentalist regime of Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s government is considered to be moderate and has cracked down on Islamists. Sources say Pakistani intelligence fanned the conspiracy as it feared that many of its key assets could be tried for war crimes committed in 1971.
The Hasina Government had moved a resolution in Parliament last month to punish criminals of the 1971 war, something her party had promised in its election manifesto. Sources say JEI leaders Amir Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mujahid, who are alleged war criminals, provided logistical support to the mutiny.
The ISI plotted to kill Hasina as Islamabad has been uneasy with the Hasina regime’s policies and it’s perceived proximity to India. In fact the crisis in Dhaka should be another reason why India and Bangladesh should work together closely, especially on security issues. Besides, India has to align with the international community to ensure the stability of Hasina’s regime which is pivotal for India’s security concerns.
Experts say that New Delhi and Dhaka should use this opportunity to sensitise the world that Pakistan is the fulcrum of terrorism, and till its agencies, like the ISI, are neutralised, the world, beginning with our neighbourhood, cannot be free of terrorism.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Sinister designs to portray Bangladesh as a “Failed State”
The recent events that left in its wake a trail of death, destruction and irrefutable damage to the reputation of the Armed Forces in Bangladesh, has instigated my nether senses. The diabolical conspiracy by pitting the country’s 200 year old paramilitary forces, the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), against the ranks of the professional military unit, Bangladesh Army who embodied their command structure, once again points clearly to an attempt by the Fifth Columnists to destabilize the security apparatus of the country and to prove beyond any reasonable doubts the tendentious attempts of a group of subservient local clique to tarnish the image of our Armed Forces. Or is it a greater international conspiracy by agent provocateurs hatched to create a bloodbath in a disciplined, well organized state supported forces that have long been the cornerstone of our defense and security? A long drawn out plan and intense preparation must have been in place. Who started it? Who funded it? Who directed it? The preliminary diagnosis showed a possible external link which was trying to drive a wedge between the Bangladesh Army and BDR. The command structure of BDR is entirely manned by the Army officers and by destroying it the BDR will become dysfunctional. This will weaken Bangladesh Armed Forces as being the sole line of defense and also deprive trained border guards manning country’s porous borders through which extremists encroach into the mainland.
From the morning of 25th February, 2009, when the durbar was in session, armed people entered the hall brandishing heavy combat weapons – a phenomenon not seen in any of the armed forces informal gatherings. As if on cue, four gunmen accounted for the Director General Major General Shakil Ahmed, and the mayhem began. Soon a core of fifty to hundred gunmen started rounding up officers, young and old, and summarily executed them. The senior officers did not have the time to react, aghast at seeing own soldiers resorting to such a cowardly and dastardly act. Out of 179 officers of all ranks only 32 managed to survive, and that too, because their orderlies had hidden them and found it difficult to kill them in cold blood. The carnage did not end here. Afterwards, these brutal, murderous rag tags slowly walked up to the Officer’s quarters and brought out the inmates – men and women, children and old and set their quarters to fire. Before that, many of these animals pounced on whatever expensive items they could find and looted gold, ornaments, jewelries, money.
In a revelry befitting the medieval bloodthirsty marauders, these armed miscreants then arrogantly got on top of the towers of the main gates and sporting red bandannas over their heads proclaimed in a nebulous fashion why they have revolted on the megaphone to the passerby people, waiting journalists and administrative officials. Many of them had their face covered but they would only be very happy to have their presence felt in the electronic media, “Mama, see I am on the Television.”Not to show off their murderous intent, they would scorn at all the Army officers and tell the public to remain at a distance or else, we shoot off again. They couldn’t say who their leader was, but the fact that the DG, DDG and the Project Director of the Daal Bhaat programme had siphoned off enormous amount of funds that was to be their benefit money and so on and so forth. Also important was their oft repeated pejoratives about all Army officers and that they should not be in the command structure of the BDR. Rather, BCS officers should be appointed for the running of BDR. The cruelty, the deprivation, the poor ration, the insufficient pay, the rankdowns on flimsy pretext was getting a bit too much for them. Their backs were pinned to the wall. They had no other alternative.
At first, the local media played up the rebel tune. So effective was that pitch for their propaganda that soon it was reverberating in the supportive slogans of the general public in Gates 1 and 2. It seemed like an old history of deprivation, privation and humiliation and the class problem of officers and jawans, the have and the have-nots etc., the dialectics of the state and the people that rack our inner souls from time to time. The practical issues of wages, perks and budget, rewards and benefits, promotion, pension and last if not the least: the behaviour of ranked senior officers towards their junior or non ranked subalterns, especially in the context of 21st Century.
Had all these been the issues for a aggrieved hopelessly poor all rank formations who had revolted for fairness, justice, good behaviour and a few certain rewards for their hard work, how are the attacks on innocent women and children and non officers justified? Nay, the mutinous rebels got more audacious. After all, they got more than they desired. They won prime time TV spot, public adulation and sympathy, “motherly love” from the Home Minister and even a private “durbar” with the Prime Minister who granted them an instant “General Amnesty”. The conspirers must have been tearing their hairs for such a colossal faux pas. Had the officers not been killed and incarcerated, it could have easily been the greatest hostage taking of all times and a total humiliation and inefficiency of the BDR management, or should I say, a “command failure”.
The Government of Bangladesh, who had just taken over power 50 days backs, was initially reacting to damage limitation. It had more time later to find out the causes but for now, they had to talk to the rebels and heel them down. The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also tried brinkmanship. So the tough option of a military strike first was ruled out. The Home Minister, Sahara Khatun, was an active livewire, trying to fan up the flickering light of hope through negotiations and building a buffer between the rebels and the hostages. The chief Whip, Mirza Azam and Jahangir Kabir Nanak, MP did commendable jobs in engaging the rebels and not let them take potshots at passing pedestrians. The political dialoging got more wind in its sails and drew out throughout the night, but it did not make the rebels surrender.
By the next morning, two bodies were found in the sluice gates of the sewarage outfall of the Hazaribagh area. It was that of a Colonel Mujibul Huq and a Lieutenant Colonel Enayet of the BDR. Both of these officers were at the forefront of the “Daal Bhaat” programme last year and according to some disgruntled jawans, were responsible for misappropriating huge funds from the programme along with DG. People and the reporters were now asking all sorts of questions to the rebels: How many prisoners do you have? Where are they? Are they alive or dead? Where is DG Shakil? The answers weren’t unequivocal; and by the afternoon time, many of the BDR jawans abandoned their posts and started telling the truths. They talked about a possible massacre and shooting down of most of the Army officers in the Durbar Hall and then burying them in unknown spots. This had happened all in the first day and that they were forced to join the rebels or face certain death. A few officers and their families were also released after talks with rebels and they narrated of harrowing times in the last 24 hours. The PM then came on the Television and declared no harm would come to those who are willing to lay down arms. On the other hand, if the rebels fail to do will be dealt with severely.
The speech worked like a tonic. Thousands of incendiary soldiers surrendered their arms expressing full confidence in the PM. Thousand other fled through the back doors with the evacuating public. By this time, the Home Minister, IG Police, DG, RAB had all entered the premises of BDR and saw the first glimpses of the wasteland followed by a bevy of newsmen, servicemen, medical personnel, Fire Brigade and curious onlookers. All night long, worried relatives of the Army Officers kept an all night vigil against all dying hopes.
At the end of all this, we have nearly a hundred and a quarter of the best professionally trained Army officers dead; some as highly ranked as Generals and Colonels. It cannot be just over petty increase in salaries or better working conditions or rationing or what have you. It wasn’t as if 10,000 soldiers mutinied at the same time but a band of just a few trouble mongers who set the forest on fire. This was indeed challenging times for the newly elected democratic government.
The government did not delve in strategic risk analysis but crisis management through political tools. It did not call on international terror experts and hopelesslessly compromised intelligence which was already on the anvil. The Prime Minister should not have met the rebels in person. However, it did defuse some of the tensions when the equanimity and firm resolve of the daughter of Bangabandhu puzzled the mutineers. For the first 24 hours the government was vulnerable. Non state actors were having their ways; their powers may have been quite consolidated because BDR units were rebelling all over the country. The international borders were left insecure. It looked that the final objective was going to be met beyond their expectations. A head on confrontation between the Army and the BDR was in the offing, the heavy air of suspicion was tearing the nation apart, Dhaka and the whole country was filled with rumours of an impending military take-over. The Prime Minister’s office with the Press Secretary, the Home Ministry, parliament members were passing sleepless nights in anxiety.
However, things started turning on its head from day 2. Many of the rebels were recanting now. Some of them started fleeing. The so called leaders of the revolt were busy in their negotiations to have their demands met (mainly to seek government protection from a military assault). The government machinery grinded unabated with a humongous task of co-ordination from the PM’s office with the press, Armed Forces Directorate (the PM is also the Defense Minister and Commander in chief of Armed Forces in Bangladesh), PID (civilian information cell that gives govt. press releases and communiqués), Home Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Law Ministry and all the other related organizations – Police, Fire Service, Ansar-VDP (civilian defense). The opposition also participated and expressed solidarity and unity with govt. and line agencies. All this dealt a further blow to the militant BDR mutineers. As the clock ticked by, the ultimatum to strike was very much on the cards. The government started mobilizing the Army. The Army had taken position from Day 1 in the vicinity with its field guns, mortars and machine gun batteries but kept its measurable distance and restraint awaiting higher authority orders. Now the tanks were coming in and encircling the Peelkhana sprawling complex in all directions. This had unnerved the mutineers even more. A clash with the Armed Forces would mean inevitable death.
While this entire whirlwind was blowing, the international observers were also watching developments in the BDR intensely over the channel transmissions. The Indian and Pakistani media were particularly keen observers, especially India with which Bangladesh shares a 2000 km border, much of it being barbed wired and cordoned off to prevent cross state infiltration. Two of the TV channels and the largest publishing house in Kolkata, the AnandaBazar Publications Ltd. came out with a connection of the BDR attack with the latest Mumbai terrorist strikes. It believes that the planning had taken place from cells in Pakistan and transmitted to their sister organization in Bangladesh, mainly the Harkatul Jamia Islamia or HUJI with training cells conducted by ISI operatives. Many such speculations of an international link had been rife and the presence of a grey van laden with 20 crates of arms and clips in front of the BDR Durbar Hall is a growing testament to it.
Some instigators who were supporting the rebels from outside Gate 3 and conducting processions until Thursday afternoon on Day 2 were also under the microscope. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why weren’t the rebel soldiers shooting at them? Right now, all these answers remain unsolved.
The immediate task would be to restore confidence and take charge. Already some of the peripheral mutiny has died down and the mutineers returned back to their border outpost. Once the border is secure, the HQ will have to get back its command structure which was decimated in the February 25 rebellion. A new Director General (DG) has already been appointed. A strong investigation committee has been constituted to find out the reasons for this mutiny headed by the Home Minister and this committee will submit its report in 7 days time. The escapees and the plotters and their ringleaders will be brought in and interrogated to see if any international connection with terrorism exists. The perpetrators of this heinous crime will then subject to the sternest punishment according to the law of the land. At least that may bring some peace and justice to the near and dear ones of the slain innocent officers.
There are so many lessons that need to be learnt here. The security apparatus need to remodeled and revamped. The securities of VIPs have to be strengthened. Institutional security and defense mechanisms need to be understood and personal safety has to be beefed up. Now the state level activities will have to be pro-active with the help of national and international defense analysts and strategists. The counter terrorism aspect will also have to be strengthened and finally, intelligence gathering nationally, regionally and internationally will have to be co-existent and co-ordinated. An overall policy that is commensurate with international policies in the “War on Terror”, UN charters and regional counter terrorism laws and regulations will have to be chalked up by local and international experts. Care must be given so that constitutional provisions of this country is not over stepped and no clause that compromises our sovereignty as an independent nation is breached.
From the morning of 25th February, 2009, when the durbar was in session, armed people entered the hall brandishing heavy combat weapons – a phenomenon not seen in any of the armed forces informal gatherings. As if on cue, four gunmen accounted for the Director General Major General Shakil Ahmed, and the mayhem began. Soon a core of fifty to hundred gunmen started rounding up officers, young and old, and summarily executed them. The senior officers did not have the time to react, aghast at seeing own soldiers resorting to such a cowardly and dastardly act. Out of 179 officers of all ranks only 32 managed to survive, and that too, because their orderlies had hidden them and found it difficult to kill them in cold blood. The carnage did not end here. Afterwards, these brutal, murderous rag tags slowly walked up to the Officer’s quarters and brought out the inmates – men and women, children and old and set their quarters to fire. Before that, many of these animals pounced on whatever expensive items they could find and looted gold, ornaments, jewelries, money.
In a revelry befitting the medieval bloodthirsty marauders, these armed miscreants then arrogantly got on top of the towers of the main gates and sporting red bandannas over their heads proclaimed in a nebulous fashion why they have revolted on the megaphone to the passerby people, waiting journalists and administrative officials. Many of them had their face covered but they would only be very happy to have their presence felt in the electronic media, “Mama, see I am on the Television.”Not to show off their murderous intent, they would scorn at all the Army officers and tell the public to remain at a distance or else, we shoot off again. They couldn’t say who their leader was, but the fact that the DG, DDG and the Project Director of the Daal Bhaat programme had siphoned off enormous amount of funds that was to be their benefit money and so on and so forth. Also important was their oft repeated pejoratives about all Army officers and that they should not be in the command structure of the BDR. Rather, BCS officers should be appointed for the running of BDR. The cruelty, the deprivation, the poor ration, the insufficient pay, the rankdowns on flimsy pretext was getting a bit too much for them. Their backs were pinned to the wall. They had no other alternative.
At first, the local media played up the rebel tune. So effective was that pitch for their propaganda that soon it was reverberating in the supportive slogans of the general public in Gates 1 and 2. It seemed like an old history of deprivation, privation and humiliation and the class problem of officers and jawans, the have and the have-nots etc., the dialectics of the state and the people that rack our inner souls from time to time. The practical issues of wages, perks and budget, rewards and benefits, promotion, pension and last if not the least: the behaviour of ranked senior officers towards their junior or non ranked subalterns, especially in the context of 21st Century.
Had all these been the issues for a aggrieved hopelessly poor all rank formations who had revolted for fairness, justice, good behaviour and a few certain rewards for their hard work, how are the attacks on innocent women and children and non officers justified? Nay, the mutinous rebels got more audacious. After all, they got more than they desired. They won prime time TV spot, public adulation and sympathy, “motherly love” from the Home Minister and even a private “durbar” with the Prime Minister who granted them an instant “General Amnesty”. The conspirers must have been tearing their hairs for such a colossal faux pas. Had the officers not been killed and incarcerated, it could have easily been the greatest hostage taking of all times and a total humiliation and inefficiency of the BDR management, or should I say, a “command failure”.
The Government of Bangladesh, who had just taken over power 50 days backs, was initially reacting to damage limitation. It had more time later to find out the causes but for now, they had to talk to the rebels and heel them down. The Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also tried brinkmanship. So the tough option of a military strike first was ruled out. The Home Minister, Sahara Khatun, was an active livewire, trying to fan up the flickering light of hope through negotiations and building a buffer between the rebels and the hostages. The chief Whip, Mirza Azam and Jahangir Kabir Nanak, MP did commendable jobs in engaging the rebels and not let them take potshots at passing pedestrians. The political dialoging got more wind in its sails and drew out throughout the night, but it did not make the rebels surrender.
By the next morning, two bodies were found in the sluice gates of the sewarage outfall of the Hazaribagh area. It was that of a Colonel Mujibul Huq and a Lieutenant Colonel Enayet of the BDR. Both of these officers were at the forefront of the “Daal Bhaat” programme last year and according to some disgruntled jawans, were responsible for misappropriating huge funds from the programme along with DG. People and the reporters were now asking all sorts of questions to the rebels: How many prisoners do you have? Where are they? Are they alive or dead? Where is DG Shakil? The answers weren’t unequivocal; and by the afternoon time, many of the BDR jawans abandoned their posts and started telling the truths. They talked about a possible massacre and shooting down of most of the Army officers in the Durbar Hall and then burying them in unknown spots. This had happened all in the first day and that they were forced to join the rebels or face certain death. A few officers and their families were also released after talks with rebels and they narrated of harrowing times in the last 24 hours. The PM then came on the Television and declared no harm would come to those who are willing to lay down arms. On the other hand, if the rebels fail to do will be dealt with severely.
The speech worked like a tonic. Thousands of incendiary soldiers surrendered their arms expressing full confidence in the PM. Thousand other fled through the back doors with the evacuating public. By this time, the Home Minister, IG Police, DG, RAB had all entered the premises of BDR and saw the first glimpses of the wasteland followed by a bevy of newsmen, servicemen, medical personnel, Fire Brigade and curious onlookers. All night long, worried relatives of the Army Officers kept an all night vigil against all dying hopes.
At the end of all this, we have nearly a hundred and a quarter of the best professionally trained Army officers dead; some as highly ranked as Generals and Colonels. It cannot be just over petty increase in salaries or better working conditions or rationing or what have you. It wasn’t as if 10,000 soldiers mutinied at the same time but a band of just a few trouble mongers who set the forest on fire. This was indeed challenging times for the newly elected democratic government.
The government did not delve in strategic risk analysis but crisis management through political tools. It did not call on international terror experts and hopelesslessly compromised intelligence which was already on the anvil. The Prime Minister should not have met the rebels in person. However, it did defuse some of the tensions when the equanimity and firm resolve of the daughter of Bangabandhu puzzled the mutineers. For the first 24 hours the government was vulnerable. Non state actors were having their ways; their powers may have been quite consolidated because BDR units were rebelling all over the country. The international borders were left insecure. It looked that the final objective was going to be met beyond their expectations. A head on confrontation between the Army and the BDR was in the offing, the heavy air of suspicion was tearing the nation apart, Dhaka and the whole country was filled with rumours of an impending military take-over. The Prime Minister’s office with the Press Secretary, the Home Ministry, parliament members were passing sleepless nights in anxiety.
However, things started turning on its head from day 2. Many of the rebels were recanting now. Some of them started fleeing. The so called leaders of the revolt were busy in their negotiations to have their demands met (mainly to seek government protection from a military assault). The government machinery grinded unabated with a humongous task of co-ordination from the PM’s office with the press, Armed Forces Directorate (the PM is also the Defense Minister and Commander in chief of Armed Forces in Bangladesh), PID (civilian information cell that gives govt. press releases and communiqués), Home Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Law Ministry and all the other related organizations – Police, Fire Service, Ansar-VDP (civilian defense). The opposition also participated and expressed solidarity and unity with govt. and line agencies. All this dealt a further blow to the militant BDR mutineers. As the clock ticked by, the ultimatum to strike was very much on the cards. The government started mobilizing the Army. The Army had taken position from Day 1 in the vicinity with its field guns, mortars and machine gun batteries but kept its measurable distance and restraint awaiting higher authority orders. Now the tanks were coming in and encircling the Peelkhana sprawling complex in all directions. This had unnerved the mutineers even more. A clash with the Armed Forces would mean inevitable death.
While this entire whirlwind was blowing, the international observers were also watching developments in the BDR intensely over the channel transmissions. The Indian and Pakistani media were particularly keen observers, especially India with which Bangladesh shares a 2000 km border, much of it being barbed wired and cordoned off to prevent cross state infiltration. Two of the TV channels and the largest publishing house in Kolkata, the AnandaBazar Publications Ltd. came out with a connection of the BDR attack with the latest Mumbai terrorist strikes. It believes that the planning had taken place from cells in Pakistan and transmitted to their sister organization in Bangladesh, mainly the Harkatul Jamia Islamia or HUJI with training cells conducted by ISI operatives. Many such speculations of an international link had been rife and the presence of a grey van laden with 20 crates of arms and clips in front of the BDR Durbar Hall is a growing testament to it.
Some instigators who were supporting the rebels from outside Gate 3 and conducting processions until Thursday afternoon on Day 2 were also under the microscope. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why weren’t the rebel soldiers shooting at them? Right now, all these answers remain unsolved.
The immediate task would be to restore confidence and take charge. Already some of the peripheral mutiny has died down and the mutineers returned back to their border outpost. Once the border is secure, the HQ will have to get back its command structure which was decimated in the February 25 rebellion. A new Director General (DG) has already been appointed. A strong investigation committee has been constituted to find out the reasons for this mutiny headed by the Home Minister and this committee will submit its report in 7 days time. The escapees and the plotters and their ringleaders will be brought in and interrogated to see if any international connection with terrorism exists. The perpetrators of this heinous crime will then subject to the sternest punishment according to the law of the land. At least that may bring some peace and justice to the near and dear ones of the slain innocent officers.
There are so many lessons that need to be learnt here. The security apparatus need to remodeled and revamped. The securities of VIPs have to be strengthened. Institutional security and defense mechanisms need to be understood and personal safety has to be beefed up. Now the state level activities will have to be pro-active with the help of national and international defense analysts and strategists. The counter terrorism aspect will also have to be strengthened and finally, intelligence gathering nationally, regionally and internationally will have to be co-existent and co-ordinated. An overall policy that is commensurate with international policies in the “War on Terror”, UN charters and regional counter terrorism laws and regulations will have to be chalked up by local and international experts. Care must be given so that constitutional provisions of this country is not over stepped and no clause that compromises our sovereignty as an independent nation is breached.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Does Bangladesh military deserve impunity?
Does Bangladesh military deserve impunity?
By Rater Zonaki
Source: UPI Asia On-line
February 10, 2009
Hong Kong, China — Bangladeshi members of Parliament and the media have been speaking out against the former military-controlled emergency government, now that a new elected government is in place. They are demanding the prosecution of members of the military forces responsible for arresting and detaining high-ranking politicians, and subjecting them to physical and mental torture in custody.
Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the Awami League, which is now the ruling party, has demanded a parliamentary probe into such detentions. The veteran politician could not help crying while describing the torture he underwent in a detention center operated by the armed forces. He said around eight armed men had come to his office, blindfolded him and taken him away in a waiting car. They identified themselves as members of the Joint Forces.
Jalil was detained in custody where he was physically and psychologically tortured for five consecutive days. He was later paroled for treatment abroad, and after returning to Bangladesh, managed to get bail from the Supreme Court.
Another member of Parliament, Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir, has also described his arrest and torture in a number of articles, interviews and talk shows. He has declared his intention to sue the chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Lt. Gen. Hassan Mashhud Chowdhury, and other members of the armed forces for torturing and treating him inhumanely in detention.
Barrister Moudud Ahmed – who was minister of law during the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led regime and lost his seat in Parliament in the recent election – has also been trying to convince people through the media that he was a victim of brutal torture and degrading treatment in the custody of the armed forces. Moudud also announced that he is writing a book on his life in prison.
However, Moudud’s hue and cry about custodial brutality appears to be aimed at personal or political gain. In fact, Moudud was law minister when the government validated actions of the armed forces during Operation Clean Heart, an 86-day crackdown on political dissenters in late 2002, which resulted in 58 deaths in the custody of the armed forces. The government termed all these deaths as "heart attacks."
More than 10,000 ordinary citizens were illegally arrested, arbitrarily detained and brutally tortured under fabricated charges by the military-dominated law-enforcement agencies. Moudud, as the minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, issued an ordinance to ensure blatant impunity to the perpetrators in January 2003, which was then enacted by Parliament.
Moudud and his government ignored the people's fundamental rights, especially the right to life and liberty. Later, he was a victim of the same treatment.
Talking about human rights, as Jalil, Alamgir and Moudud are now doing, is rare in Bangladesh’s political circles. This discussion conveys a message to ordinary victims that some politicians now understand the taste of pain. At the same time, their stories support claims made by human rights defenders that the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies operate torture cells.
The real picture of brutality by the armed forces and the police is much more severe than the stories of these three politicians. Ordinary citizens have long suffered immeasurable atrocities at the hands of the military during the state of emergency and the police during previous regimes.
Now the incumbent law minister, Barrister Shafique Ahmed, is talking about the "doctrine of necessity" as a means of justifying the actions of the military-controlled emergency government. Speaking of the armed forces, he told the media, "You cannot say all their actions or activities were within the bounds of the Constitution …Whatever they did, they did responding to the necessity of the time. So we are not giving legal cover to all their actions, we're not validating all their ordinances."
This raises the question as to whether the illegal arrests, detentions, torture and killings were a "necessity of the time." Are the present politicians ready to accept the armed forces' actions even though they defied the Constitution? Isn’t the so-called "doctrine of necessity" merely an excuse to once again grant impunity to the perpetrators of injustice, with the permission of the present government and at the demand of the armed forces?
It is not convincing that those now in power can accept and explain the former government’s brutal and unconstitutional actions under the "doctrine of necessity." Why can’t people like Moudud and Shafique face the truth behind the recurrent take-over of power by the armed forces?
Will the current batch of politicians also surrender to the armed forces instead of taking effective action to stop such brutality forever? Why is there no effective resistance to keep the soldiers in their barracks?
The door must be closed forever on the armed forces’ ability to take over and abuse power. The ruling party could start now by using its absolute majority in Parliament to criminalize torture and repeal Article 46 of the Constitution, which allows Parliament to grant impunity to state officers for any action, however brutal, taken to “restore order.”
The demand for justice by a few senior members of Parliament has aroused the interest of the people. But ordinary people will treat such demands as mere political rubbish unless the politicians follow through and effectively punish the perpetrators.
(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)
By Rater Zonaki
Source: UPI Asia On-line
February 10, 2009
Hong Kong, China — Bangladeshi members of Parliament and the media have been speaking out against the former military-controlled emergency government, now that a new elected government is in place. They are demanding the prosecution of members of the military forces responsible for arresting and detaining high-ranking politicians, and subjecting them to physical and mental torture in custody.
Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the Awami League, which is now the ruling party, has demanded a parliamentary probe into such detentions. The veteran politician could not help crying while describing the torture he underwent in a detention center operated by the armed forces. He said around eight armed men had come to his office, blindfolded him and taken him away in a waiting car. They identified themselves as members of the Joint Forces.
Jalil was detained in custody where he was physically and psychologically tortured for five consecutive days. He was later paroled for treatment abroad, and after returning to Bangladesh, managed to get bail from the Supreme Court.
Another member of Parliament, Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir, has also described his arrest and torture in a number of articles, interviews and talk shows. He has declared his intention to sue the chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Lt. Gen. Hassan Mashhud Chowdhury, and other members of the armed forces for torturing and treating him inhumanely in detention.
Barrister Moudud Ahmed – who was minister of law during the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led regime and lost his seat in Parliament in the recent election – has also been trying to convince people through the media that he was a victim of brutal torture and degrading treatment in the custody of the armed forces. Moudud also announced that he is writing a book on his life in prison.
However, Moudud’s hue and cry about custodial brutality appears to be aimed at personal or political gain. In fact, Moudud was law minister when the government validated actions of the armed forces during Operation Clean Heart, an 86-day crackdown on political dissenters in late 2002, which resulted in 58 deaths in the custody of the armed forces. The government termed all these deaths as "heart attacks."
More than 10,000 ordinary citizens were illegally arrested, arbitrarily detained and brutally tortured under fabricated charges by the military-dominated law-enforcement agencies. Moudud, as the minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, issued an ordinance to ensure blatant impunity to the perpetrators in January 2003, which was then enacted by Parliament.
Moudud and his government ignored the people's fundamental rights, especially the right to life and liberty. Later, he was a victim of the same treatment.
Talking about human rights, as Jalil, Alamgir and Moudud are now doing, is rare in Bangladesh’s political circles. This discussion conveys a message to ordinary victims that some politicians now understand the taste of pain. At the same time, their stories support claims made by human rights defenders that the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies operate torture cells.
The real picture of brutality by the armed forces and the police is much more severe than the stories of these three politicians. Ordinary citizens have long suffered immeasurable atrocities at the hands of the military during the state of emergency and the police during previous regimes.
Now the incumbent law minister, Barrister Shafique Ahmed, is talking about the "doctrine of necessity" as a means of justifying the actions of the military-controlled emergency government. Speaking of the armed forces, he told the media, "You cannot say all their actions or activities were within the bounds of the Constitution …Whatever they did, they did responding to the necessity of the time. So we are not giving legal cover to all their actions, we're not validating all their ordinances."
This raises the question as to whether the illegal arrests, detentions, torture and killings were a "necessity of the time." Are the present politicians ready to accept the armed forces' actions even though they defied the Constitution? Isn’t the so-called "doctrine of necessity" merely an excuse to once again grant impunity to the perpetrators of injustice, with the permission of the present government and at the demand of the armed forces?
It is not convincing that those now in power can accept and explain the former government’s brutal and unconstitutional actions under the "doctrine of necessity." Why can’t people like Moudud and Shafique face the truth behind the recurrent take-over of power by the armed forces?
Will the current batch of politicians also surrender to the armed forces instead of taking effective action to stop such brutality forever? Why is there no effective resistance to keep the soldiers in their barracks?
The door must be closed forever on the armed forces’ ability to take over and abuse power. The ruling party could start now by using its absolute majority in Parliament to criminalize torture and repeal Article 46 of the Constitution, which allows Parliament to grant impunity to state officers for any action, however brutal, taken to “restore order.”
The demand for justice by a few senior members of Parliament has aroused the interest of the people. But ordinary people will treat such demands as mere political rubbish unless the politicians follow through and effectively punish the perpetrators.
(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
War criminals barred from leaving country
War criminals barred from leaving country
Govt alerts agencies concerned but no list prepared
Source: New Age
January 31 2009
The government on Friday ordered all agencies concerned to bar the suspected war criminals from leaving the country. ‘All relevant information about the war criminals have already been sent to the agencies concerned asking them to guard all points so that the war criminals cannot flee the country,(The Newage)
home minister Sahara Khatun told reporters after attending the 23rd annual conference of Bangladesh Law Association at the Annex Complex on the premises of the law faculty of Dhaka University.
The home minister came up with the statement after Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday night approved unanimously a resolution seeking speedy prosecution of the 1971 war criminals.
The minister refused to give the list of the war criminals barred from leaving the country.
‘Why ask for details,’ Sahara told reporters and walked away.
A high official of the home ministry, however, said that the ministry was yet to prepare a list of the war criminals.
After 1972, the government has not prepared any list of the war criminals, said another high official.
Immigration officials at the Zia International Airport and Benapole Land Port told New Age Friday evening that they had not yet received any such instructions.
A home ministry official said a general instruction was issued to the authorities concerned not to allow any suspected war criminals to leave the country. He, however, added that no list was sent to the authorities.
Law minister Shafique Ahmed also said that the home ministry had issued instructions to the authorities concerned in this regard after being asked to do so.
The government in 1972 prepared a list of 37,000 war criminals and they were also sued.
The process of trial and conviction was, however, impeded by a general amnesty for the collaborators, declared by the then prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on November 30, 1973.
Under the general amnesty, about 26,000 of the 37,000 people held or convicted under the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order 1972 were released. While the amnesty did not apply to those charged with murder, rape or arson, most of the collaborators, especially the bigwigs involved in abduction and other general collaboration charges, were released. A large number of persons charged with murder, rape or arson, including known collaborators, were also released.
The collaborators order was finally revoked on December 31, 1975 and almost all of the collaborators convicted or indicted were released in the early days of the regime of Ziaur Rahman.
The War Crimes Facts Finding Committee, a research organisation, on April 3, 2008, unveiled a list of 1,597 war criminals responsible for genocide, rape and other atrocities during the Liberation War.
Of those on the list, 369 are members of Pakistani military, 1,150 are their local collaborators, including members of Razakar and Al Badr [forces formed to aid the occupation army] and Peace Committee, and 78 are Biharis.
On December 23, 2008, Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad published a list of 600 war criminals responsible for mass killing, rape and other misdeeds during the country’s Liberation War.
Sector Commanders Forum, a platform of war veterans, on November 4 made public their preliminary list of 50 war criminals, which includes Jamaat-e-Islami amir Matiur Rahman Nizami and its secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid. It also demanded trial of war criminals under the International Crimes Tribunal Act, 1973.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Friday said that the party would back trial of war criminals if it was ‘properly’ done and was not politically motivated.
BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain said the demand for trial of war criminals had their moral support and none should have any objection to it.
Grassroots level leaders of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami on Friday asked the leadership of the party to take ‘legal protection’ against the government’s move for trial of war criminals.
When asked if the members of the central Majlish-e-Shura, highest decision making body of the party, had discussed the parliament’s decision on the ‘immediate trial of war criminals’, a central secretary admitted, ‘A number of delegates raised the issue. They advised the Jamaat leaders to take legal protection.’
Addressing a law association conference, state minister for law, Quamrul Islam sought cooperation from the members of the Bangladesh Law Association and the countrymen, especially lawyers, in the trial of the war criminals, a major election pledge of the present government.
‘This move of the government would be successful through a bold and unique role of the judges and the lawyers,’ he said.
Govt alerts agencies concerned but no list prepared
Source: New Age
January 31 2009
The government on Friday ordered all agencies concerned to bar the suspected war criminals from leaving the country. ‘All relevant information about the war criminals have already been sent to the agencies concerned asking them to guard all points so that the war criminals cannot flee the country,(The Newage)
home minister Sahara Khatun told reporters after attending the 23rd annual conference of Bangladesh Law Association at the Annex Complex on the premises of the law faculty of Dhaka University.
The home minister came up with the statement after Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday night approved unanimously a resolution seeking speedy prosecution of the 1971 war criminals.
The minister refused to give the list of the war criminals barred from leaving the country.
‘Why ask for details,’ Sahara told reporters and walked away.
A high official of the home ministry, however, said that the ministry was yet to prepare a list of the war criminals.
After 1972, the government has not prepared any list of the war criminals, said another high official.
Immigration officials at the Zia International Airport and Benapole Land Port told New Age Friday evening that they had not yet received any such instructions.
A home ministry official said a general instruction was issued to the authorities concerned not to allow any suspected war criminals to leave the country. He, however, added that no list was sent to the authorities.
Law minister Shafique Ahmed also said that the home ministry had issued instructions to the authorities concerned in this regard after being asked to do so.
The government in 1972 prepared a list of 37,000 war criminals and they were also sued.
The process of trial and conviction was, however, impeded by a general amnesty for the collaborators, declared by the then prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on November 30, 1973.
Under the general amnesty, about 26,000 of the 37,000 people held or convicted under the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order 1972 were released. While the amnesty did not apply to those charged with murder, rape or arson, most of the collaborators, especially the bigwigs involved in abduction and other general collaboration charges, were released. A large number of persons charged with murder, rape or arson, including known collaborators, were also released.
The collaborators order was finally revoked on December 31, 1975 and almost all of the collaborators convicted or indicted were released in the early days of the regime of Ziaur Rahman.
The War Crimes Facts Finding Committee, a research organisation, on April 3, 2008, unveiled a list of 1,597 war criminals responsible for genocide, rape and other atrocities during the Liberation War.
Of those on the list, 369 are members of Pakistani military, 1,150 are their local collaborators, including members of Razakar and Al Badr [forces formed to aid the occupation army] and Peace Committee, and 78 are Biharis.
On December 23, 2008, Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad published a list of 600 war criminals responsible for mass killing, rape and other misdeeds during the country’s Liberation War.
Sector Commanders Forum, a platform of war veterans, on November 4 made public their preliminary list of 50 war criminals, which includes Jamaat-e-Islami amir Matiur Rahman Nizami and its secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid. It also demanded trial of war criminals under the International Crimes Tribunal Act, 1973.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Friday said that the party would back trial of war criminals if it was ‘properly’ done and was not politically motivated.
BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain said the demand for trial of war criminals had their moral support and none should have any objection to it.
Grassroots level leaders of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami on Friday asked the leadership of the party to take ‘legal protection’ against the government’s move for trial of war criminals.
When asked if the members of the central Majlish-e-Shura, highest decision making body of the party, had discussed the parliament’s decision on the ‘immediate trial of war criminals’, a central secretary admitted, ‘A number of delegates raised the issue. They advised the Jamaat leaders to take legal protection.’
Addressing a law association conference, state minister for law, Quamrul Islam sought cooperation from the members of the Bangladesh Law Association and the countrymen, especially lawyers, in the trial of the war criminals, a major election pledge of the present government.
‘This move of the government would be successful through a bold and unique role of the judges and the lawyers,’ he said.
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