John Pilger who has done a lot of fine work over the years & most recently on Iraq has let his personal friendship with Moudood cloud up his assesment of him. True Moudood's arrest on charges of illegal alcohol possession is laughable and ridiculous. The a great portion of the ruling circles in Bangladesh can be put in prison for alcohol and other narcotic possesion.
Moudood could have been charged for far more serious offenses such as high treason in in assisting prior dictators in illegally amending the constitution to legitimize their grip on power. I suspect the present military regime may yet require his services in the future to make necessary amendments when they decide to give up the charade and legitimize their rule. And Moudood will most certainly oblige for reasons of "national interest & necessity". (wink wink)
Moudood is no Tom Paine just an above average for-rent constitutional hack.
The prisoner of
This illegal incarceration should be a global cause celebre, but instead there is a shameful silence
John Pilger
The Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/12/humanrights.bangladesh
Wednesday March 12 2008
There is a decent, brave man sitting in a dungeon in a country where the
"Why have you come when even crows are afraid to fly over our house," said Begum Mujib, the sheikh's wife. This was typical of Moudud, whose tumultuous life carries more than a hint of Tom Paine.
As a schoolboy, Moudud wet his shirt with the blood of a young man killed demonstrating against the imposition of "Urdu and only Urdu" as the official language of Bangla-speaking
When
Once in power, Sheikh Mujib turned on his own democrats and held show trials at which Moudud was their indefatigable defender until he himself was arrested.
Assassination, coup and counter coup eventually led to a parliamentary period headed by Zia ur-Rahman, a liberation general with whom Moudud agreed to serve as deputy prime minister on condition Zia resigned from the army. Together they formed a grassroots party, but when Moudud insisted that it must be democratic, he was sacked.
Whenever he came to
"I am the prime minister now," he once said, as if we had not heard. Outspoken about his people's "right to social and economic justice", especially women, he was duly arrested again, then won his parliamentary seat from prison.
On April 12 last year, late at night, 25 soldiers smashed into Moudud's house in
Moudud is suffering from a pituitary tumour and has been denied medication for six months. He is terribly ill, says his wife, the poet Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud. "Thousands of people have been detained for being activists, or just supporters," she says. "The country is a prison, and the world must know."
There are striking similarities between Moudud's case and that of the Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, who this week all but overturned the old, autocratic regime. Both were framed in order to silence them. The difference is that Anwar Ibrahim's case became an international cause celebre, whereas there is only silence for Moudud Ahmed, locked in his cell, ill, without charge or trial.
In the next few days, Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, the "chief adviser" to the caretaker government - in effect, the head of
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