Covert external interventions in Bangladesh polity
Sadeq Khan
The political scenario of Bangladesh is in deep turmoil. More than the
principal actors at home, Bangladesh watchers from abroad are being
profusely quoted in the vernacular media of the country about their
detection of a geo-strategic hand of foreign agents entering the game.
The purpose is hinted to be a "destabilisation agenda" being pursued
by the neighbourly regional power, which may be finding the very
existence and development potential of independent Bangladesh a threat
by example, in effect encouraging the separatists in Indian northeast.
A pen-picture of such foreign geo-strategic interests fanning up
troubles in peaceable Bangladesh has been painted (and reproduced in
Bangla papers) on diverse grounds by various international reporters.
The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, for instance, saw in the
border management policy of India with regard to its boundaries with
innocuous Bangladesh inexplicably "aggressive".
Its correspondent Ben Doherty reported on April 21 (abridged):
"The Border Security Force soldiers are unfailingly polite and
hospitable, but conspicuously armed and resolute. We go no further.
'Why do you need to go to the border? There is nothing there,' we are
told over endless cups of chai (tea) with progressively more senior
officers, all of whom refuse us permission to travel beyond their
cantonment, or photograph 'the fence' a few hundred metres away.
'Berlin wall of Asia'
The border these men patrol is not India's antagonistic front with
Pakistan, nor its contested line with China. This is India's quiet
boundary with Bangladesh, a frontier that doesn't attract the
attention of its querulous colleagues, but one that, in recent times,
is proving equally fractious. The fence they are so reticent to reveal
is a rampart known in these parts as the 'Berlin Wall of Asia'.
Over 25 years, India has been building, and reinforcing, a massive
fence along its 4053-kilometre border with Bangladesh, each renovation
pushing the barrier higher, an ever-escalating posture of aggression.
It is due to be finished this year. But more than the simple fact of
building a border fence, at issue has been India's manner of policing
it. 'India and Bangladesh are friendly countries, they are not
enemies,' Kirity Roy, the secretary of the Indian human rights group
Mausam, tells the Herald. 'But the Indian government's paramilitary
organisation, the Border Security Force, they are … trigger happy,
they are killing Indians and Bangladeshis without discrimination. And
they are killing with impunity because they are never charged or given
any punishment.'
A Human Rights Watch investigation found killings on both sides of the
fence, as well as beatings, torture, kidnappings and rampant
corruption. 'The abusive methods used by the BSF are disproportionate
to the problems that the Indian government faces on its eastern
border. Numerous ordinary Indian and Bangladeshi citizens resident in
the border area end up as victims of abuses, which range from verbal
abuse and intimidation to torture, beatings and killings.'
In January the BSF director, Utthan K. Bansal, said soldiers should
exercise restraint, but warned they would shoot if they felt
threatened. As if to belie the director's emphasis on restraint, just
days later a brutal video was posted on YouTube showing uniformed BSF
soldiers stripping naked a suspected Bangladeshi cattle smuggler,
tying his arms to a pole and beating him with bamboo sticks for more
than 10 minutes as he writhed on the ground and screamed for his
mother.
India sees this imposing barrier as a panacea against the evils it
believes lurk across the border, from the very real problem of people
smuggling, to the less-likely threat of Islamist terrorists. But the
fence's fundamental purpose is far simpler: to keep out Bangladeshis.
The xenophobe card plays strongly in Indian politics, and senior
officials, like the Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, have lost no
support lecturing that Bangladeshis 'have no business to come to
India'.
Yet, for all the cost of building the fence - upwards of a billion
dollars so far - and the violence along it, both sides of the border
know it is no border at all. Dozens of villages act as unofficial,
illegal transit posts. At each, a "lineman", handsomely remunerated,
pays off the guards from both notoriously corrupt countries, and
directs the illegal traffic, which can run into scores of people at a
time, across the border.
In December last year, Suman says, he was walking just after dark near
the Indian side of the border. 'My family has a house there, and I go
there often, it was not unusual. Suddenly, they flashed a torch on me
and then they shot.' Suman survived, dragged to hospital by family who
heard the firing. He has lost all sight in his right eye.
Others do not survive, like 15-year-old Felani Khatun who was trying
to cross into Bangladesh to be married. She was shot when her salwar
kameez became caught in the wire. Her screams alerted the guards, who
shot her as she struggled. Her body was left hanging on the fence for
five hours before it was cut down."
More pungent story
A more pungent story of interventionist operations by the Indian
security establishment in Bangladesh was circulated by Jessica Fox,
presumably from London, on April 22 in the on-line 'Free Press
Release' news service. The press release (abridged) said:
"Strictly scrutinized 100 armed cadres of the ruling Awami League in
Bangladesh, who received 6-month long extensive commando training at
Dehradun in India under the direct supervision of Indian espionage
agency RAW are continuing various types of activities, including
secret killing, abduction etcetera since June of 2010 with the mission
of 'clearing' a large number of politicians, media personnel and
members of the civil society in Bangladesh. The team codenamed
'Crusader-100' went to India during end September 2009 and stayed
there till mid June 2010.
On return, the members of the 'Crusader-100' team from India were
provided a hit list comprising names of opposition politicians,
members of Bangladeshi media and some members of the civil society.
According to information, the list contains names of more than 83
people, who are planned to be 'cleared' by the members of the
'Crusader-100' gang."
A follow-up story was contributed by the same reporter in Sri Lanka
Guardian, April 23 issue, as reproduced hereunder (abridged):
"Enforced disappearance in Bangladesh went on for past three and half
years since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formed the government. The
issue has now drawn attention of the global community, when recently a
former MP and prominent leader of the opposition Bangladesh
Nationalist Party, M Ilias Ali disappeared along with his chauffer.
The Prime Minister was cool, making jokes about the disappearance.
Sheikh Hasina and her government has somehow become comfortably
confident of being assured by New Delhi on remaining in power at least
up to 2019. It is a substantial period for the ruling party in
establishing much stronger grip over country's civil and military
administration, as well as the judiciary, thus bringing Bangladesh
under one-party rule, which was the brain-child of Hasina's father
Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.
One party rule
Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, who is the founding-father of Bangladesh,
introduced the one-party rule system named BKSAL, which he conceived
from former Soviet Union. The era of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman came to a
tragic end, when he was assassinated along with members of his family
on 15th August 1975 in a military coup.
After 20 years of the tragic assassination of the founding father, the
people of Bangladesh voted Mujib's eldest daughter Sheikh Hasina into
power in 1996, but her government had to finally face a huge defeat
just after five years, because of its massive corruption, nepotism,
state-patronized crime and bad governance. Prior to this election,
Sheikh Hasina sought apology to the people for all wrong-doings of her
father.
In 2008 again, Sheikh Hasina made fresh pledges to the people with
renewed apology for the 'mistakes' during her tenure of 1996-2001, and
promised 'a better Bangladesh' with the implementation of her Vision
2021 and establishment of 'Digital Bangladesh'. It was already known
in the political and media circles in India that, the pre-election
propaganda strategy and the election manifesto of Awami League were
drafted by a team of seasoned politicians and media personnel from
India. Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Pranab Mukherjee contributed in the
election manifesto of Bangladesh Awami League by their inputs.
Awami League got a huge victory in the election and since it formed
government in January-2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her
cabinet are seen totally committed in implementing all of its
commitments and pledges, made to India, without considering their
impacts on Bangladesh or its people. For the people of Bangladesh,
this is possibly one of their worst-ever period of national
catastrophe of letting Awami League still being in power for another
one plus year. No doubt the ruling party and its elites are fully
aware of people's grievance and anger. Sensing this as well as
foreseeing possible revolt of the people either before or during the
election, the ruling party is carrying out its well-planned agenda of
political secret killings as well as forced disappearances, with the
goal of eliminating most of the potential political opponents as well
as leaders of the opposition parties, especially BNP and Jamaat. The
case of forced disappearance became prominent when BNP leader and ex
Member of Parliament (from Sylhet) M Ilias Ali went missing along with
his chauffer few days back.
While Bangladeshi Sylheti community in London are very active and
protesting the forced disappearance of M Ilias Ali, few pro-Awami
League palls such as writer Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury and some of the
business associates of Sheikh Rehana are trying to organize people to
counter the protests of angered Sylhetis in London and the United
Kingdom."
The Guardian, London
The violence on the ground in Bangladesh ahead of the dawn-to-dusk
general strike called by the main opposition in Bangladesh was
portrayed by a despatch in The Guardian of U.K. (abridged as follows):
"Police in Bangladesh used baton charges, live bullets and teargas on
Sunday (22 April) in clashes with demonstrators protesting against the
alleged abduction of a senior politician. The violence was the most
acute for many months in the unstable state.
In Dhaka, the capital, dozens of small devices were reported to have
exploded and 20 arrests were made. In the north-eastern city of
Sylhet, 12 people were reported to have been injured and more than 50
detained in running battles. On Sunday night a tense calm had been
established, although tens of thousands of security personnel remained
deployed across the country in anticipation of further clashes on
Monday.
The crisis was sparked by the disappearance last Tuesday of Ilias Ali,
a key organiser with the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP). Ali was
the latest in a series of political activists who have apparently been
abducted, raising fears of a concerted campaign of intimidation aimed
at opposition politicians. At least 22 people have gone missing so far
this year. In 2011, the number was 51. Many local and international
campaigners have blamed security forces, accusing the paramilitary
Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and local police of eliminating
opposition figures to benefit the administration of Sheikh Hasina, the
prime minister. Spokesmen from the Rab have denied the charge.
In its 2012 annual report Human Rights Watch said ministers have
denied that such incidents occur, even when the government's own
investigations found evidence of wrongdoing."
Wall Street Journal
The finale of this phase of hartals has been described in a report
published by The Wall Street Journal of U.S.A. as follows:
"At least five people have been killed and scores of protesters and
security officials injured in Sylhet and Dhaka, the capital, over the
past week as tens of thousands joined demonstrations. Dhaka ground to
a halt as people stayed in their homes Tuesday. Shops remained closed
and thousands of security personnel fanned out across the city of 12
million.
The clouded economic picture, coupled with the return of violence,
shows that Bangladesh may be slipping back toward
instability.Bangladesh for decades has been unhinged by political
vendettas, largely stemming from deep animosity between the supporters
of Ms. Hasina's Awami League and the Khaleda Zia-led BNP.
On a visit in February, Robert Blake, U.S. assistant secretary of
state for South and Central Asia, raised concerns, though, about media
freedom and a draft law that would impose restrictions on
nongovernmental organizations. More recently, the government has been
hit by a number of corruption scandals. Earlier this month, railways
minister Suranjit Sengupta resigned on allegations he took bribes from
applicants seeking jobs. He denies wrongdoing. Ordinary people remain
hit by high inflation and daily power outages that have dented the
government's popularity since its landslide victory in 2009.
Now, the BNP is threatening to call for strikes until the return of Mr. Ali.
'The government has pushed us to the wall,' said Mirza Fakhrul Islam
Alamgir, a BNP spokesman."
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