Bangladesh Watchdog

Time to think different

2012-02-18T11:20:00.000+06:00

Lots of expectation: Sheikh Hasina & Manhoman Singh

Ties with Pakistan is bedeviled, while relations with Nepal, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka impaired by minor irritants

INDRANI BAGCHI

Indias size and strength both have been a source of insecurity for the smaller nations that ring the subcontinental giant. Thats made the strategic dimension of bilateral relations with neighbouring countries critical. While ties withPakistan have been bedeviled by terror attacks and territorial claims, better relations with Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been impaired by minor irritants.

Thankfully, Indian mandarins have woken up to the country's intimidating size and capacity and how that can overwhelm smaller neighbours. As the new conversations with Bangladesh and Nepal demonstrate, New Delhi appears to be moving towards the strategic view that the larger "give" will have to come from India.

But there are new elements that have to be infused to Indian strategic thinking -- first, that implementation is even more important than the declaratory diplomacy India is fond of. Second, the central government has to partner seriously with state governments where foreign policy intersects with domestic issues. Certainly, in the case of Bangladesh, West Bengal should be a key interlocutor for the Bangladeshis as well as for the MEA.

In return, Indias smaller neighbours will have to be mindful of Indias huge security concerns and how leaving these unaddressed can impact other key areas of the relationship.

Bangladesh has transformed into a good news story for Indian foreign policy. After decades of a blow hot-blow cold relationship, both India and Bangladesh can say with a great deal of certainty that sharing prosperity is a strategic imperative for both.

This week, India decided to start work on a $51-million railway line between Agartala and the Bangladesh border town of Akhaura that will enable Tripura to get grain and food supplies through Bangladesh. For India, Bangladesh is the gateway to southeast Asia. For Dhaka, India is the safest partner for its growth and development. For the ordinary Indian and the ordinary Bangladeshi, this is not hard to understand. Yet, establishments on either side of the border are still lumbering and the atmosphere remains still peppered with mistrust. In New Delhi, strategic experts fear that India may be falling short in taking this relationship forward, a fact that is worrying the top foreign policy leadership here.

Manmohan Singhs Bangladesh initiative had been the most important piece of neighbourhood diplomacy undertaken by the UPA government, but it seems to be slowing down. The exercise was started during the caretaker government before the last elections, and taken forward afterSheikh Hasina took over in Dhaka.

Sheikh Hasinas initial steps to address Indias security concerns went a long way in setting the ground for intensified engagement. In response, Sheikh Hasina was Indias Republic Day chief guest in 2010, an event that kicked off a massive Indian outreach programme with Bangladesh. A second marker of improved ties came with the reciprocal visit by Manmohan Singh to Dhaka in September, 2011. As we go into 2012, its important to realize that in fact, India and Bangladesh have actually had a very productive year. A land boundary has been demarcated, the vexed issue of enclaves and adverse possessions resolved. The land boundary agreement will not only change the map of India, it will be the first resolved boundary that India has with any of its neighbors. The agreement will essentially formalize the status quo on enclaves and areas under adverse possession -- that is, there will be no transfer of territory or people. The 53,000 people in the enclaves, who have just been counted in the first ever census there, will get the citizenship of the country they reside in.

India has been generous with tariffs leading to greater trade and investments, especially in the garments sector. Recognizing the growth potential for Indian investments in Bangladesh, AMA Muhith, the Bangladesh finance minister recently announced the establishment of new special economic zones that would simultaneously spur Bangladeshi industry, not just in the garment and textiles sector where Bangladesh enjoys enormous advantages, but also foreign investment.

The residual unhappiness in the relationship stems from the fact that India failed at the last minute to stitch together the Teesta River agreement with Bangladesh after promising to do so, because the UPA government botched up in getting West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to agree to the deal. Banerjee, famously capricious, dumped Manmohan Singh at the eleventh hour, diminishing the PMs transformative visit to Dhaka in September.

"Our inability to settle the Teesta issue is making small incidents flare up," a source said. The Sheikh Hasina government had gambled big on the India relationship, but with India failing to come up to scratch, there is the inevitable bad blood that affects the relationship. The lack of an agreement on Teesta has overshadowed progress on many other fronts. Miffed, Bangladesh now wants to hold cooperation on transit, an issue considered important by India, until the Teesta issue is settled.

India has just appointed a new envoy to Dhaka, whose brief it will be to put the bilateral relationship on a more sure footing. Because ultimately, the strength of the relationship will be its survivability -- that it should be the same no matter who is in power in Dhaka. Pankaj Saran, currently a key official in the Prime Ministers Office, has just been named the new high commissioner to Bangladesh, a sure sign that India continues to place a high value on getting the Bangladesh relationship right.

The good thing is that India acknowledges the importance of Bangladesh and is willing to take small steps to keep the ties afloat, even as domestic politics has grounded substantive movement on issues that matter to Dhaka.

Sheikh Hasina was in Agartala on January 11 to receive a doctorate from Tripura University. But more important, she went down memory lane, because Agartala holds memories for their independence struggle, as well as some personal memories of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. These are important gestures -- because the bilateral relationship should not be confined to governments, but people. For instance, Bangladesh politics continues to pressure the Hasina government on the Tipaimukh dam prompting a recent urgent visit by Hasinas foreign policy advisers, Gowher Rizvi and Matiur Rehman, who met the PM to apprise him of the brewing crisis. There are any number of creative solutions to the Tipaimukh Dam issue, including making Bangladesh a beneficiary of it. These should be collaborative efforts on finding solutions to common problems or certainly, problems that have the potential to derail a good news story.

First published in The Times of India, February 17, 2012

United States softens on threats to relations with Bangladesh

2012-02-16T23:21:00.000+06:00

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Bangladesh foreign minister Dipu Moni in Washington DC

SALEEM SAMAD

It now appears that the United States government has softened in exerting diplomatic pressure on Bangladesh soon after the authorities forcibly removed Nobel laureate Professor Mohammad Yunus from the micro-finance institution he founded 30 years ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was irked last March and threatened that the bilateral relations with Bangladesh would jeopardize if authorities continue to harass Prof. Yunus, a popular advocate of social business concept.

Visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert O. Blake in Bangladesh capital on Thursday told reporters that with Bangladesh and U.S has developed strong cooperation on counter-terrorism and security issues.

The visiting official emphasized the importance of Bangladesh’s finding an eminently qualified successor to Dr. Yunus as managing director of Grameen Bank, which has credit of empowering 10 million disadvantaged rural women. The Islamist squarely blamed the micro-finance bank for voting against the mullahs in last parliament election.

Blake reiterated U.S. policy against extra-constitutional means to overthrown a democratic government. In a recent botched military coup hatched by mid-level radical Muslim army officers in last January, the U.S. immediately condemned the conspiracy and firmly stood beside Sheikh Hasina’s government in establishing secularism and democracy. The overwhelming majority of Bangladesh 150 million people are Sunni Muslims, followed by 10 million minority Hindu population.

The senior U.S. official hopes that the ruling Awami League and mainstream opposition Bangladesh Nationalists Party would rise above narrow partisanship and will work together to agree for a mechanism in holding free, fair, credible and participatory election, schedule in end 2013.

He urged Bangladesh authority to ensure continued space for free media and vigorous non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The vibrant civil society representatives expressed their fear to Blake that the draft NGO law would curtail their mandate for empowerment of the rural poor.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow, is an award winning investigative reporter based in Bangladesh. He specializes on Islamic extremism, forced migration, good governance, press freedom and elective democracy. He was detained, tortured in 2002 and later expelled in 2004 for whistle-blowing of the safe sanctuaries of the Jihadist leaders in Bangladesh who fled during Anglo-US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Ending his life in exile from Canada he has recently returned home after six years. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Australian energy firm struck gas reserve in Bangladesh offshore

2012-02-15T23:46:00.000+06:00

Energy activists protest contracts to energy giants

SALEEM SAMAD

AN AUSTRALIAN energy corporation has struck huge gas reserves in off shore Bay of Bengal, which is commercially viable.

The president of Santos Bangladesh John Chambers briefed journos on Wednesday that they are confident to start supplying gas from the reserve from the first week of April.

John Chambers, said that the Aussie company will be able to quantify Sangu-11's reserves in the next couple of weeks when necessary assessments are completed.

From the new well in shallow water block 37.2 miles from the Bangladesh coast, at least 25-30 million cubic feet of gas per day will be available for Chittagong's energy starved industrial customers within March – April, the official added.

For the second time, commercially viable gas reserves have been found in offshore Bangladesh, following the previous discovery by the U.K's Cairn Energy in 1996. Cairn, the previous operator of the Sangu field, found gas in the same block.

Unlike other energy giants globally, Santos has agreements to sell gas from its well to private consumers at market price, the Santos official said. The Aussie company has already received expressions of interest from over a dozen large privately owned companies in Chittagong to buy gas at market price due to a growing gas shortage in the country.

The energy crunch has forced Petrobangla, state energy regulatory agency to suspend new gas connections to industries since July 2009, squeezing industrial growth. Gas rationing is widespread and CNG filling stations are closed four hours a day. Bangladesh economy is entirely dependent on gas and electricity for production of the huge export industries.

Earlier, energy activists have been protesting the government ink a deal with Santos and other American energy giants for allowing them to sell gas privately, which they term is anti-nationalism, said its leader Professor Anu Mohammad of a state university.

Heart throb’s suicide pact on Valentines Day

2012-02-14T21:49:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

A LOVE pair in a suicide pact dies on Valentine Day with a hope they would be united in eternity, on Tuesday.

Saud Sheikh, 17, and Mitu Mollah, 16, from a village Kathibazaar in Gopalganj in southern Bangladesh decided to give away their lives, after stiff opposition from both their families against their bondage.

Demoralized and frustrated by the attitude of their parents, the teens were driven to end their life.

Both are students of high school in grade ten, were in love, said the village leader Mejbah Uddin Chowdhury.

Shiekh had an affair with Mollah for a long time, but Saud’s family refused to accept the affair, a ridiculed as fairytales. The parent transferred Shiekh to the capital Dhaka. In the meantime Mollah’s family forced her to marry a groom whom he never met, said the village leader Chowdhury.

Police said, Shiekh returned to the village a day before the incident. The lovers tied a knot in their hands with a scarf and jumped from a mobile phone tower. They died instantaneously, Gopalganj police officer Sarojit Biswas said.

Bangladesh TV journalist couple brutally murdered

2012-02-13T23:59:00.001+06:00

Journalists threaten to take to the streets if the killers of journalist couple Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi are not arrested immediately in line with the home minister's promise. Photo: Safin Ahmed/Demotix

SALEEM SAMAD

A YOUNG journalists couple was cruelly murdered by unknown assailants in their apartment in the small hours in the weekend in the capital Dhaka, sparking widespread protest prompting authorities to issue orders for an investigation.

The couple’s five year-old son Megh informed her grandmother at 7:00 am on Saturday that two assailants killed his parents and he was locked inside a room. Police found Sagar Sarowar, news editor of private Maasranga TV both his hands and feet tied and his wife Meheren Runi, special correspondent of private ATN Bangla TV channel lying dead in a pool of blood.

Police security has been deployed to protect the only child who had survived the gruesome murder of his parents.

Sarowar returned to Bangladesh in 2011 after a few years stint with Deutsche Welle in Germany as a broadcaster.

The motive of the killing is unknown and police have yet to determine whether it is related to their work.

Chief Coroner at a state hospital said after the autopsy, Sarowar and Runi were hacked to death and had bore scores of stab wounds in their bodies.

Police detectives and intelligence agencies jointly launched a massive man-hunt ever in the history of Bangladesh and is desperately looking for clues.

Detectives and anti-crime agencies after two days is yet to make any progress in resolving the mystery of the most talked about murder story of the popular television journalists.

The police chief Hassan Mahmood Khandaker on Monday was evasive when crime reporters asked him barrages of questions regarding the progress of the investigation and whether the suspects have been nabbed. He, however, said there was significant progress and would not disclose any information for the sake of investigation.

Earlier the grieved journo leaders at a rally in front of the National Press Club on Sunday has set a 24 hours deadline, otherwise they threatened to boycott press coverage of the Home Affairs minister Sahara Khatoon.

Bangladesh is among the worst nations in the world in combating deadly anti-press violence. Bangladesh ranks 11th on New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Impunity Index, which calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country's population. Twelve journalists have been murdered in reprisal for their work in Bangladesh since 1992.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow, is an award winning investigative reporter based in Bangladesh. He specializes on Islamic extremism, forced migration, good governance, press freedom and elective democracy. He was detained, tortured in 2002 and later expelled in 2004 for whistle-blowing of the safe sanctuaries of the Jihadist leaders in Bangladesh who fled during Anglo-US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Ending his life in exile from Canada he has recently returned home after six years. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Air pollution in Bangladesh capital kills thousands

2012-02-10T19:56:00.001+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

Nauseating air pollution in the Bangladesh capital annually kills thousands of urban poor and millions more suffer from respiratory diseases, a burden on inadequate health budget.

Authorities in Bangladesh assume if air pollution in its overcrowded capital could be reduced by only 20 to 80 percent, an estimated 1,200 to 3,500 lives annually could be saved.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) claims that another 80 to 230 million cases of respiratory diseases could be averted each year.

The recently completed Country Environment Assessment, conducted jointly by the government and the World Bank identified air pollution as the leading cause of mortality and morbidity related environmental issues.

Clean Air and Sustainable Environment (CASE), a project of the government with the support of the Bank to reduce the capital Dhaka’s smog (smoke and fog) squarely blames scores of brick industries at the fringe of the city and clogging of limited road by large number of vehicles for 16 hours during weekdays.

The study says if the air pollution is reduced, it would also save $170 to 500 million in healthcare costs and simultaneously increase the productivity of city dwellers.

Traffic congestion in the capital and smoke from brick kilns are the main reasons for air pollution in Dhaka city, according to the World Bank and the Bangladesh government.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests says that vehicles in Dhaka move 14kmph on an average, which is very slow and causes them to burn more fuel and contribute to air pollution. They say the average speed could come down to 4kmph by 2025 if things do not improve.

The urban environment experts recommends for immediate introduction of energy efficient technology for a pro-green brick industry and rapid mass transit in Dhaka metropolis to ease traffic gridlocks through out the day.

An independent newspaper Daily Star on Friday quoting an official of the Department of Environment (DoE) said the density of airborne particulate matter is around 250 micrograms per cubic metre in Dhaka, which is five times the acceptable level.

The air consists of common pollutants, sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ground-level ozone (O3), volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sulphates and nitrates, the DoE official said.

Additional air pollutants of concern include toxic metals (lead, mercury, manganese, arsenic and nickel), benzene, formaldehyde, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), dioxins, and other persistent organic compounds, he add.

In another study Environmental Performance Index 2012, undertaken by the U.S. universities of Yale and Columbia, found Dhaka to be the 31st most polluted city out of 132 cities across the world.

Indian border guard chief remark outrage Bangladesh

2012-02-09T22:19:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

BANGLADESH GOVERNMENT, as well as the rights groups are outraged after the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) chief said that it is not possible to stop border firing completely.

The BSF director general U.K. Bansal told the BBC on Tuesday that it is not possible to stop border firing completely and his Bangladesh counterpart Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) chief Maj.Gen. Anwar Hossain disagrees and said on Thursday that killing at the border under any circumstances is not acceptable.

The remark is contrary to Indian government’s agreed policy and continues to maintain a shoot-at-sight policy for any Bangladeshi illegally crossing the international divide, foreign minister Dipu Moni told reporters on Thursday.

Last July, the Indian home affairs minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the Indian guards will no longer shoot people crossing the porous border from Bangladesh. Instead the guards will use rubber bullets after warnings.

Two days after the anger is still being raged, two more Bangladeshi citizens on Thursday have been shot and wounded by BSF at Satkhira in south-east, lieutenant colonel Abu Bashir confirmed with the private wire service bdnews24.com.

Bangladesh Human Rights Commission chief Prof. Mizanur Rahman on Wednesday threatened to raise the issue at the United Nations Human Rights Council, unless BSF stops killing and torture of innocent Bangladeshis.

In December 2010, New York based Human Rights Watch in a report described the Indian border guards as "Trigger Happy" force and documented hundreds of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment by the BSF.

In January 18, 2012, Indian news channel NDTV showed a disturbing video of what appears to be a group of BSF guards in uniform beating up a young Bangladeshi man ruthlessly near the Bangladesh border after he allegedly refused to give them a bribe. BSF top officers acknowledged that this incident took place and the perpetrators were fired.

The rights groups Odikhar and Ain Shalish Kendra (ASK) documents the killings on the border have denounced the border killings as extrajudicial murders.

The NGO’s stated that it is one of the most dangerous international borders, where an estimated 350 Bangladeshis and 165 Indians have been killed by Indian forces since 2006, since India began to fence the borders.

India in the east, shares 2,544 miles of porous and soft border with Bangladesh and have constructed walls with barbed wire, roughly 70 percent border with Bangladesh to stop illegal border crossing. The rest of the border is running across the delta's shifting rivers, which are unfenceable, but patrolled.

Livestock, food stuffs, gun-running and drug trade are regularly brought from India into Bangladesh. Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh cross into India to find jobs.

However, Gen. Hossain said on Thursday that the incident of killing at the border is on the decline in the last two months.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow, is an award winning investigative reporter based in Bangladesh. He specializes on Islamic terrorism, forced migration, good governance, press freedom and elective democracy. Ending his life in exile from Canada he has recently returned home. He was detained, tortured in 2002 and later expelled in 2004 for whistle-blowing of the safe sanctuary in Bangladesh of the Jihadist leaders who fled during Anglo-US invasion of Afghanistan. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Bangladesh: Coup bid against Sheikh Hasina foiled

2012-02-09T17:14:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

In late December last year, a secret letter went from New Delhi to Dhaka. It was delivered directly to Sheikh Hasina, 65, the prime minister of Bangladesh. It warned her that Islamist radicals embedded within the Bangladesh Army were planning a coup. Hasina had reason to fear coups. On the night of August 15, 1975, her father, Bangladesh's first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her mother and three brothers were massacred by officers of the Bangladesh Army. Hasina and her sister would have been dead as well, but were abroad on a tour of Europe.

Along with the letter, India had worked out a contingency plan to evacuate the prime minister, her cabinet and key figures of her Awami League party in the event of a coup. There was a military plan as well. Indian helicopter gunships would be launched from two airbases in West Bengal and Tripura into Dhaka to provide air cover for the operation. Landing zones and evacuation sites were identified in and around the capital for the air corridor.

All through December, Bangladesh's spy agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), which reports directly to Hasina, quietly went to work. It was headed by Major General Sheikh Mamun Khaled, whom Hasina had personally chosen. They tapped phone communications, smss and emails of suspects in the conspiracy. Social networking sites were monitored. A series of arrests was made from December-end to January.

Opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), who is anti-India by conviction and hates Hasina with a rare passion, alleged at a public rally in Chittagong that army officers were becoming victims of "sudden disappearance". The army's media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate (ISPR), warned Khaleda to refrain from making any statements. The army was worried that public discourse might soon include details of the impending coup.

The coup attempt began innocuously. Posts on a Facebook group, 'Soldiers Forum', instigated soldiers to work against the government. Major Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haq, a graduate of the military academy who was training at the Military Institute of Science and Technology, Dhaka, was identified as the mastermind. He used a mobile phone with a UK number to share details of the conspiracy with 11 other army officers. On his Facebook account, he bragged that "mid-level officers of Bangladesh Army are bringing changes soon". On January 8, the banned fanatical organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) distributed provocative leaflets based on his post.

Major Zia regularly updated his Facebook account with "information" on arrests of army officers by "anti-terrorism agents", including those of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). His messages spread to blogs and were even picked up by a pro-BNP newspaper, Amar Desh. The DGFI and other security agencies kept the suspected plotters under surveillance. They discovered that the likely date of the coup was January 10 or 11. One by one, the plotters were picked up and are now detained in military headquarters, Dhaka.

On January 19, the army unveiled the plot. In its first ever press conference, held at the Army Officers' Club in Dhaka, ISPR spokesperson Brigadier General Muhammad Masud Razzaq took questions, didn't reveal specifics, but talked about the threat to Hasina's "pro-secular and democratically elected government". Brigadier Razzaq claimed between 14 and 16 former and active mid-level radical Muslim officers were behind the conspiracy to topple the government and install an Islamist regime. Two retired officers, Lt Col Ehsan Yousuf and Major Zakir, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government and they "admitted their role in the plot". Major General Mohammad Kamruzzaman, commander of the Comilla-based 33rd Infantry Division, was removed from his command and detained in Dhaka. Another brigadier, Tariqul Alam, commander of 71st Brigade of 9th Division, and Major General Shabbir Ahmad, commander of the Rangpur-based 66 Division, are under surveillance. Eleven other officers from Dhaka and other cantonments across the country have been confined in the capital.

Bangladesh Army chief General Mohammad Mainul Islam says the major general and some religious bigots had planned to indoctrinate pious officers. "They had targeted the deeply religious officers, who they felt would be amenable because they were pious, to execute their conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected government," he says.

On January 21, Hasina said, "I would like to thank the Bangladesh Army. Had they not unearthed the conspiracy in time, a great disaster could have taken place. The army saved the patriotic forces and the country as well by throttling the conspiracy to topple the democratic government." She accused arch-rival Khaleda of plotting to overthrow her government. The BNP dismissed this as well as allegations that self-exiled BNP leader Tarique Rahman, Khaleda's son, was involved in the aborted coup attempt.

The Bangladesh Army says Major Zia, the alleged coup mastermind, evaded arrest. His whereabouts are unknown. Yet, it was the resurfacing of an underground Islamist organisation that caused concern. The Bangladesh Army linked the conspirators to the Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Tahrir, an international Sunni pan-Islamist political organisation, advocates an Islamic Caliphate governed by Shariah law. Founded in 1953 in Jerusalem, it has spread to more than 40 countries, and is also active in Pakistan.

The Hasina government had banned the Tahrir in October 2009. Agencies such as the Rapid Action Battalion, National Security Intelligence and Detective Branch repeatedly claimed they had succeeded in containing them. They based these claims on the detention of key figures such as Towfiq Elahi, a teacher of a prominent private university, and Dr Golam Haider Rasul, 45, who practises at Dhaka's United Hospital, besides hundreds of others. Tahrir leader Maulana Mamunur Rashid, principal of a Dhaka madrassa, remains a fugitive.

Nearly 500 Tahrir members were detained mostly for organising rallies and distributing leaflets. Police officers now admit their inability to curb the well-funded organisation merely through arrests. "It's tough because families of the detained activists get money from their global network," says Lt Col Ziaul Ahsan, director of the Intelligence Wing of the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion. Most of the detained militants released on bail rejoin the outfit. The outfit has resurfaced more aggressively after its ban.

Besides the men in uniform, the Hizb ut-Tahrir has spread its invisible tentacles among the social elite, government professionals, academics and politicians. "They have a new approach to radicalism, the cuckoo's eggs in the crow's nest (trying to covertly embed themselves in society)," says Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah, a political scientist in Dhaka University.

Since their 1975 putsch that killed Mujib, the Father of the Nation, the military in Bangladesh has overthrown the civilian government four times. The army has killed two elected presidents and coerced three other presidents into declaring military-backed emergency. The last coup was in January 2007 and since then, attempts have been made to keep the military in the barracks.

The Supreme Court has been a key force. A landmark judgment by a full bench headed by former chief justice Mohammad Tafazzul Islam on July 28, 2010, declared three military regimes between August 15, 1975, and February 1979 as illegal. The new constitution, adopted by Parliament in November 2011, has restored equality of religions. But as UK-based terror analyst Chris Blackburn says, "The recent coup plot shows that extremism in South Asia has many forms. There has always been a trend within the ranks of the military to push the importance of religion in binding a country together. There are certainly officers who see themselves as guardians of both state and religion. But I still think it is too early right now to speculate on Hizb ut-Tahrir's role in the attempted coup. They are an extremist group."

Hasina has been under threat since she swept to power in early 2009. More than 1,000 paramilitary border guards of Bangladesh Rifles, now renamed Border Guards Bangladesh, revolted against the military's hegemony over their institution. It was symptomatic of the unrest in the armed forces. India helped even then. Sources in the prime minister's office said that as soon as the mutiny broke out, India kept its special forces 50 Parachute Independent Brigade on standby to fly into Dhaka in case of an emergency. New Delhi's support for Hasina is clear. In her third stint as prime minister, Bangladesh has ceased to become a safe haven for militant groups operating in India.

The military has moved in swiftly to initiate a court of inquiry against the rogue officers. The military brass, meanwhile, reassured the president of its secular credentials and their support. "There is no room for religious zealots in the Bangladesh Army," army chief General Islam told a seminar in Dhaka a week after the botched coup. The civilian government can only hope that it is true.

First published in India Today, New Delhi, January 28, 2012

@ Copyright 2011 India Today Group

The Rise and Fall of One of the World's Worst-Performing Stock Markets

2012-02-06T10:02:00.000+06:00

Bangladeshi investors shout slogans as they protest in Dhaka in January 2012
Photo: Munir Uz Zaman / AFP / Getty Images

NEEL CHOWDHURY

Nobody in Hafizur Rahman's family asked too many questions when the money they sent home to Bangladesh doubled or even tripled within two to three months. "He was like a prince," says Mirza Golam Sabur of his brother-in-law. So when Sabur was told last May that his 55-year-old brother-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack, he was shocked. Shocking, too, was the discovery that the tens of thousands of dollars sent to Rahman by relatives in Europe and North America was largely gone. The funds that they planned to use to buy retirement homes for relatives in the southern port city of Khulna had disappeared in Bangladesh's volatile stock market.

Woeful tales like the Rahmans' are multiplying across Bangladesh as the country's benchmark stock index, which has dropped 55% since early 2011, continues to fall. Although Bangladesh has seen booms and busts before during its stock exchange's 58-year history, the steep losses suffered over the past 12 months by millions of small investors threaten to bring fresh economic and political turmoil to a long-suffering nation that seemed, at last, to be gaining ground.

Between 2006 and '11 Bangladesh's booming garment industry fueled average economic growth of 6.3%. In 2005, Goldman Sachs included Bangladesh among the "Next 11" rapidly emerging economies to succeed Brazil, Russia, India and China. J.P. Morgan followed suit in 2007, including Bangladesh in its "Frontier Five" markets. Today, though, the market's dramatic rise — and swift fall — seems like a cautionary tale for emerging-market investors oblivious to the perils of hasty banking deregulation and rapid capital inflows.

So what went wrong? The country's growth spurt was fueled by the garment industry, where some 2.5 million workers toiled for about $40 a month, a third of wages in southern China. Low costs helped Bangladesh become a hub for global apparel makers, including H&M and Li & Fung. In 1993, the value of Bangladesh's garment exports was under $2 billion, according to Stockholm-based Brummer & Partners, a large private-equity-and-hedge-fund company that invests in Bangladesh. By 2011, garment exports had risen sixfold to $17.9 billion.

Polo shirts and blue jeans were paired with another fast-growing export from Bangladesh: Bangladeshis. Some 5 million Bangladeshis work abroad, many as construction workers, mariners and restaurant owners in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Great Britain, and the $12 billion they sent home last year swelled Bangladesh's $100 billion economy with cash. Coupled with the earnings from garment exports, that cash flooded into more than three dozen banks across the country, many of which were newly licensed, small and unprofessionally managed. As inflation crept up and more banks entered the marketplace, the pressure to generate higher returns for depositors mounted. That, in turn, turned banks into stock-market players. The central bank allowed banks to invest a tenth of their total liabilities in the market. "This was considerably less restrictive than the international norm," says Ifty Islam, managing partner at Dhaka-based investment firm AT Capital.

As banks poured money into stocks, the market rocketed skyward. In 2010, the benchmark index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange climbed over 90%. Such heady gains fed a hunger for investing among small-time players, even among those who knew little about the stocks they were trading. According to AT Capital's Islam, retail brokerage accounts in Bangladesh jumped sevenfold from roughly half a million in 2007 to 3.5 million by 2010. "Many people didn't have any investment knowledge," says Sabur. "But the market was so bullish everyone was buying."

Unsurprisingly, the bubble soon burst. By the end of 2010, inflation had climbed past 11%, pushing up the price of staples. Alarmed, the central bank began tightening, in part by proposing stricter limits on banks investing in the market. That became the trigger of a punishing one-year-old market decline that's wiped out all the gains of 2010 and is now threatening to widen into a more serious economic and political crisis. As Europe's demand for garments slows and fewer Bangladeshis find work abroad, the country has begun to run a current account deficit. That is eroding the value of the Bangladeshi taka, which has dropped by roughly a fifth against the dollar over the past two years and is accelerating the market's slide. "It's going to get worse before it gets better," predicts Arjuna Mahendran, the Singapore-based head of investment strategy for HSBC Private Bank.

Worryingly, high food prices are stoking public anger against the government Sheikh Hasina. Over the past year, groups of disgruntled investors have been regularly gathering outside the stock exchange's Dhaka headquarters to burn tires and protest, venting their frustration with a regime they feel has not taken adequate steps to curb market speculation and protect small investors. Last April, a committee led by Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled, a respected former banker, submitted an official report to the government that alleged extensive market manipulation prior to the initial Jan. 2011 crash, ratcheting up tensions ahead of a general election to be called by mid-2013.

Decades of steady economic progress won't be necessarily unraveled by a market rout alone. Kiron Bose, chief investment officer of Brummer & Partners' Bangladesh-focused private equity fund, emphasizes that the stock market has not traditionally been a major source of capital for Bangladesh. Analysts say the country's larger banks are solvent enough to continue lending to companies and individuals, albeit at double-digit interest rates. "I still believe in the country's long-term story," echoes AT Capital's Islam, who points out, for example, to a report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which says if Bangladesh can upgrade its road and ports and Chinese manufacturing rages continue to rise, the country's garment exports could further double to surpass $40 billion over the next decade. Even so, to small investors like Sabur's late brother-in-law, hitching his fortunes to a roller-coaster market was a devastating ordeal.

First published in TIME magazine, February 02, 2012

Grave robbers shock relatives in Bangladesh

2012-02-01T23:58:00.001+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

Robbers stole 23 human skeletons from graveyards at a village in Gazipur, north of the Bangladesh capital, leaving scores of relatives in shock.

Zaher Ali was found crying beside his elder brother’s grave following the bizarre discovery. “My brother died nearly six months ago. Miscreants stole his skeleton from the grave,” was speaking to reporters in tears.

The relatives are in pain and agony that they would never be able to pay respect to their near and dear ones. Like other religions, graves are sacrilegious for the Muslims and desecration of a grave is attributed as a sin.

Umar Ali, chairman of the graveyard supervisory committee of the village Gojarichala said he found 23 graves were exhumed to the spot and the skeletons are missing.

The committee chairman said there are about 280-300 graves at the graveyard and grave robbers have stolen these skeletons in the last few days. He believes that the thieves robbed the skeletons in the darkness of the night.

Abdul Baten, police chief of Gazipur on Tuesday rushed to the place of occurrence after locals reported the heist. He said police has been deployed and will take necessary measures in this regard.

The rapacious thieves steal human skeletons for a lucrative underground market which is abroad. Nobody could however provide accurate information on the final destination of the bones.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow, is an award winning investigative reporter based in Bangladesh. He specializes on Islamic terrorism, forced migration, good governance, press freedom and elective democracy. Ending his life in exile from Canada he has recently returned home. He was expelled in 2004 for whistle-blowing of the safe sanctuary in Bangladesh, of the Jihadist leaders who fled during Anglo-US invasion Afghanistan. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

From Antarctica to Bangladesh: The Story of Rising Seas

2012-02-01T17:00:00.022+06:00

AL GORE

After crossing the legendary Drake Passage, we came in sight of the Antarctic continent. It is a majestic, otherworldly place. The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts northward toward South America, is lined with ice-covered mountains and surrounded by abundant wildlife in the sea. But even on this continent that looks and feels pristine, a troubling process is underway because of global warming.

The ice on land is melting at a faster rate and large ice sheets are moving toward the ocean more rapidly. As a result, sea levels are rising worldwide. Most of the world's ice is contained in Antarctica -- more than 90 percent. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which lies south of the Peninsula, contains enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by more than 20 feet. Part of the ice sheet, the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, is among the many in Antarctica that are shrinking at an accelerating rate. This has direct consequences for low-lying coastal and island communities all over the world -- and for their inland neighbors.

In analyzing the relationship between melting ice and sea level rise, it is important to distinguish between two kinds of ice: the ice on land and the ice floating on top of the sea. When floating ice melts, sea level is not affected, because its weight has already pushed the sea level upward.

But the melting of glaciers and ice sheets resting on land does increase sea level rise. So far, the melting of small mountain glaciers and portions of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland has been the main contributor to sea level rise from the loss of ice. (As the oceans warm up, their volume naturally expands, and this too has been a contributor to a small portion of the sea level rise that has occurred in the age of global warming).

Scientists aren't yet sure precisely how much sea levels will rise over the next century. What we do know is that sea level rise is occurring already, with real consequences for human beings who live near the coasts. In the world's largest port cities, 40 million people are now already at risk of severe coastal flooding. That number could well triple within the next half-century or so.

Even wealthier countries are not immune to the impacts. In the United States, for example, particularly vulnerable areas are: Miami Beach, the Chesapeake region, coastal Louisiana, and coastal Texas. In some of these areas, the land is sinking even as the oceans rise. This will have implications that extend right up to the steps of our nation's Capitol. A recent study found that sea level rise of only a tenth of a meter would lead to $2 billion in property damage and affect almost 68,000 people in Washington, D.C. In addition, the enhanced threat of storm surges was illustrated last year when tropical storm Irene led to warnings that the New York City subway system and tunnels into the city could be flooded.

But the most vulnerable regions lie in developing countries, where populations are still rising fast and there is little money to shore up infrastructure. The cities most threatened by sea level rise are places like Calcutta and Mumbai in India; Guangzhou, China; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. And of course, there are more than a few low-lying island nations -- like the Maldives -- that are already in imminent danger.

Then there is Bangladesh. A one-meter sea level rise -- which could happen as soon as 2050 according to some Antarctic specialists -- could result in between 22 and 35 million people in Bangladesh relocating from the areas in which they now live and work. Two-thirds of this nation is less than five meters above sea level. For the nation's 142 million people packed into a small space, climate change poses a nearly unimaginable challenge.

The threat of sea level rise is not simply flooding, but saltwater intrusion that hurts the production of rice, the country's staple crop. Increased damage to rice farmers could soon put 20 million farmers out of work and force them into crowded cities.

Here in Antarctica, it's easy to feel isolated from the rest of the world. But as I look at this exquisite continent buried deep under the ice, it's troubling to think about what will happen as this ice melts ever more rapidly.

First published in The Huffington Post, January 31, 2012

Al Gore is former Vice President of United States Al Gore is chairman of Current TV, an Emmy award winning, independently owned cable and satellite television non-fiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism. He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing.
He is chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a non-profit he founded to educate citizens in the U.S. and around the world about solutions to the climate crisis. He is a member of the board of directors of Apple, a senior adviser to Google, a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and is a Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Author of the bestsellers Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Earth in the Balance and An Inconvenient Truth and is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary. Al Gore is the co-winner, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.” He and his wife have four children and three grandchildren.

India plans war games with U.S, Russia Bangladesh

2012-02-01T08:17:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

INDIA ARMY will hold war games with top global powers, including United States, Russia, France, Bangladesh and Singapore to learn from India its experience of counter terrorism and urban warfare operations.

Indian Army will hold around 15 war exercises this year with friendly foreign countries, Indian private news channel NDTV reported on Sunday quoting army officials.

In its immediate neighbourhood, Indian Army will conduct these joint training exercises with Bangladesh and Singapore too. Earlier, India and Bangladesh had two limited scale war games in 2009 and 2001.

The war game will kick-off with Singapore army in March, when the two sides will field their mechanised forces in the training engagement.

The for anti-terrorism drills and urban warfare is going to be an important part of all of these war games, an officials said. The schedule with other countries will be finalized soon.

The army troopers will also engage the American mechanised forces in the deserts of Rajasthan in the exercise which will see the U.S. fielding its tanks there.

Earlier in 2009, the U.S. had participated in exercise with the Indian Army, when it had taken its Stryker infantry armoured vehicles outside of its operational area to a foreign land.

Saleem Samad, an Ashoka Fellow is an award winning investigative journalist based in Bangladesh. He specializes on Islamic terrorism, forced migration, good governance and elective democracy. He has recently returned from exile from Canada after return of democracy. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Pakistan textile industry relocating to Bangladesh

2012-02-01T00:00:00.001+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

PAKISTAN EXPORT oriented textile industry are relocating their business to Bangladesh for a slice of preferential trade agreements with United States and European Union as poor country.

Pakistan Textile Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin on Tuesday confirmed that the textile industry in Pakistan is gradually shifting to Bangladesh to seek more profit, while the industry leaders argue that there relocation was because of electricity and gas outages prevailing in Pakistan.

Bangladesh authority has given the Pakistan textile producers special area in export processing zones to enable to establish their business. Energy starved Bangladesh is also making all efforts to improve augmentation of power and gas supplies for its crucial export industries.

The industries located in the textile hub of southern Punjab in Pakistan had effected the jobs of 60,000 workers and nearly 200,000 families of indirect employments. The authorities nor the industry owners have any plan to compensate the job loss.

Shahabuddin, a senior politician of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party said that Bangladesh textile receives special privileges from E.U. and U.S. Both E.U. and U.S. are major market destination for textile companies. To increase their market share, the industry is shifting to Bangladesh, he said.

According to the minister, more than 40% of the textile industry and around 200,000 power looms have been shifted to Bangladesh in the last five years, causing employment problems.

Defending the electricity crisis, the senior politician said that it is not the only problem in Pakistan, other Asian countries are also facing this predicament. He claimed that electricity shortage would be minimized soon and power tariffs would be brought down according to the demand in the country, to encourage investment climate in Pakistan.

Despite protests, India, Bangladesh agrees to generate power

2012-01-31T18:02:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

IN MAJOR breakthrough India have agreed to help Bangladesh to generate coal-fired power station and pens another deal to generate additional power by private companies.

The state owned Power Development Board (PDB) on Sunday penned an agreement with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) of India to build a 1,320-megawatt coal-fired power plant at Bagerhat, near the southern coast.

The environmentalists and senior citizens have protested against the construction of coal-fired power plant, which they argue would jeopardize the fragile mangrove forest. It is feared to drown at the time of sea-level rise caused from global warming, environment advocate Rizwana Hasan lamented.

However environmentalists say the proposed site for the power plant is too close to world heritage Sundarbans. They argue that discharge from the power plant, like sulphur dioxide and fly ash, will have disastrous consequences for the fauna and flora of the mangrove swamps.

Environmentalists and senior citizens have protested against construction of the coal-fired plant, which they argue would jeopardize a fragile mangrove forest. It is feared to drown at the time of sea-level rise caused from global warming, lamented environment advocate Rizwana Hasan in a joint statement with senior citizens.

ASM Alamgir Kabir, chairman of PDB, and Arup Roy Choudhury, chairman and managing director of the New Delhi-based company, signed the deal to install two units of the plant with 660 MW generation capacity each.

The PDB chief said the plant would use supercritical pressure technology that offers high efficiency and less coal consumption in order to keep the emission level as low as possible.

Bangladesh energy starved nation of 150 million has gradually developed hundreds of export industries, which has caused hiccups due to acute power shortage. The traditional natural gas based power generation faced setback due to gas shortage.

The country's present power production is slightly more than 5,000 MW against a daily demand of 7,000 MW.

The deal would cost $1.5 billion and it will start supplying electricity to the national grid by 2016. The coal imported from India, Australian Indonesia and South Africa will be shipped to its location more than 12 miles north of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, the plant will be the country's largest power plant.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh and India are working together to draw the contours of the proposed South Asia Power Grid. India and Bangladesh were preparing the draft concept papers for the proposed regional power trading regime.

Bangladesh unveils cyber watchdog to check crimes

2012-01-27T10:48:00.001+06:00

Campaign: Free Internet

SALEEM SAMAD

BANGLADESH IN the wake of last week use of social media by key conspirators botched Islamic coup, the authority unveiled on Friday a new cyber watchdog.

Bangladesh Computer Security Incident Response Team (BD-CSIPT) began its operation with an objective to secure the country's information and communication traffic.

The abortive coup by Islamic radicals planned to overthrow the democratically elected pro-secular government led by Shiekh Hasina. The conspirators used social medial like Facebook and blogs to ventilate their Islamic agenda with their disgruntled collaborators in the army and used smart phones to stay connected.

Maj. Gen. (retd.) Zia Ahmed, chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission told state-run BSS news agency that the BD-CSIRT is mainly assigned to identify the sites and persons or institutions who will engage in operating harmful activities against the state, society, political and religious beliefs using the mobile phone, website and different social networking sites.

Apart from monitoring and control of cyber-crimes, it will take punitive measures against the offenders, and in some cases it will take action directly.

The cyber watchdog will also ensure the security of value-added services like e-banking, e-ticketing and similar others, which require strong security system.

Ahmed Swapan, a media activist advocating for privacy rights in a mixed reaction, regarding the objectives of the government’s decision. He said that in the name of cyber surveillance, it would be detrimental and if the authority exercise cyber-censorship, unnecessary interference and harassment of the users.

Politics in Bangladesh: Turbulent house

2012-01-27T10:21:00.000+06:00

Rare: Army spokesperson brief the press

The army claims to have thwarted a coup

IT WAS, says Gowher Rizvi, a close adviser to Bangladesh’s prime minister, “very quickly nipped in the bud”. He was talking of a coup plot foiled by the army. The schemers—16 were involved, and some are on the run—included disgruntled mid-ranking officers, retired officers, and others abroad. He claims investigators found a list of prominent people to be assassinated, and another list of generals expected to be “potential partners”.

Bangladesh has faced dozens of coups, failed or not, in its 40 years. But for an army spokesman to give details of one, on January 19th, was unusual. He named the plotters and blamed them for inducing others to revolt (by passing on provocative e-mails and posting on Facebook). The conspirators, he said, shared extreme religious beliefs.

The official view is that dogged opponents of Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s elected regime must now be rooted out, especially from the army. These include Islamists—many supposedly recruited to the army in the early 2000s—and those who oppose ongoing war-crimes trials (over killings during the secession war of 1971).

Mr Rizvi says the government’s legitimacy is assured and reports “absolute calm” in Dhaka, the capital. The army’s discipline looks admirable, he says, encouraged by a popular desire (in contrast to a few years ago) for men in uniform not to meddle in politics.

The equanimity is not shared by all. Many normally garrulous Bangladeshi commentators this week shunned requests to talk. A wide presumption exists that phones are bugged. Speak to one of the men accused of leading the plot, who is in hiding abroad, and a murky picture emerges. Ishraq Ahmed concedes that the arrested men are his friends, but denies religious extremism (indeed, he complains that the authorities have seized his painstakingly collected cellar of wines, Armagnacs and malt whiskies). He says the government “can show no troop movements, no guns, anything” to prove the plot.

Mr Ahmed is a former high-ranking officer from a liberal family. He says he fought “with great responsibility” for Bangladesh’s independence. Now he and other nationalists are merely trying to oppose what they see as a coup-by-stealth by Sheikh Hasina, who is letting Bangladesh be “turned into a Bantustan” run by India.

He makes many claims. Among the more plausible and specific is that spies from India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW) operate in the country. He claims, too, that for two years RAW has had an office within the headquarters of Bangladeshi Intelligence in Dhaka and a “direct submarine cable for communications” back to India. He claims that Indians conduct electronic surveillance in the country and kidnap suspects from Bangladeshi cities. Indian prodding, he adds, encourages the government to crack down on “anyone with beards. Any practising Muslim is vilified and portrayed as Taliban.”

Mr Rizvi denies all this, saying he is “totally unaware of any Indian presence in Bangladesh”. Yet he accepts that many are uneasy about Bangladesh’s rapprochement with India under Sheikh Hasina. Bangladesh has also met Indian demands to root out Islamists’ training camps, and he concedes that some individuals—though not Bangladeshis—are taken over the border for prosecution in India.

Fractiousness will grow ahead of a general election in 2013. Returned to power three years ago, Sheikh Hasina has seen her popularity slump from 81% to 39%, according to an opinion poll published by the Daily Star on January 8th. More telling, 74% say they oppose her constitutional meddling last year, which changed how elections are organised. That may bode ill for stability. Mughal kings struggled to rule the territory over four centuries ago, lamenting that Bengal was “a house of turbulence”. Little has changed.

First published in The Economist magazine, January 28 2012

Torture Video Sparks India-Bangladesh Tension

2012-01-26T20:48:00.002+06:00

Deadly border features outrages by forces on both sides

MAHER SATTAR

Tensions have been mounting at the India-Bangladesh border following the discovery of a video showing Indian border guards torturing a Bangladeshi cattle smuggler.

Shot on a mobile phone camera, the video contains graphic (NSFW) footage of several men wearing the uniforms of India’s Border Security Force (BSF) stripping a Bangladeshi man in his 20s completely naked and then tying him to a bamboo pole in a manner resembling a crucifix. The guards then proceed to take turns beating him for several minutes with sticks as the man writhes in the mud screaming loudly for his mother.

The video is believed to have been filmed by the soldiers themselves, apparently intending to circulate it as a warning to smugglers. Eventually someone put the footage up on Youtube, where it quickly sparked a media sensation and outrage in Bangladesh.

The man being tortured in the video has been tracked down. Habibur Rahman, 22, says he passed out after the beating, and woke up abandoned in the middle of a mustard field.

According an account of Habibur’s account which appeared in Banglades’s leading English-language daily The Daily Star, the Indian border guards caught him around 11pm on Dec. 9, 2011, during what would be the last of many illegal border crossings he had done throughout the year to smuggle cattle from India into Bangladesh. Once he was in their custody, he says the guards demanded Rs1,000 (US$20), a torchlight, and a mobile phone.

When Habibur said he did not have any of those things in his possession, the guards began to hit him with punches and kicks. Then they took him back to their camp, and in the crisp, foggy morning that followed, tortured him for over an hour.

Then, just one day after the video was discovered, a Bangladeshi border guard was kidnapped by Indian smugglers after he allegedly crossed into Indian territory and killed one of them. The Bangladeshi guard is now in BSF custody, and is expected to be released shortly.

Conflict between India and Pakistan dominates international and regional headlines, but the India-Bangladesh border has been a deadlier place in recent years.

The majority of those killed are cattle rustlers. Selling cows for slaughter is illegal in India, where they are considered holy, but it is legal to sell smuggled Indian cows in Bangladesh.

One consequence of this is that Indian media refers to those involved as cattle smugglers, while the Bangladeshi media call them cattle traders and ‘businessmen.’

A more tragic consequence has been the deaths of more than 1,000 Bangladeshis and Indians at the hands of India’s frequently trigger-happy border guards over the past decade, according to Human Rights Watch. The BSF itself admits to killing hundreds of people of both nationalities, although they say they fire in self-defense when attacked by smugglers.

Trading cattle between India and Bangladesh is a lucrative and dangerous business, one that tempts thousands of young men like Habibur who live in impoverished conditions near the border.

Villagers can double their monthly incomes in one night, earning as much as $70 per trip. Cows in Bangladesh sell for three to four times as much as they do in India. Simple economics means that even the threat of death or torture will not stop the smugglers.

Neither will the world’s longest barbed wire fence. Over 4,000 km long, construction on the 3m high fence began in 2006, inspired by Israel’s West Bank barrier. BSF outposts have also increased in frequency during that period, but the trafficking of cattle continues.

“Most of the beatings happen on both sides of the border, and it happens because of extortion,” says Mizanur Rahman, the chairperson of Bangladesh’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

An October 2011 expose by Indian investigative magazine Tehelka revealed the mechanics of the trade. There are the ghatiyals, who own the cows and are buying and selling them. Then there are the rakhals, who actually transport the cows across the border. Finally, there are the dalals, or brokers, who arrange the bribing of Indian and Bangladeshi border guards.

Things can go wrong. Bribing the guards may be “bypassed” in order for the smugglers to make a bigger profit. A dishonest dalal might pocket the entire sum given to him instead of bribing the border guards. Or one outpost might be bribed, but the smugglers might encounter guards from another who could open fire.

Rakhals like Habibur get the smallest cut of the profits, but when something goes wrong, they pay the biggest price.

Change in the air?

After sustained pressure from human rights watchdogs and numerous, India agreed in 2011 to bring a halt to the shooting. In July of that year, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced that Indian border guards would no longer shoot Bangladeshi civilians.

“Our stance on border killings is very clear,” says Bangladesh’s NHRC chief Mizanur Rahman.

“In very strong and unqualified terms we have protested the killings. On certain cases we have directly written to the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC India) to investigate. I personally met with [NHRC India Chairperson] Balkrishnan in Delhi and asked him to take this up. And now BSF has said border guards will not use any lethal weapons. So we can claim some credit for this.”

Despite the no-shooting decree, violence on the border remains a problem. Shootings still occur, albeit more rarely, but there has been a spike in reports of stonings, drownings, and beatings.

On the face of it, the video of Habibur being tortured implies that nothing has really changed. But for the first time, eight BSF guards were actually suspended for their role in the beating. Also for the first time, the India-Bangladesh border became headline news in Delhi as well as Dhaka, with the torture video featuring in every major Indian news channel.

The past few months has seen a notable increase in media savvy among South Asia’s security forces, who in previous years have showed scant regard for the opinions of civil society.

The rapprochement that led to the no-shooting decree in July began because of media outrage over the killing of 15 year old Felani Khatun, an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant in India who was shot by BSF guards while climbing the barbed wire fence.

India’s BSF is not the only acronym that human rights groups complain about in the region. Bangladesh’s own Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite force comprised of the best of the country’s army and navy, have allegations of extrajudicial killings to deal with as well.

Since the force was formed in 2004 RAB has acknowledged killing at least 622 people inside Bangladesh with impunity – it claims that most of the deaths are a result of “crossfire.” Human Rights Watch says many of RAB’s victims as well as those who survive RAB custody bear marks of torture. US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks described the force as a “death squad,” which was widely reported in international media.

But in recent months, RAB too has taken tentative steps towards an image makeover. They have had much publicized human rights training provided by the US government recently. And RAB press conferences take place regularly now, highly staged events with somewhat theatrical speeches and confrontational dialogue between the press and RAB officers on one side and apprehended criminals on the other. If this wooing of the media leads to improvements in accountability, then few will complain.

First appeared in Asia Sentinel, Thursday, 26 January 2012

Maher Sattar is a South Asian journalist based in Bangkok. You can follow his work or reach him at mahersattar.wordpress.com or via twitter at twitter.com/mahersattar

Bangladesh: Failed Coup

2012-01-26T12:00:00.000+06:00

AJIT KUMAR SINGH

Bangladesh has taken firm steps to quell violent Islamist extremist groupings operating on and from its soil, but it is clear that these groups have not abandoned their ideology or their objectives, and that they retain significant capacities, though pressure by intelligence and enforcement agencies has pushed them underground. The introduction of the 15th Amendment Bill of the Constitution on June 30,2011, which gives Islam the status of the 'State Religion', may well expand the spaces for radical Islamist politics in the country, legitimizing extremist formations and radical political parties such as the JeI. These are the very forces that have repeatedly jeopardized stability and development in Bangladesh in the past, and the state will have to remain extraordinarily vigilant if they are not to return to prominence in the proximate future.
HuJI-B: Potent Threat, SAIR, August 1, 2011

HuT's radical ideology, the propagation of hatred against 'infidels' and 'deviants', and the flirtation with violence and terrorism hold significant potential dangers within the far from stable South Asian environment.
HuT: Extremist Spectre, SAIR, October 24, 2011

In nearly three years of almost consistently positive news from Bangladesh, the revelation that a coup plot had been foiled by Dhaka has sent shock waves through the region, and underlined the dangers of residual Islamist extremism within the country.

On January 19, 2012, it was disclosed that the Bangladesh Army had discovered and neutralized a plot by some serving and retired Army officers, at the instigation of some Bangladeshi civilians at home and abroad, capitalizing on the sentiments of the Islamist extremists. The conspiracy was intended to overthrow the Awami League (AL) led civilian Government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.

Revealing the details of the plot, Brigadier General Muhammad Mashud Razzaq, Director of the Personnel Services Directorate, and Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Sazzad Siddique, acting Judge Advocate General of the Army, in a Press briefing on January 19, 2012, circulated a statement saying that “around 14 to 16 mid-level officers were believed to have been involved in the bid”, which came to notice when Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Ehsan Yusuf on December 13, 2011, instigated a serving Major (not named) to join him in executing his plan. The Major revealed the plot through the chain of command. Two retired officers, Ehsan Yusuf and Major Zakir, were arrested. Another plotter, a serving Major, Syed Mohammad Ziaul Haque alias Major Zia, is on the run. Meanwhile, a Court of Inquiry was constituted on December 28, 2011, to unearth further information about the plot.

Though it will take time to unravel all the facts, the revelation that at least two plotters have already admitted their links with the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT, ‘Party of Liberation’) has once again brought focus on Islamist fundamentalist groups that continue to maintain their strong presence in the country’s military establishment. Indeed, on January 8, 2012, HuT had circulated provocative leaflets, based on the fugitive Major Zia's internet message, throughout the country. Zia had sent out two e-mails containing imaginary and highly controversial contents, styled “Mid-level Officers of Bangladesh Army are Bringing down Changes Soon (sic)”. The Bangladesh Security Forces (SFs) on January 20, 2012, arrested another five HuT cadres in connection with the failed coup attempt.

This is the second attempt military revolt by hardliners under the Hasina Government since it came to power after the elections of December 2008. On February 25 and 26, 2009, shortly after the Government took charge, members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), since renamed the Bangladesh Border Guards, staged a mutiny against their commanding officers, killing more than 74 persons, including 52 officers, SF personnel and six civilians, including the Director General of the BDR and his wife. The mutineers, backed by the Islamists, wanted to create a rift between the Hasina Government and the military, in order to overthrow the civilian Government. They failed in the face of an effective and concerted response by the military top brass.

Interestingly, Sajeeb Wazed, an Information Technology specialist, political analyst and advisor to Sheikh Hasina, along with Carl Ciovacco, in an article titled 'Stemming the rise of Islamic Extremism in Bangladesh' published in the Harvard International Review on November 19, 2008, had underlined the ‘astronomical growth’ of Islamists in the military, claiming that madrassas (religious seminaries) supplied nearly 35 per cent of Army recruits. Indeed, the seminaries in Bangladesh have emerged as the principal medium for fundamentalists to propagate radical ideologies.

The radicalization process has been rooted in Bangladeshi politics since the bloody coup of August 15, 1975, which killed the country’s founding father, Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Sheikh Hasina’s father). The coup leaders used Islam as an instrument to legitimize and secure their power. Succeeding regimes have collaborated with radical and fundamentalist Islamic political organizations. Indeed, the principal political parties, in their efforts to oust the military from power, maintained tactical relationships with fundamentalist political organizations, giving them unbridled power, which radicalised society and the polity to the core. The AL was guilty of such alliances in the past, though, in its current tenure, it has acted with determination and consistency against Islamist extremist elements in the country.

On April 2009, the AL Government blacklisted 12 extremist organisations – Harkat-ul Jihad Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Shahadat-e-al-Hiqma (SAH), Hizbut Touhid, Islami Samaj, Ulema Anjuman al Baiyinaat, HuT, Islamic Democratic Party, Touhid Trust, Tamir-ud-Deen, Alla’r Dal. Four of these 12 groups, including HuJI, SAH, JMJB and JMB, had already been banned during the earlier Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JeI) coalition regime.

Later, on March 25, 2010, the AL Government set up a special tribunal for the trial of "war criminals" of Liberation War of 1971. Five of the Jamaat's top leaders, including its 'chief' Motiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid, were jailed in this connection. Subsequently, on January 11, 2012, former JeI 'chief' Gholam Azam was sent to jail by the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT), which, on January 9, 2012, had accepted formal charges against Azam and present 'chief' Nizami for their alleged involvement in war crimes.

Further, on June 27, 2011, 666 members of the 24th Border Guards Battalion were tried before the BDR Tribunal, a military court. All but nine were found guilty and sentenced to terms ranging from four months to seven years in prison.

In June 2011, the Government passed the Constitution (15th Amendment) Bill, 2011, restoring secularism as a ‘fundamental pillar’ of the Bangladesh Constitution.

An extremist backlash was almost inevitable.

Meanwhile, on January 19, 2012, Prime Minister Hasina accused the "desperate" opposition of "plotting" against her Government. Criticizing the BNP, she declared, "They are desperate to spoil the democratic process. They are threatening the Government to protect the war criminals." It is widely reported that the BNP is vehemently opposing the trial of war criminals to support its ally, JeI, and some of its own leaders. Notably, a former BNP Minister Abdul Alim and a BNP lawmaker Salahuddin Qader Chowdhury, have been accused of war crimes.

Though there is no conclusive report of direct BNP involvement in the attempted coup, some developments raise a finger of suspicion. Indeed, Abdul Hye Sikder (a former leader of the cultural wing of BNP) wrote a provocative article in Amar Desh, a vernacular daily, instigating the anti-Government sentiment of the Islamist forces within and outside the Bangladesh Armed forces. Apparently referring to BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia's remarks at a Chittagong rally on January 9, 2012, that 'even army personnel are being abducted', Brigadier Razzaq, while disclosing details of the coup plot, hinted at possible BNP involvement, stating, "Even a large political party sang along imaginary, misleading and propagandist news to bring allegations, which created unexpected and provocative debate among the Army and conscious citizens."

HuT has been gradually gaining grounds in Bangladesh, and is currently regarded as the strongest anti-state organisation in Bangladesh. Another such group, Hizbut Touhid, established in 1994 at Korotia village in the Tangail District, and led by Bayezid Khan Panni alias Selim Panni, who claims himself to be the Imam-uz-Zaman [Leader of the Age], has also extended its base. The Hizbut Touhid, which aspires to establish the ‘world leadership’ of the Imam-uz-Zaman, declares itself against democracy and democratic institutions, which it regards as ‘rules of evil’.

According to SATP data, the SFs have arrested 213 HuT cadres since March 10, 2000, (till January 22, 2012), out of which 96 have been arrested since the Hasina Government came to power in January 2009. 107 Hizbut Touhid cadres have also been arrested by the current Hasina regime. Nevertheless, these groups, in alliance with the JeI, continue to constitute a major threat for the Hasina Government, though the dangers have, in some measure, been minimised by sustained SF action.

These dangers have not, however, seized to exist, and even a group like the JMB, which was decimated in the aftermath of the serial bombings of August 2005, is reported to be exerting visible efforts to engineer a revival. Quoting Abu Talha Mohammad Fahim aka Bashar, a son of detained JMB chief Saidur Rahman, officials of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) disclosed that the reorganisation attempts under the directives of JMB’s acting 'chief' Sohel Mahfuz, were being intensified.

The failed coup is a reminder that Islamist Forces in the country, while they have weakened, have not been entirely contained. Despite the tremendous gains of the past three years, the threat of an Islamist resurgence, of coup attempts, of terrorism and of engineered political violence, will persist as long as these groupings continue to have a base in the country.

First appeared in SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW, Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 10, No. 29, January 23, 2012

Ajit Kumar Singh, a Research Fellow with Institute for Conflict Management, India

Bangladesh security agency smash coup conspiracy

2012-01-20T00:21:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

BANGLADESH SECURITY agencies have unearthed a conspiracy to overthrow the anti-Islamist government of Shiekh Hasina.

In a rare press conference hurriedly organized by the Bangladesh Army’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) at it’s headquarter in the capital Dhaka on Thursday, said that they do not rule out any possibility of international links and foreign involvement in the foiled coup plot.

The statement read out by Brigadier General Muhammad Masud Razzaq claimed that some 14 – 16 former and in-service radical Muslim mid-level officers were involved in the conspiracy to topple a democratic government and install a hardliner Islamist regime.

Brig. Gen. Razzaq said retired Lieutenant Colonel Ehsan Yusuf and Major Zakir were placed under arrest on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government and that they "admitted their role in the plot".

However, the mastermind of the coup Major Syed Mohammad Ziaul Huq (a.k.a. Major Zia) remains a fugitive. The renegade officer has links to banned Islamist terror network Hizb ut-Tahrir, the spokesperson claimed.

The conspiracy came into surface on Dec. 26 and intelligence and security agencies kept the suspects of the coup plotters under surveillance and found that the fugitive officer maintained contacts with other disgruntled army officers by mobile phones, emails and social media Facebook.

Finally on January 10 – 11, Maj, Zia contacted the collaborators through mobile phones. The renegades wanted to know details of the execution of coup d’état and the suspected mastermind repeatedly urged to execute the plan, which flopped.

The spokesperson did not deny of any foreign country or international network’s involvement in the conspiracy. He said nothing can be dismissed, but quickly said to wait for the inquiry report.

Brig. Gen. Razzaq said after the probe, tough measures would be taken against the renegades. The suspects are being hunted and asked them to surrender.

Hasina’s father, Shiekh Mujibur Rahman, the pro-independence hero was assassinated in a military putsch in 1975, when her family members were also killed. Meanwhile, the security of the prime minister has been beefed up.

The news broke at the time when the pro-independence government after 40 years have began the trial of Islamist leaders for crime against humanity during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Hours after the army had gone public about a bid to topple the Sheikh Hasina led coalition government, a senior minister Syed Ashraful Islam and general secretary of ruling Awami League said public representatives must continue to call the shots and that the rule of law must be upheld.

Ban on bureaucrats rocks bourse in Bangladesh

2012-01-18T22:31:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

THOUSANDS OF SMALL investors took to the streets after the bourse dipped once again to 4695.57 points, losing 168.72 points or 3.46 percent, at close of trading on Wednesday.

As the index tumbled inside, on the outside the Dhaka Stock Exchange building protesting retail stocks investors blocked traffic in the Motijheel, commercial hub of the city. Riot police with bullet-proof vest and tear-gas shells stood guard to protect the agitators becoming violent, said senior police officer Krishna Roy.

Share prices dropped sharply on Wednesday even after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman clarified that no decision was taken in Monday's cabinet meeting to stop public servants from investing in the capital market.

Hours after issuing a notification asking the bureaucrats to refrain from making investment in the capital market, the government on Wednesday withdrew the order.

The raucous began over the government’s official notification which bans the bureaucrats from investing in the capital market. The notification says that public servants cannot make any speculative investment or engage in a business that creates a conflict of interest.

Fearing massive fall in share prices following the banning of bureaucrats from investing their money in the capital market, the authorities on Tuesday based on the media report on “banning government employees from investing their money in the capital market”.

At a press briefing Musharraf M Hussain, chief executive officer of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, said they suspended the trading to protect interests of both the capital market and the capital investors.

Rights group protest abduction, secret killings in Bangladesh

2012-01-17T22:51:00.001+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS groups are seeking answers from the Bangladesh authorities for ongoing abductions, disappearances and secret killings.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in their report released last week expressed alarm of increasing numbers of professionals including lawyers, university students, small businessmen and pro-opposition political activists are being abducted by plain clothed armed men from the streets, business offices and homes. Often the victims’ bodies with their hands tied or blindfolded are dumped on lonely roadsides.

Government continuously denied any knowledge of any abductions or disappearances. The failure of the authorities to probe by independent investigators into complaints of abductions, disappearances and secret killings, AHRC laments.

National rights organizations Odhikar, in its annual human rights report found alarming rise of disappearances, deaths in custody and attacks on journalists in 2011. Another rights group Ain-O-Salish Kendra, did not hesitate to express similar concern of disappearances and secret killings.

Top ranking officials of law enforcing and security forces instead blamed the “criminal gangs” or the “opposition political parties” for the abductions and secret killings.

An independent newspaper Daily Star in its Tuesday editorial, fears that the government’s denial may breed impunity. In spite of the government's denial, the newspaper writes that some of the cases are plainly indefensible. If deterrent measures are not taken, the government may be condoning a dangerous culture of impunity, completely opposed to the values of democracy and civil liberties.

Bangladesh, as a member of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations and also a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has an obligation to protect its own citizens in the country.

The international rights group AHRC advised that the government should halt the law-enforcing agencies arrests of suspects without a warrants, which will generate a believe among general people that the police and other law enforcing agencies does not arrest or abduct in plainclothes.

Analysis - Bangladesh’s War Crimes Trials

2012-01-17T12:00:00.000+06:00

RAJEEV SHARMA

IF THE ongoing war crimes trials in Bangladesh are carried out in an objective and transparent manner, the new generation of Bangladeshis will be made aware of the extreme brutalities and distress inflicted on their forefathers by the occupying Pakistani forces and their local collaborators and the heavy cost paid by them during the Liberation war in 1971. The new generation will also then come to know of the gruesome consequences of the abuse of religion to justify heinous crimes. Success in holding trial of war crimes and crimes against humanity will be achieved when exploitation of religion in the country’s power-play is brought to an end, an idea that appears almost Utopian in the present political scenario of the country.

For probing war crimes and crimes against humanity committed forty years ago by the occupation forces of Pakistan and their local collaborators comprising mostly Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) leaders and Muslim Leaguers, the investigators will have to rely mainly on news reports, statements of the accused published in the newspapers of the time, official records and books written by eminent personalities during the period. Citing from the submissions of Nuremberg Tribunal’s Chief Prosecutor Robert H Jackson, Hannan Khan, one of the prosecutors of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) said ‘There is no count in the indictment that cannot be proved by media reports, books and records’.

The JEI mouthpiece ‘Dainik Sangram’ bears ample testimony to the war crimes committed by senior JEI leaders during the liberation war in 1971. The provocative statements of senior JEI leaders published in the ‘Sangram’ had instigated large scale killings, arson, looting and rape in the name of religion. In the so-called civilian government formed by the Pak military junta in East Pakistan in 1971 with Dr A.M. Malik as the Governor, Abbas Ali Khan, former JEI chief (now dead) and Maulana Abul Kalam Mohammad Yusuf, the present JEI Naib-e-Amir were made ministers. According to a report carried in the daily ‘Sangram’ former JEI Amir Golam Azam in his speech at a reception in honour of the JEI ministers at Hotel Empire in Dhaka said, ‘Pakistan is the house of Islam for all Muslims of the world. Therefore, JEI workers and sympathizers do not find any justification for being alive if Pakistan had to disintegrate’.

The present JEI chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, who was the chief of Islami Chhatra Sangha, student wing of JEI in 1971, wrote “Sacred land Pakistan is the home of Allah for establishing His rule” in an article published in the ‘Sangram’. Nizami who subsequently succeeded Golam Azam as JEI chief, labeled the freedom fighters as ‘Khodadrohi’ (rebels against Allah). In the article he also wrote ‘The cowards (freedom fighters) who are against the almighty Allah have attacked the holy land of Allah (Pakistan)’. The daily ‘Sangram’ in its issue of September 15, 1971 quoted Nizami as saying: ‘Every true Muslim should assume the role of dedicated soldier of Islam and kill those who are hatching conspiracy against Pakistan, as conspiracy against Pakistan is conspiracy against Allah’.

Further, ‘Sangram’ archive reveals that Razakar (the term has become synonymous with brutalities and evokes panic in the mind of people even now) was formed by former JEI Secretary General Maulana Abul Kalam Mohammad Yusuf. Al Badr, Al Shams and Razakar which were formed to counter and kill the freedom fighters comprised mostly the JEI and its student organization Islami Chhatra Sangha activists. When these pro-Pak / anti-liberation forces realized that their defeat was imminent they picked up almost all the leading intellectuals and professionals of the erstwhile East Pakistan on December 14, 1971, lined them up and killed them in brush fire with the help of occupying Pak forces. This day is the blackest day in the history of the country and observed as Martyred Intellectuals Day.

Apart from the reports and articles published in the JEI mouthpiece ‘Sangram’, there are plenty of other documents that can serve as evidence of involvement of senior JEI leaders and other anti-liberation/pro-Pak forces in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Much vital information about the role played by these elements are available in ‘Secret Fortnightly Intelligence Reports’ prepared by Home Ministry of the erstwhile East Pakistan Government for the central Martial Law administration. These reports reveal that Golam Azam had urged his followers to crush the liberation war branding freedom fighters as ‘rebels, secessionists and enemies of Islam as well as Pakistan’. One of these fortnightly reports, to be specific, the report covering first half of August, 1971, reveals that at a meeting organized by JEI on August 4, 1971 in Khulna, Golam Azam called upon the people to ‘crush and annihilate the rebels (freedom fighters) in order to establish Islamic rule on the basis of Quran and Sunnah’.

These fortnightly reports disclose that on April 4, 1971, Golam Azam met Gen Tikka Khan and assured him of his party’s full support in protecting territorial integrity of Pakistan at any cost and described the liberation war as ‘naked Indian interference and infiltration’. Azam promised all-out help to the ‘patriotic armed forces’ of Pakistan to foil India’s ‘mischievous intentions’. During the nine month long liberation war, the JEI played an active role in organizing ‘Peace Committee’ for rendering ‘assistance’ to the occupation forces of Pakistan in resisting the activities of the freedom fighters whom Azam described as ‘miscreants’. The role of Peace Committee and its wings – Al Badar, Razakar and Al Shams – in perpetrating inhuman torture and killing of freedom fighters, innocent people and intellectuals in the erstwhile East Pakistan has been well-documented in various studies.

According to fortnightly reports of the East Pakistan government, Azam was directly involved in ordering the systematic genocide. One such report covering the first half of September 1971 mentioned that addressing the workers at a party meeting in Dhaka on September 3, 1971, Golam Azam said, ‘We need to restore normalcy in the country by physically eliminating the rebels and anti-social elements’ (freedom fighters).

All this is crucial evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971.

First published in South Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 4867, January 16, 2012

Islamist rampage in Bangladesh capital protesting jailing of war crimes suspect

2012-01-13T06:20:00.003+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

Islamists on January 12 in Bangladesh rampage in the capital’s downtown and clashed with riot police protesting imprisonment of the high profile war crimes suspect and also demanded abolition of war crimes trial.

A day after the Jamaat-e-Islami linchpin Ghulam Azam was send behind bars, the activist’s organized series of street protests in the capital and elsewhere in the upcountry. The International Crimes Tribunal, set up to try war crimes suspects has rejected Azam’s bail plea on Wednesday.

Jamaat-e-Islami linchpin Ghulam Azam has been indicted on 62 counts of crimes against humanity during the war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

The Islamist activists clashed with riot police in bullet-proof jackets in the city center. The irate activists vandalized a police vehicle, attacked police officers and snatched police weapons.

Police to quell the violence lobbed tear-gas shells and baton charged the activists. Several arrests were made.

Police officer Anwar Hossain told journalists that the situation is under control in the evening and confirmed that the pistol loaded with bullets has not been recovered.

The Islamist party a strategic partner of main opposition has demanded to scrap the war crimes trial, which they say is witch-hunting the opposition leaders who are arch political rivals of the ruling party. The government always denied such accusation of the opposition and explained that it was longstanding electoral promise to try war criminals committed 40 years ago.

Bangladesh tribunal reject bail of high profile war crimes suspect, send to prison

2012-01-11T19:53:00.000+06:00

Photo: Activists demand trial of war crimes of 1971 war of independence

SALEEM SAMAD

BANGLADESH HIGH profile crimes suspect has been send to prison on Wednesday after the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in capital Dhaka rejected the bail petition.

Amidst tight security, the prime suspect was driven in a prison van to central prison in old city.

Within hours after the arrest of former Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami chief Ghulam Azam from the court premise, the ailing suspect was send to the prison cell of a specialized government hospital for treatment in the afternoon.

Police source could not confirm if Azam had any health-related complaints.

Earlier in the day, Azam who has been indicted on 62 counts appeared before the tribunal in compliance with its order on Monday last for hearing of his bail petition, which was rejected.

His counsel Barrister Abdur Razzaq said in his petition that the bail plea was made solely on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, that his client was almost 90 and suffered from a number of old-age ailments.

The tribunal set Feb.15 for hearing of charges against him for his alleged involvement in crime against humanity during the bloody war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

The court room was filled to the brim as the Jamaat guru's hearing began amid palpable tension.

Chief prosecutor Ghulam Arieff Tipoo said this man headed the Jamaat-e-Islami, "which mobilized its forces from one corner of the country to another."

Azam has been blamed for being the linchpin for raising Al-Badar, fanatic Islamic militants responsible for kidnap, disappearance and execution of pro-independence professionals and intellectuals, mostly teachers, doctors, journalists and engineers.

The pro-independence government set up the ICT to try crimes against humanity of dreaded Islamic militants from among his party’s youth members, the lead prosecutor said. The militants on the behest of the marauding Pakistan army caused genocide of an estimated 3 millions, rape of 420 thousand women and the atrocities forced 10 million to flee to neighboring India.

Bangladesh army takes offence of opposition leader’s remark

2012-01-10T23:37:00.000+06:00

SALEEM SAMAD

THE BANGLADESH armed force has taken serious offence of main opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia’s statement at a public rally in Chittagong in the south.

The military press wing Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) on Tuesday in strongly guarded termed the remarks of the opposition leader regarding army official were ‘provocative, irresponsible, false and unexpected’.

On Monday, Zia said at a rally that the government was eliminating opposition leaders and activists not only through repression but also through abductions and secret killings. "Not only this, even army personnel are being abducted," the former prime minister had alleged.

It also said the nation does not expect such a provocative speech from an opposition leader.

The reaction issued to the press, interprets her remarks as an attempt to tarnish the image of the armed forces in a bid to create anarchy.

The ISPR press release also said the army is run through a specific military law. “Measure is taken as per the law if it is violated,” it added. There is no scope of spreading speculation here, it added.

On the other hand, the prime minister Shiekh Hasina on Tuesday scoffed off opposition leader’s call to step aside and hold an election. She instead urged the opposition leader to join parliament, which her party is boycotting for more than two years.