2nd “Operation Searchlight” in Dhaka: Is Hasina in the twilight of her demise?

Bangladesh is now passing a great crisis in her political arena. Violence is spreading on the run all over the land and the miscreants are at large with state-patronage. The scenario sounds as though the country were a place secure ab initio for the evildoers and a gaol for the righteous. The public offices and even academia are seriously politicized by the government with intent to perpetuate its power. Democracy and good governance have been severely questioned over the current regime. Human rights have been infringed and human rights activists as well as journos have also been harassed to an unprecedented extent. The situation reached to such abysmal state that even the civilians feel insecure inside their homes and the pedestrians plus commuters doubt if they will be back safe to their loved ones at the fall of dusk. The jails are crammed with thousands of innocent men, women and children and still awaiting many more whereto justice is not usually meant to be done. People are crying out in injustice but justice is very costly here to approach. Now the question glares as to what the last episode of this dirty game is; a game that claims countless innocent lives, kills mutual respect, mutual trust and tolerance and gives rise to a societal order wherein people live scared of suspicious arrest and enforced disappearance and of being killed in broad daylight by the armed cops. The answer is not that easy to be passed!!!

The Bangladesh government, mainly headed by the nasty Awami Party, has been exposing its deadly autocratic attitude and unethical stand both in national as well as international arenas since it has acceded to power in 2009. It has always shown ultra-rated hostility towards people’s demands and their democratic demos and protests. A strong and effective “Opposition” is a must for the sustainability of a true democracy but this totalitarian regime throttled its political opponents by locking them up, lodging false and fabricated charges against them and wantonly opening fire at their protests and gatherings. As a result, since last year to date, hundreds of thousands of people inclusive of political big shots as well as ordinary mortals have been killed, injured, tortured and even crippled for life by the personnel of the law enforcing agencies. Incidents of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearance allegedly by the law enforcing agency personnel are still on the rise which has already created a black horizon in the sky of country’s criminal justice system.

Most recently, Hefajat-e-Islam, a non-political religious outfit set out to ensure punishment of the anti-religious bloggers and online activists for their blasphemous words and actions, staged its scheduled “Dhaka Siege & Sit-in” program on last 5th May 2013 urging the government to meet its 13-point demand announced earlier. These blasphemous offenders were indeed behind the ill-debated “Shahbagh Protest”. Since the break of dawn on that day, a sum total of about 3 to 4 million Hefajat men, as a whole, blocked the entrances to Dhaka city and they took, as per the governmental consent, to the streets round the “Shapla Square” at Motijheel in Dhaka at around 3:00 pm. But as soon as Hefajat-e-Islam began its gathering and sit-in therein, armed cops and RAB personnel started to shoot at the participants indiscriminately. Soon, the hub of Dhaka city turned into a battlefield and Hefajat men were turning into ‘corpses’ one after another but, despite all these, they didn’t flee the scene; nor did they lose heart. They declared to continue their sit-in indefinitely. However, on 6th May at 3:00 am at midnight, the locale was blacked out by switching streetlights off, two TV channels on stream (namely, Diganta TV and Islamic TV) were cut off and made go off the air as they dare to air true news about governmental injustice, and all the journos were forcibly made leave the locale by the government official dudes and pro-party thugs. Then, all on a sudden, an integrated band of cops, BGB and RAB personnel began to open fire wantonly at the sit-in participants to take over the reins of the locale whereby over 5 hundred people died, thousands of people got injured and shot and about 2 thousand more went traceless. The death toll is still counting and gradually becoming higher.

Video Footage links of the attack:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=127457774117069
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=127464680783045

Most of the corpses were reportedly hidden and transported to some remoter places by trucks by the law enforcement agencies to escape public wrath and international condemnation. It is no better than the brutal attack carried out on the dark night of 25th March 1971 by the Pakistani Forces though, however, the only difference is that the perpetrators of 25th March were ‘outsiders’ while those of 6th May are ‘insiders’(!).

Now the pivotal query is how long this dirty game will last for. Social insecurity and violations of fundamental human rights were, we know, some common connotations in Bangladesh during the liberation war of 1971 as the Pakistani Army together with their accomplices and collaborators used to commit heinous acts of abduction, secret killing, mass murder, forced disappearance and so forth to suppress our countrymen. After independence, the surviving people hoped to have a breath of fresh air under the heaven of a newly born sovereign country and live the rest of their lives in peace and tranquility. But their hope did not correspond to their living at its best. The state has a huge responsibility to secure the lives of its citizens because the concept of the ‘statehood’ has been evolved for the welfare of the people. Under the administration of a nation state, people are supposed to feel better safe and secured with their fundamental rights, property, honor and dignity. But things started changing since the very beginning of our journey with the Awami regime. The unconstitutional journey, paving the way for undemocratic set up within the state jurisdiction, was set out in the country in 1975 with the fourth amendment to the Constitution transforming it beyond any resemblance with the original. The Constitution, as the supreme law of the Republic, guaranteed fundamental rights for every citizen of the state while the then government repealed, through the cited amendment, the enforcement of those fundamental rights and introduced an ‘autocratic’ system of only one political party (BAKSAL) in the state blindfolding the media. This is why that statesman was toppled by an army coup d’etat and subsequently martial law administrators could shake the country several times. Today, after 42 years since we achieved independence, we feel, to the same extent as before, afraid of being abducted or picked up by the plain clothed personnel of our own law enforcing agencies and subsequently going missing or being killed, or getting detained in custody for an indefinite period of time without trial or any formal charge and falling victim to custodial death or simply being shot dead by the cops while protesting against misdeeds of the government.
We know that dictators and autocrats don’t survive sustainably and must collapse in a heap, today or tomorrow, without fail. Sheikh Hasina, the woman in charge of Bangladesh, is really not stronger than Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or Gaddafi of Libya. It is also a proven fact of “psychology” that the protesting minds are too difficult to soothe and they are factually irresistible in nature. If Hasina daydreams to hang on power by suppressing her opposing quarters, she is sure to undergo a deadliest nightmare no different from that Gaddafi or Mubarak experienced. Fie, fie on the human brutes!! Sincere hatred for you boors!!!

Source: CNN