Clampdown on Odhikar: Madness or desperation?

 

The situation in Bangladesh has reached the proverbial point of no return and the world is stunned by the desperation of a political regime that is getting ever more draconian by the day.

Coinciding with the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) initiation of an investigation into the alleged commission of crimes against humanity by the country’s security forces in February, March and May, a global uproar has been stirred following the police raid on August 11 at the office of an independent human rights group, Odikar, the seizure of computers, laptops and archive materials, and, the arrest of the outfit’s secretary, Adilur Rahman Khan.

This is sheer madness.

Already the EU, the USA and all the major human rights watchdogs across the world have expressed condemnation for the police swoop at the Odikar compound and the arrest of its secretary.

“All data, pictures and archive files relating to the massacres in late February, early March and on May 5 and 6 have been confiscated by police,” said a researcher working for the much famed independent watchdog which receives contributions for its noble works from a number of foreign governments and international organizations.

Insisting on anonymity, the researcher said, “When our officials went to Gulshan Police Station to file a complaint against Adilur’s arrest and the seizure of evidence from our head office, police refused to accept it. Adilur was deprived of his rights. The law enforcers didn’t file any case before arresting him and had no warrant to make the arrest or to conduct the seizure.”

Adilur was charged on August 11 under Section 57 (1) and (2) of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act for allegedly publishing false information on website while police obtained from the court a mandate to put him on a 5- day- remand for quizzing, which was revised later as quizzing on jail gate. One of his family members claimed the former Deputy Attorney General was tortured in custody soon after his arrest.

In Bangladesh, quizzing by police while on remand means torture in custody. Amidst chorus of uproar by rights groups within and outside the country protesting the crackdown on a human rights watchdog, media reports claimed the attack on Odikar followed the group’s publication on June 10 of its latest report on the alleged crime of genocide in which it claimed that 61 people died in the early hours of May 6 when a 10,000 strong force flushed out thousands of Hefajat activists from Dhaka’s Shapla Chattar where the group staged an overnight sit – in; demanding punishment of bloggers insulting the Prophet of Islam in the internet. The government claims that the report is false.

That claim sounds hollow given the slew of demands from national and international rights group to launch an independent investigation into the alleged massacre and the government’s stone-walled response that nobody was killed during the late-night raid in May on the Hefajat congregation. Hence the desperate bids by rights groups and investigative journalists to unearth the truth behind the reports that hundreds of Islamists may have been slaughtered during that brutal crackdown, and the filing of a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Hefajat declared officially that over 2000 of its activists are still missing. In early July, head of the ICC’s information and evidence unit of the office of the prosecutors, M.P. Dilon, confirmed having received a complaint relating to the alleged genocide in Dhaka on May 5-6, and, on February 28 and March 1, 2013. Dilon said the ICC would give consideration to the complaint “in accordance with the provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

Mooted by the Washington based law office of Martin F. McMahon & Associates on behalf of Counsel for Human Rights and Development for Bangladesh, and, Bangladeshi Americans in Greater Washington DC, the complaint was indexed in the ICC’s registry as OTP-CR-214/13, according to the lawyers for the complainants.

Adilur and the Odikar are the latest victims of a persistent campaign of persecution by the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime which has been accused since 2009 of indulging in a killing spree and abetting the murder of 57 military officers during the February 25-26, 2009 mutiny in the Bangladesh Rifle (BDR) forces, and, of executing thousands of other extrajudicial deaths, kidnapping and illegitimate incarcerations of opposition activists and dissenters.

In April, acting editor of the Bengali language daily Amar Desh, Mahmudur Rahman, was arrested and charged for sedition and unlawful publication of a conversation that led to the resignation of the lead judge of the country’s controversial International War Crimes Tribunal. The Amar Desh was also accused of inciting violence by publishing the contents of the blogs in which the Prophet of Islam was denigrated by some government-sponsored youths seeking death sentences to the accused facing prosecutions in war crimes tribunal for alleged crimes against humanity during the country’s 1971 war of liberation against the Pakistani forces.

These high-profile arrests signal the arrival of some sort of dictatorship in the country as the nation’s political crisis hits its climax in the run up to a scheduled general election in late December or early January 2014; for which no acceptable modality has yet been finalized. The air is thick with speculations that the military will seize power once again if the haggling over the election modality lingers, as it did in 2007.

Since its independence from Pakistan in 1971, Bangladesh has had two of its Presidents killed by the military, one military dictator jailed for corruption, and, two Prime Ministers, including the incumbent one, arrested and indicted for corruption and misuse of power.

No wonder the latest incidents have begun to ring alarm bells among a group of bureaucrats aligned with the regime that are getting increasingly fearful of retribution once the regime changes. Insisting on anonymity, one of them said: “Adilur’s arrest and the raid on Odikar office aimed at destroying the evidence of genocide which the group has painstakingly gathered and was about to handover to the ICC investigators.”

That seems credible as the report of 61 deaths on that fateful night does not even go near to what happened to thousands of Islamists who’re reportedly still unaccounted for since the May 5-6 onslaughts on the Hefajat congregation.

The Economist magazine of London reported on May 11 that “What happened in Dhaka and beyond in the early hours of May 6 looks like a massacre.” Citing Dhaka-based European diplomats the Economist reported, “The European diplomats say as many as 50 people were killed in the capital as security forces cracked down on members of an extreme Islamist group, Hefajat-e-Islam. Many more were killed elsewhere.”

From the beginning, the Odikar has been the most diligent in unearthing the truth of this bloodbath. Soon after the May 5-6 massacre, the watchdog reported that “Some hundreds of people died during a “killing spree” by a force of 10,000 made up of police, paramilitaries and armed men from the ruling Awami League.” It said “Bodies were strewn about the streets of Dhaka’s commercial district. Deadly clashes took place elsewhere, such as at Narayanganj, south of the capital, where 20 people were reported killed.”

The Odikar report added, “Just what happened remains murky. Before opening fire in Dhaka, police cut the power supply in the city’s commercial area. The idea seems to have been to flush out tens of thousands of often violent demonstrators, mostly young students, who had flocked in from madrassas (religious seminaries) in rural Bangladesh.”

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), an independent rights watchdog, summed up the massacre in its initial report on May 6 that read: “News reports from Bangladesh allege that a series of attacks on demonstrators have taken place, at around 3 am today, May 6, 2013. The extent of the injuries and death is difficult to be ascertained at the moment. The Daily Star, a Dhaka newspaper, gave the figure of deaths as 5. However, several internet reports have mentioned that the number of deaths could be as high as 2,500 or more. Pictures of dead bodies have also been distributed over the internet. Major news channels in Bangladesh have been silenced. Two private television channels that were showing live pictures of the attacks upon the demonstrators were immediately closed down. All forms of public gatherings, rallies and protests have been prohibited until the midnight of May 6.”

If actions are purveyors of intents, there is no reason to believe that the government was not involved in crimes against humanity after the disconnection of electricity on the night of the May massacre; instant closure of two TV channels broadcasting the onslaught live; arrest of Mahmudur Rahman and Adilur Rahman Khan; all of whom were involved in exposing the truth of a heinous crime committed in cold blood.

Besides, as more evidence of atrocities came to the surface and the complaint in the ICC started to make an impact, the desperation of the government multiplied since late July.

Following the publication of an article on May 29 by ruling party MP Golam Moula Roni that had exhorted the government to explain to the nation the situation of a captive Hefajat leader, Junaid Babunogori, who has had his leg chopped off and was facing imminent death due to torture in custody, Roni became the target of police and ruling party thugs. He too was arrested on July 23 and charged for beating journalists.

With fire now swirling around its own backyard, the government of Sheikh Hasina must change course or risk getting thrown into the gutter of history with one of the most deplorable records of human rights abuses (globalreview.ca).

Source: Weekly Holiday