OUT OF THE BOX The stench of death

Ayesha Kabir

What terror filled Tonu’s heart as she gasped for her last breath? Were Mahmuda’s last thoughts filled with anxiety for her children as the merciless bullet penetrated her body and ended her life?
People are falling like flies, one after the other, killed in acts of unabated brutality. The names of Tonu and Mahmuda Akhter spring to the mind. There are the ill-fated atheist bloggers. The members of religious minorities. LGBT activists. Then there are those persons killed in the recent violent union parishad elections, names forgotten, reduced to mere numbers. They might not have made the headlines as individuals, but their deaths are no less a poignant tragedy to their families and loved ones. And to the nation as a whole. There is a stench of death in the air.
Much has been written about these poor souls and much more will be written. Sadly, no eulogies will bring them back to this world. They have passed on to the other side, perhaps to a safer place were machetes, cross-firing and the flames of hatred can no longer touch them
But what about those who remain? The teeming millions who open the pages of the newspapers every day, switch on their TV, only to be hit with shocking stories of blood, gore and death, what about them? Will they remain in fear of danger lurking around the corner? Whose name is written on the next bullet? Where will the next machete strike?
It all may sound a little dramatic. After all, people are going ahead with their daily lives, eating, sleeping, working and doing what people do. But the tension is there.
International quarters have expressed grave concern at the situation, particularly at the attacks on the bloggers who expressed the anti-religious sentiments in all religiosity. There was an outraged reaction to the killing of the gay activists, of the religious minority. The angered indignation is certainly expected. These are blatant violations of human rights, spreading fear of growing religious fanaticism.
But what about the large number of people killed during the recent local government elections in Bangladesh? They were not killed by religious extremists. They did not deviate from the mainstream. Not all of them were even involved in politics. They were hapless, helpless victims of the union parishad elections, “collateral” damage, bereft of name and face. Who remembers them? The opposition may use them as statistics to bolster their arsenal against the government. Human rights organisations may use the numbers to fill the pages of their annual reports. But what about their children, their mothers, their fathers, wives, husbands, brothers or sister who feel the pain, the emptiness which no amount of tears can wash away? Justice would help.
Perhaps the anger and sorrow in the heart of Professor Avijit Roy would abate somewhat had the killers of his son, blogger Avijit Roy, been caught and punished. Perhaps Tonu’s family would be able to grieve for their girl in peace, if an authentic autopsy report would reveal the mystery of her death. The hundreds of loved ones of those killed in the union parishad elections would find some solace if the perpetrators of the violence were tried and sentenced.
Unfortunately, this has not been done. The tears still fall, the anger remains unabated, and the grief remains raw, as the killers remain out of reach of the law.
It is not just the individuals who suffer the trauma of these tragic events. The entire nation pays the price. The vision of an independent Bangladesh, where development, democracy, freedom of expression, human rights and positive values would flourish, is rapidly being eclipsed by a cloud of doom. We might point to the killings in Orlando, in Paris and other parts of the developed world and say that none is immune to this. But why should we take heart from such gruesome examples?
The common people of Bangladesh, the garments workers, the entrepreneurs, the industrialists, the farmers, the academics, the innovators, the youth, have taken Bangladesh to the world arena with pride. Our cricketers have won us fame, our readymade garment industry has taken Bangladesh’s name to almost every big chain store in the world, our micro-credit model is being replicated all over the world, thanks to its Nobel Laureate innovator and his brainchild Grameen Bank, Sir Fazle Hasan Abed has made BRAC a household name in the world of international NGOs and development, our physicists are breaking into new and ground-breaking discoveries in the most sophisticated laboratories of the world… the list goes on. Yet all this hard work to win a name for Bangladesh is being rapidly undone by the recent violence and series of killings.
Just as we had managed to erase the image of Bangladesh as a land of floods and famine, and stand proud as a people of determination and development, we now are being seen as a country were killings take place almost every other day and the killers remain at large. Our hands are stained with blood.
There is only one way to rid the nation of this ignominy. This has been repeated time and again, but it can’t be said enough: the killers must be identified and caught. The masterminds behind the killers must be brought to justice. No matter whom they are, no matter of what political affiliation, they must be tried and shown no mercy. Otherwise, no matter how much we wash our hands, the bloodstains will remain.

Source: Prothom Alo