The murder of Milki by Tarek and the killing of Tarek in a RAB ‘crossfire’ has shaken up everyone. Tarek was probably guilty but so is RAB and by extension the entire government. Extrajudicial killing is the worst insult anyone can make to a people who are told they live in a legal regime. It’s a slap on the face of the nation showing that people really do not matter to the people in power. Most people are saying that Tarek was killed in order to save the skin of other AL leaders who are part of the protection racket to which so many ruling party leaders belong.
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The first murder took place in front of a shopping centre and the event was caught in a CCTV camera. The fact that both the killer and the killed belonged to the same party made the incident ugly looking but obviously pointed to the cause behind the killing which is chandabaji business. It showed how political parties have become a network of criminals and how the authorities actually patronise them and let them have the run of the city. Gulshan-Badda is a rich collection area and obviously you can’t run this business without godfathers higher up in the party. How high? But the killing by RAB — everyone believes this — has put a different spin to the issue. It points to the fact that the chandabaj and the law enforcement agencies have now become part of the same structure. Can it get worse than this?
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It seems that the AL feels so safe that it can afford to ’sanction’ such killings so close to the elections. It knows that the sheep that votes for it regularly will not be affected by such killings. But it’s the most extreme form of law and order violation and it’s committed by the state. It’s in these moments that we understand how the state actually looks and why the system itself hasn’t or doesn’t work. In fact it can’t work. Not when the principal killer of citizens is the law enforcing agency itself.
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In the backdrop of such killings, how can there be a discussion on improving the law and order situation? The state if it is to survive must do so within the ambit of law. When that code or understanding is broken, the state breaks down. The same force that produced Milki and Tarek organised their death. The state has become as common and low as a common criminal.
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There can be no political gain for the AL in this killing and even the AL leaders such as Suranjit Sengupta has said it will help those who are against the party in the next elections. People don’t like killers particularly once in police custody and the AL by ’sanctioning’ this killing doesn’t at all come out looking good. Even the cancellation of Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration as a political party which should have otherwise drawn serious attention hasn’t happened. If the AL thought that the ‘Jamaat ban’ news will wipe away the incident from the public mind, they are wrong. People do condemn them privately — not publicly out of fear — but they condemn it nevertheless. It can only mean that the big fishes involved in the racketeering are very very big and have to be protected even at the cost of ’sanctioning’ such killings at such a delicate time
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One also wonders why the young generation never raises their voice against this. In most other countries the victims and the protesters both include young people but while we have many political activists belonging to both the parties, they rarely speak out against such incidents. It is because when time comes both parties indulge in extrajudicial killings. And the conscientious “third force” may be keen to hang the killers of 1971 but for them the decline of the state and the destruction of a legal regime doesn’t matter much. For many, the substance of the state is of little meaning.
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Murder seems to be a running motif of our national politics. We are either killing murderers or protecting them. This has begun after 1972 and continues unabated till today. With every regime, this gets worse and the political structure has morphed into a mafia like construct whose primary role is to keep the extortion going. When in a society politics becomes a source of crime and provides impunity to the criminal, it in effect says that the purpose of the state is to ensure the process of money making and make sure that no one interferes with that. And if need be the state itself intervenes to ensure that it goes on.
Have we become a criminal state?
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Md. A Hossain is a HR activist teaching at a private university.
Source: bdnews24
The author asks, “Have we become a criminal state”, the answer is, yes we have. This is because these acts either enjoy the passive endorsement or suffer moral numbness of our partisan civil societies and media – these two institutions regarded in most civilized societies as pillars of conscious have instead become citadels of immorality in Bangladesh .
Over the years, we have witnessed that what excites most our so-called civil society and urban youth is killing. In recent times we have witnessed we become very unhappy when judgments against a certain type of alleged offender do not include hanging and rally for hanging with candle light vigil, the latter a reserve for peace rallies used to protest against killing but in Bangladesh we do just the opposite. We light candles to demand killing. Indeed, we have given candle light vigil a new meaning;
I fully empathize with the author’s frustration and indeed his disgust. Disgust because the entire political institution has become utterly corrupt and dangerously criminal and with government change the executive branch of the government, the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies simply take turn to perpetuate and defend crime. Disgust also because the so-called society is nauseatingly mute and criminally partisan.
Like us all the author is also frustrated because we do not see any way out. We are also frustrated because the so-called international community (read India and US and its western cohorts) are disturbingly silent. For the reasons of self-seeking geopolitics the international community is busy forming alliance with these criminals and this do little to stem the slimy slide the country is currently experiencing, rather their indifference is doing just the opposite. Their silence and in some instances their covert support to these criminals encourage them to commit crimes with impunity.
Without some sort of a miracle rescue is not in sight.
Sounds pessimistic, perhaps. But it is also said that accumulated pessimism produces ammunition for change and it also act as moral mortar against tyranny!
Is Bangladeshi society admits the use of rare and unique permission of power gun (to Police or RAB) in any extra-judicial killing in the name of maintaining law and order? On-line comments shows a good percentage admits. There are also no practice to answer the responsibility of use of lethal power by Police or RAB. That was not happened in any incidence before, rather we witnessed Home Minister and colleagues comment in favor of Police or RAB’s actions. So, where is our country’s standard of practice, legal permission statute and Bangladeshi people’s psychological standard?