Such long journeys of silence and forgiveness

Bangladesh is now being imagined outside, it has been externalized, and there is no longer the trickle-down of hope.

Afsan Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi liberation war researcher, columnist and journalist.

"You pray therefore you are"

Two journalists from the British Channel 4, Zaiba Malik and Bruno Sorrentino, along with producer Ruchira Gupta, came to Bangladesh in early November to produce a documentary on what they have said variously was the political situation, issue of identities, and other topics. However, their original visa application said they wanted to find out why a country that had secularism as one of its constitutional pillars had moved so far from its institutional ideal and become a sanctuary for Islamic extremists. They were denied visas twice by the government at the London embassy but managed to get tourist visas from the Bangladesh embassy in Italy. Once in Bangladesh, they hired a number of people to act as assistants and interpreters. Saleem Samad, a freelance journalist, professional 'fixer' for foreign media and representative of Reporter Sans Frontiers, was their point man.

While in Bangladesh, they went about shooting without bothering to hide their identity, although foreign journalists are not allowed into the country except on a special visa. Entering the country under false pretext constitutes an offence; the same law is in force in India and Pakistan. The focus of the filming team was on the rise of the 'Islamist trend', something being reported extensively by the Western and the Indian media. After shooting in various parts of Bangladesh, Malik and Sorrentino moved towards Jessore. Gupta had flown out earlier. Probably underestimating the tracking ability of the Bangladesh police, the two tried to cross over to India at the Benapole border. They were arrested along with Pricilla Raj, an NGO activist who has written extensively on development issues. This was 25 November.

Saleem Samad went into hiding but a phone call to his brother was traced and he was picked up from his hiding place and remanded by the police. According to evidence given by Raj, she was tortured and a confession was forced out of her, which she retracted in court. Samad too was reportedly tortured in custody.

Due to pressure from the Western world, Malik and Sorrentino were released on 11 December. They gave an undertaking that they would not say anything derogatory about Bangladesh and also dissociated themselves from the public information campaign carried out on their behalf internationally by Ruchira Gupta. In jail, they were treated well and put into 'division' or a privileged section. Samad and Raj, charged with sedition, were kept with the local inmates.

Raj's bail application was rejected by the Magistrate's Court, but she was granted bail by the High Court, although it took another four days before she was released on 22 December. Since the principal two accused had already left the country, it seemed patently unjust that the local journalists continued to be held in custody. Saleem Samad was also granted bail on the same grounds but on 24 December, before the order could reach the jail, he was handed a month's detention under the Special Powers Act by the government.

Meanwhile, most of Bangladesh's top criminals have taken shelter in Calcutta, where some were arrested and reported by the Indian media to be Al Qaeda activists. This was later denied and the criminals were let go. Bangladesh has demanded they be handed over; they have prices – Taka 50,000 to one lakh – on their heads. The Indian media has generally been accusing Bangladesh as a haven for anti-Indian terrorists and Al Qaeda operatives, a charge the Dhaka government vociferously denies.

The current dispensation in Bangladesh is an alliance of four right wing parties: the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a fringe Islamist party and the breakaway faction of another party. The JI is in fact a United States ally, the typical Islamist US ally which fights 'commies'. In 1971, with Pakistani army support, it spawned the two groups of Al Badr and Al Shams, which killed a large number of people, including intellectuals, in late December 1971.

When the Channel 4 journalists were arrested, a controversial law and order restoration campaign was on in Bangladesh. It still is, with the army leading the show. Many people welcomed the crackdown as the situation in the country had reached extreme levels of distress with political thugs having near total control of public life. Since the army crackdown, the law and order situation has improved significantly, but human rights abuse has escalated tremendously. Almost 30 people have died in custody or in hospitals following interrogation by the military. Amnesty International (AI), has severely criticised the move and its chief Irene Khan was in Dhaka in late December where she attended a seminar organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) where the BIISS had a birthday party for her much to her surprise, we are told.

Meanwhile, the arrests of Awami League (AL) supporters and activists continue. The well-known iconoclast and writer Shariyar Kabir and author and columnist Prof Muntasir Mamun are now behind bars. They were granted bail only to be detained under the Public Safety Act which was passed, ironically, by the AL when it was in power to silence dissidents. Justice Habibur Rahman, retired chief justice, littérateur and grammarian, jurist and chief advisor to the president of the Neutral Caretaker Government under which national elections are held has written a poem on the recent military crackdown which was carried by The Daily Star. While most people are happy, some are not but too scared to speak out, and only a few have voiced protest.

Somebody calculates the time it takes the release order to travel from the court to the jailer's office. The magistrate has to inform the court that a bail has been granted in the sedition case. He has to call the jail and say so, just the paper will not do. Why? Arrests and releases have to be confirmed… made sure.

You have to be official so you exist… the phone doesn't work he says.  It keeps being cut off he says. Have you no sense of… unsaid words.. "this is the third day after being granted bail but Pricilla is still inside in post-electric shock state".. she's a toast… yap..yap..yap. "I have screamed like a mad woman at the officials for delaying the release", the woman says on the phone… she has taken on the task of getting Raj released along with a few others… an assorted bunch of her friends from assorted lives… Such a long journey… she has been rewarded by nasty pieces in the establishment media… such a strange journey… I do not care if they arrest me. Travelogues on staying alive.. not safety.. not risks.. just being oneself one didn't know one was… you look different today.. Scared?… past that traffic light… hello.. hello.. Pricilla is free on bail.. get the copy moving.. come on… I need a smoke.. Christ man, it's counting time.

We walk hand in hand with torture and its hand is warmer than our own. You tortured man? you tortured someone.. ha..ha..ahhh… love to hear the bones break.. the muscles jump in unexpected fright as electric impulses hit them.. like.. like custom-made thunder bolts.. raining down from the remanded skies.. this is parampara.. haven't we done it to all before.. get real, torture is part of investigation.. this is police culture. Explanations have no remorse, not even for the burn marks that are painted like mehendi on bridal skin… No no she is single… want to hear a dirty joke about her. A drunken man weeps on the phone.. haven't met Saleem bhai in years.. they will get his knees.. they will get his knees… Liquor drowns the eyes that watch the past fly by in distant newsrooms in faded memories… are you blind man.. we gonna get ya… Saleem sat bleeding in a waiting room in the jail… the person who saw him is too scared to report… QED.

Saleem Samad is granted bail but it takes four days to push the order from the court to the jail… slow motion justice.. justice delayed is a slow motion journey… but the state moves swiftly and a detention order is signed before the family can hurry the papers through… the bail hangs in mid-air like a torn trouser hanging from ropes and flapping in the wind… Saleem can't make the journey home.. such a long journey…

Travelogue.. travelogue.. it's all about journeys… Shariyar Kabir and Muntasir Mamun, two AL-leaning intellectuals are moved from Dhaka to Rangpur to Comilla to nowhere to somewhere as lawyers and family members watch the map to find out… such reluctant explorers and their nameless diaries.. bail orders can't keep up with jail move orders.. this winter is no different than the other ones… three dead and two have gone nuts from cold.. this is cold.. cold as flesh.. thanda ghosth…

They too are accused of having been in touch… encouraged the Channel 4 crew to come to Dhaka to film fundamentalism… bombs go off a day after Eid in Mymensingh killing two dozen and injuring more… rumours of links rush faster than bomb blasts…

You Bingos are always writing poems, even protest is written in poems… Justice Habibur Rahman, the eminence grise of Bangla society sends a poem to The Daily Star…

Death in a custody

Death in a custody
Wherever it may be, and
In custody of whomsoever it may be
Is a parody
Of the man's right to life.
Hands tied in the back
Eyes covered with a sack
Is a parody
Of the man's right to liberty,
An arrested is entitled to
Till he is accused and found guilty.
The interrogator's heart is made of stone
That of the accused is the exact clone
Of an ordinary human heart
A man gets a heart condition
Soon after he is arrested.
But to keep going
He may not need a doctor.
He may suffer the violence
Of His Eminence the Inquisitor
Or of His Highness the Interrogator.
He badly, however, needs a lawyer
Who may advise him to keep silence.
An interrogator is deaf.

He was the chief justice and then headed the caretaker government steering it through the troubled waters of a near coup attempt… a poet… a Bangla… grammarian… historian… turning to poems in English to protest arrest without order… investigation without legal cover… custody without jurisdiction… death without explanation.

Birthday balloons

Happy birthday to you.. happy birthday to you.. happy birthday dear Irene.. happy birthday to you… Irene Khan, Director General of Amnesty International while attending a seminar on human rights at the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies.. BIISS.. they celebrate her birthday on the premises where she is discussing human rights… Surprise.. surprise… oh, so unexpected… something rich and strange as officers of the official crest observe the birthday of Amnesty's chief cutting a cake taking a few minutes off from the rigours of discussing human rights in a country abusing it… what did she wish for as she blew the candles in the wind?

Such a long journey from the days when men disappeared from bus stops and the courts were told they never existed. Mothers are liars too. Nobody gave birth to so and so. So, they don't exist. Even criminals are concerned. Who are we? Yesterday I belonged to the party in power. Before that I was in the other party in power. And before that to another but now am hiding in Calcutta. The Indian media says I am Al Qaeda. Is it the Indian media or Bangladesh politics or both? I can't go home?

A lovely fashion model's body is found under a bridge… thanda ghosth… She was married to one and had a kid in tow, sleeping with another… some say more… who was member of the parliament who supposedly made a blue flick with himself in the stellar role… till the last report came in, almost every star, starlet, hero, producer, make up man, hanger-on, aspirant singer..dancer..lover… has been interrogated but not Ovee, the once gifted student moonlighting as the leading mastan of Dhaka University… later hounded, arrested, released.. contested in the polls, became an MP and then under the wings of a fragment which slowly cracked into shards… "he aspired to be in the shoes of a mafia don in the film world"… a magazine splashes pics from the porno.. a man's back.. a woman lying without the knowledge of the electronic gaze that has captured her lust without shame… sold in Dhaka's sleaze market at decent prices… Only he can't be caught.. no remand for the big boy… it is only middle-aged academics who are so easy to find… teachers parade and protest… middle-aged protest for a middle-aged man…

I am cobbling together a radio series on a distant and half-forgotten history… of 1971 when people hoped of better times… I realise how terrifyingly trickle-down is this thing called hope… more than the words that spring across rooms… "you still not arrested yet… shame..shame"… somebody bangs down the phone.. you have no standards… yes there are no standards even in jails.. this is increasingly becoming the only equal space.. when you are locked up…

In 32 years, since it all began something very deep has gone wrong and we don't know what… just as nobody can really say what went wrong in Africa and dust powered winds blew across freshly baked plains made out of homesteads…

Official history has been reduced to the memories of two leaders only… both martyred in internal wars and their families continue to clash in ancient rituals of remembrances and contemporary memories of hostility…

Not only is history being stolen in strange episodes of forgetfulness, new and unknown histories are taking its place… The West insists and even the mightier in the East…East in the shape of India insists on a history that is not ours and those who deny speak like denied sons… in rage and anger and end up seeking the same histories others wish on them… It becomes a journey of circles… India-bashing means Hindu-hating.. Hindu-hating means anti-India.. anti-India means pro-Pakistan.. pro-Pakistan means ISI.. ISI means Al Qaeda… and so QED… denial of Al Qaeda becomes tirade against India and the hand that holds the goblet of rage is mirrored in the crystal glass of Hindutva venom…

Yet the bottom line is that of identity, and like for the characters of a Le Carre novel the present begins so long ago… Somewhere else… in some other war… Arab nationalism versus Western nationalism becomes a confused but convenient war for so many… You are a Muslim.. you can't go to the US to see your son… the old man with a progeny in Princeton has to live on a long line of emails alone… his son even now doesn't plan to come back.. suppose he can't go back… he is a prisoner in US eyes… in the eyes of his future he imagined and went West to look for… he can't come home anymore.

Compass

I tell the ever-eager that long before Al Qaeda was born, there was Al Badr in Bangladesh; but the international news agency lady just giggles… joke right…?… Al Badr killed more of our professional elite than anyone, even the many soldiers in 1971… hey, just give us Al Qaeda stuff she is saying… But how can you say there is no Al Qaeda, the news team from India says exasperatedly… the US has reported this… We now share unpronounceable names of unknown desert storms and rages… you pray therefore you are… not who you think you are… history repeating itself… we can have no identity except that which the West chooses for us… like the Jews of Europe under Hitler were no longer Europeans but Jews even as they insisted otherwise… the Serbians of European lineage were only Muslims there… "we are not a third world country.. not refugees.. we are Europeans.. we are Yugoslavs…"… all conflicts need to fit a religious definition for the benefit of the copy desk… no time for compound sentences…

Bangladeshis are condemned to be Muslims and nothing else… A few are happy to be part of Arab nationalism… most are not… Western media doesn't want to know about how its consumerist policies are drowning Bangladesh… global warming will too… They just want bearded Muslims alighting from midnight boats to deliver arms… hard pressed fringe journalists have to bid for a story that barely exists… too complex for the simple black and white mind seen through the blue eyes of the Western media… who will take such a long journey…

Saleem has to take whatever comes his way… plumbers are fixers too.. they can't let an offer go… Pricilla.. needs money barely a few days before Eid and gets recommended by Miti who can't take it and passes it on and soon the wheels are set rolling for another journey…

It comes at a time when the government is feeling the heat… US.. India.. the scene within.. crumbling law and order… the Channel 4 team on dishonest visas are a God-send for the government… set the story as the market wants.. every media person knows what the market is… Zaiba Malik and Sorrentino knows what Channel 4 wants… Saleem knows what Z&S wants… and nobody thinks the government might know what they want… are they so stupid that they won't take advantage of such a silly adventure.. as they go shooting scenes without permissions… "You may not like the law but you can't break it", the minister patiently explains… Al Qaeda becomes a distant image as the government cracks down under the sky the colour of the camouflaged shirts of law enforcers… of law and order and discipline and arresting and sedition and treachery and confessions and torture and suddenly… suddenly… the Channel 4 team says sorry, is released, and is gone.. hurray.

Pricilla Raj is given bail a week later by the High Court – which is part of the judiciary but not the magistracy which is part of the executive – Saleem gets bail but not out. He can't even begin the journey home.. before he can get to the gates he is served a detention order…

In all these random events there appears to be no little connection but there is a link. It seems not a description of a series of events but a diary of travels… of many people and in different directions who met at various junctions of time and space and met explosions and chatted over soft drinks and tea and had encounters which some had control, most had none… Like the body parts of innocent moviegoers in a cinema hall in remote Mymensingh as distant as it could be imagined from ground zero… Body parts that travelled in many strange and unknown directions but could be traced back to the blasts that shook the merrymakers in a hick town in impoverished Bangladesh… The blasts were real but the journey of the dismembered limbs left no travelogue behind… Western media wants to know about the blasts and not the bodies… That's where the story begins.

Oil in the Middle East and gas in Bangladesh speak in the languages of politics… As the US looks at its erstwhile enemies who are also its present friends and in a supreme irony, the other as well, history seems to spread like a deadly oil spill into other lands… Osama bin Laden, paid contributor of CIA versions is now the biggest enemy and makes history happen for other people… In a way, both Bush and Osama need Islam, the religion of the Arabs, more than anybody else… Islam, Judaism and Christianity are brothers.. all born of the same desert mother… Just as India and Pakistan need Kashmir to define the people through the lenses of religion… You can't be a Kashmiri anymore, you can only be an enemy to someone if you talk of Kashmir.. either Pakistan or India will be on your side… Kashmir is not the imagination of the Kashmiris anymore. It belongs to the foreign, the defence and intelligence offices of other countries. Kashmir has been externalised, its history constructed through the nationalist aspirations of other people… good-bye..good-bye..good-bye…

As I read a newspaper, various pages on various themes, I can feel the world delicately balanced on each… "Bangladesh is only good for disasters and fanatics and international media wants only that.. one of the last countries which is not part of Arab nationalist problems but full of Muslims.. no strategic borders like Pakistan.. not worth a correspondent.. it has to have Al Qaeda.. eight percent voters said "yes" to Islamists.. Myanamar border.. drugs.. Indian border.. are you crazy… Find me some fanatics..please.. what flavour would you like.. we pay in dollars… in 30 years, the number of fanatics hasn't risen but some of them have made connections… But bombs are always anonymous and if the secret armies of Islam are waging a war here… unlike elsewhere they haven't said anything even once in Bangladesh".

But Bangladesh is now being imagined outside, its identity externalised. Helpless, inept and unable to manage itself in any sector, it can turn only against its own kind… With the foreign media, it is grovelling and ham fisted at the same time… Osama has created opportunities to make smaller countries of uncertain identities more uncertain… has also allowed the fist that denies freedom to act easily against its own flesh. The identity crisis of the Bangladeshi people, its most obvious heritage is now its worst enemy… Neither only Bengali nor only Muslim… Its land, the richest once in entire India hasn't supported its people in the last 200 years. The nation of migrants can neither return to its vagrant home nor go elsewhere to seek that because others will now decide who it is that lives here anyway.

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