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There is every sign that the investigation probe of the Rana Plaza tragedy would soon enter into a no-man’s land. That means we’ll never learn the host of failures that led to this unimaginable disaster.

In the wake of Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster, public anger has justifiably been focused on Sohel Rana, who deserves the most severe punishment for what would qualify as “crimes against humanity.”

But it was not too difficult to see that an exclusive focus on prosecuting the building owner and a few corrupt officials would not solve the systemic problems that lead to industrial catastrophes in Bangladesh.

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There is no conclusive victory in capturing and parading the prime accused in front of the media, unless a hawkish investigation of the disaster itself is undertaken. Exactly how and why it happened—from human faults to administrative negligence to the building’s structural failure—followed by a concrete set of factory safety recommendations. This is, and should be, a standard practice in any functional society.

This leads us to consider the culture of tadonto (probe) committees typically formed in the wake of manmade disasters in Bangladesh. These committees ride on the passion of popular anger. But they routinely disappear from the public view as soon as the anger subsides.

As we have seen in the past, serious probes often do not provide lucrative political dividends or financial rewards. So there is very little genuine interest in the truthful examination of a disaster. Thus, the public rarely see any objective and dispassionate postmortem of industrial mishaps. Till today we do not know why workers could not be saved during the Tazreen fire last November and what safety measures were undertaken to avoid Tazreen-type infernos. The Spectrum collapse in 2005, too, remains a big question mark.

The tadonto committee scenario after the Rana Plaza tragedy was all too predictable. The Home Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce and the Dhaka District Administration formed three separate probe committees. In addition, Bangladesh’s Cabinet also created a high-profile committee to inspect factory safety measures in the country.

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But all the committees were led by “insiders.” For instance, the Cabinet-mandated inspection committee was chaired by a State Minister. The Home Ministry’s five member panel was headed by an Additional Secretary. An Additional District Magistrate led the Dhaka District Administration-formed seven-member panel. Why so many committees? Did they collaborate? Where are the reports they promised to publish within weeks?

And, excuse me, have you heard about something called the conflict of interest? Why should we believe the officials who themselves are part of the systemic problems in industrial regulation, oversight, and workplace safety enforcement? And, what autonomy do these government-appointed probe bodies have to deviate from the convenient official narrative of how the disaster happened?

Given our political culture, the tadonto committees are expected to produce stories convenient for the unholy alliance of the political mafia, government officials, and influential garment factory owners.

The Tazreen fire was sabotage, we were told. Was it? The tadonto committees are generally expected not to jeopardize the profit-at-any-cost arrangements within the RMG industry because many factory owners are members of the parliament or politically influential.

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It is immensely lucrative not to perturb the national cash cow.

In the interim, today’s poor dies, tomorrow’s poor fills in the factory’s vacancy. So, there’s no real pressure on tadonto committees.

We demand one INDEPENDENT probe committee for the Rana Plaza disaster. It should consist of a trustworthy civil-society member, an independent technical expert on industrial safety standards and building codes, a legal expert on industrial workplace, an historian knowledgeable about landmark industrial disasters, and an acceptable member of the concerned urban administration. Also include an international expert, recommended by global labour rights organizations. Make the report available online within a month.

Laws, if any, pertaining to rental spaces should be revisited. How come the BRAC Bank rented space at Rana Plaza? Given its international reputation, it is entirely reasonable to ask why BRAC rented space in a building that visibly violated building codes and illegally stacked up three extra floors. Did the BRAC official in charge over there demand to see Rana Plaza’s building permit?

Oversimplifying the vast problem of Bangladesh’s recurring industrial calamities as the despicable action of a few bad apples would only blunt our ability to demand change in the network of malpractices that make a disaster like Rana Plaza’s inevitable.

We should be asking a lot of questions. Why don’t RAJUK and other urban agencies have an adequate number of building inspectors despite the presence of nearly 5000 garment factories in Bangladesh? What level of accountability does BGMEA demand, if at all, from its members? What stops the government from spearheading an action agenda for enforcing safety standards in factories? Would a socially responsive business campaign dispel the prevailing myth that factory owners can’t afford the cost of safety measures due to narrow profit margins? Would an international campaign of consumer activism compel international retailers like Walmart to share the costs of installing safety measures in Bangladeshi factories? And, is it time to promote a healthy culture of labour unions with the spirit of safeguarding basic labour rights, while keeping partisan politics out of factories?

The Rana Plaza tragedy should not be remembered as the villainy of Sohel Rana or the resilience of Reshma alone. It should act as a reminder that factory disasters could be easily avoided. The corrupt culture of tadonto committees must change. We owe it to the factory workers who were misled to sacrifice their lives at the altar of an economic growth that often does not trickle down to them.

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Adnan Morshed is an associate professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Photo: Muktir Gaan

My mother-in-law passed away gracefully, on the last day of March this year, in a private hospital in Dhaka. Farida Mohiuddin fought cancer with dignity and retained her profound sense of purpose until the last minute of her life. A strong-willed woman and a lifelong government official, she was not afraid to speak the inconvenient truth, often finding herself in tenuous positions.

Farida Mohiuddin had been an enigma to me. Things became a bit more complicated with a sudden discovery. While cleaning up her mother’s bedroom, my wife Sadia found a treasure trove of letters that Farida had exchanged with her husband, Mohiuddin Ahmed, during 1971. Mohiuddin Ahmed, a freedom fighter and a then member of the parliament from Barisal, was incarcerated in one of the Pakistani army’s brutal torture chambers at the Dhaka Cantonment. As I read through the letters, I found startling insights into one family’s struggle to endure the atrocities of war and, more broadly, the psychological inflictions that Bangladeshis experienced during 1971.

Barisal remained free from the clutches of the Pakistani army for a whole month after March 25th. On April 25th, the Hanadar Bahini attacked Barisal and crushed the small-armed resistance of the Mukti Bahini. Many members of the Barisal-area Mukti Bahini, including Mohiuddin Ahmed, went to India to regroup and rearm. In the first week of May, a group of the Mukti Bahini, including Ahmed and Major Jalil, embarked on a return journey in two launches, full of arms. The Pakistani gunboats intercepted the launches near Paikgachha, in Khulna, on the Burigowalini River. The members of the Mukti Bahini dispersed into various char areas. But with the treacherous intervention of a local collaborator named Maolana Salam, the Pakistani army captured many Muktijoddhas.

Photo courtesy: Rashid Talukder/Autograph ABP

Mohiuddin Ahmed was taken to Jessore Cantonment and placed in the same room in which the Awami League MP Moshiur Rahman had been beaten to death just a few days earlier. Within days, Ahmed was flown to Dhaka Cantonment, along with 17 other prisoners. Predictably, all of the prisoners were subjected to inhuman torture and psychological pressure to divulge important information about the organization of the Mukti Bahini.

As Ahmed recalled, women were frequently brought in as sex slaves. Some of them were kept in the cell next to his. Hearing their screams every night, he thought, was like burning in hellfire. Major Bashir, who was in charge of the concentration camp where Ahmed was imprisoned, once shouted in his face: “We will make this country a land of prostitutes, a land of slaves, a land of beggars.” He wondered whether the political premise of a common religion in the creation of Pakistan found a farcical culmination in this statement. Amidst all of the brutalities, Mohiuddin Ahmed awaited his trial.

Where was his wife during this time of darkness and uncertainty? Desperate and having neither money nor shelter, she moved her infant children from place to place, in and around Barisal. Very few people wanted to reach out to her for fear of the wrath of local rajakars. Leaving her children with her mother and, sometimes, with distant relatives, she stayed mostly in Dhaka, lobbying for her husband’s release. They exchanged letters, and most were written in English. The Pakistani army must have demanded that prisoners write in English, so that they could monitor the flow of information in and out of jail.

In one letter, written in August, Mohiuddin Ahmed wrote about his unimaginable pain from two broken bones, wondering how he was still alive. He described two common torture methods that he had witnessed at the jail: hanging the prisoner upside down from the ceiling fan and giving electric shocks to private parts. He pleaded with his wife to bring his children to the jail, so that he could see them one last time. Under no circumstances should she come alone to the cantonment, he told her, for reasons too obvious. He also wrote about the ongoing court martial of Ahmed Fazlur Rahman, one of the accused in the Agartala Conspiracy Case. Salam Khan and Shah Azizur Rahman were appointed as his counsel. He lamented that it would be merely a theatre, a travesty of justice.

Another letter, dated November 17, was particularly poignant. Sensing that his time was running out, Mohiuddin Ahmed advised his wife on the eve of his court martial that there was no point in trying to hire a Bengali lawyer to make his case because his fate had already been sealed. Yet, she must also bring one, he reasoned, to see firsthand the sacrifice of the Bengalis at the altar of the Pakistani military regime’s genocidal fantasy. He wrote proudly that he had not renounced his loyalty to his motherland, despite vicious torture.
Imminent death emboldened him to solidify his devotion.

Meanwhile, Farida Mohiuddin was not just trying to secure her husband’s release. She was also providing logistical support to the Barisal-area Mukti Bahini. Her risky trips between Dhaka and Barisal were particularly helpful to disseminate intelligence. She was a freedom fighter who blended the mission of saving her family with her single-minded devotion to the cause of what would become the new nation of Bangladesh. Her comforting letters to her husband helped him stay sane in the midst of all brutalities in the Pakistani prison camp. But her words also inspired raw patriotism and humanised the war. Reading her letters, one would feel that 1971 was not only about atrocities, but also about simple human stories of love, sacrifice, and commitment.

On December 9, the army court of one Colonel Alvi imposed death sentence on Mohiuddin Ahmed. His execution was scheduled for December 19. A week later, however, Bangladesh was born. And, Ahmed went on to serve in the parliament of the new nation. He matured into a universally admired leader of Barisal. Throughout his life, he stood up for his people, on a platform built by his wife during the trying days of 1971. Farida Mohiuddin was a multidimensional example of Muktijoddha, a patriotic figure whose work cannot be summed up with heroic narratives of rifles and dead enemies. She held her head high, both in 1971 and in her battle against cancer.

But why should Farida Mohiuddin’s story matter? Not only is it a microcosm of the experience of 1971, but it is also a solemn reminder of an unfinished task: bringing the collaborators—those who engaged in crimes against humanity during the Liberation War of Bangladesh—to justice. This task should have been a momentous achievement of the current regime. But, alas, like the Padma Bridge, elevated metro-rail in the capital, and the power sector, the priority of the War Crimes Trial fizzled out in the torrent of mindless government pyrotechnics.

We should not lose sight of history and the lessons that Farida Mohiuddin and other Muktijoddhas can teach us, as we consider the urgency of our economic future.

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Adnan Morshed teaches at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.