Go to Lonka, become Rabon. REPEAT.

Published : 25 August 2015, 03:17 PM
Updated : 25 August 2015, 03:17 PM

My mother used to say, "Je Lonkai jai, se Rabon hoi". She was using it in small contexts to point out the unfairness of one kid taking over all the goodies at the expense of others. Once a year as many as 15 of us cousins would get together for Eid Holidays in Sylhet and there was always the fight for little things, mainly cookies. Depending on the day the victim from yesterday would become the oppressor the next day, hogging all the cookies. The cycle would repeat and repeat.

As I watch the jailing of Probir Sikdar by Awami League ministers (yes they will say, not me man, but we know better. They are using the hapless Swapan Pal as the bait) my mind goes back to the times before Bangladesh was born. The Pakistani regime of Ayub and Yahya Khan was repeatedly jailing the father of the current PM and many of his associates. The charges were familiar: anti-state propaganda, conspiracy in Agartala, wearing Nehru vests, calling out police brutality, talking to foreigners and so on. Now that we have Awami League as the ruling party, the same fabricated charges are being levied against journalists and people who publicly disagree with the course of governance. The tragedy is that folks in the administration have all become Rabon(s) on arriving at Lonka after shedding so much blood and treasure. Someone should probably update Mahabharata with the new twist.

Here is the law that the government is using, Section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act of 2006 (ICT), modified to fit the new Rabons in Lonka:

"The stated objective of the ICT Act is 'the legal recognition and security of information and communication technology.' However, the amendments to the Act appear designed to stifle the legitimate exercise of public criticism and to subject various persons including journalists, bloggers, and human rights defenders to arbitrary detention."

Under the present government the Act was amended on 6 October, 2013.

This is how the International Commission of Jurists described the Amendments to the ICT. Based on the actions of the current government the ICT has become a hammer to bash in the heads of people that voice any opposition. Since, it is a hammer, everything the application of this Law as amended, see, are nails to be hammered in, period. Thus, you have the imprisonment of Sikdar, closing down of The Daily Inqilab in 2014, shutting down of Amar Desh and so on.

The ICT law as amended clearly violates the Article 19 of Universal Declarations on Human Rights (UDHR). Bangladesh is a signatory to UDHR including Article 19. But, hey who is looking? Apparently no one. They are hiding behind a critical paragraph in section 59 of the ICT.

This paragraph reads, "Any material which is fake and obscene or its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, or causes to deteriorate or creates possibility to deteriorate law and order, prejudice the image of the State or person or causes to hurt or may hurt religious belief or instigate against any person or organization, then this activity of his will be regarded as an offence."

This paragraph in not only vague in definitions, it is overly broad and completely arbitrary. There is no definition of "prejudice" against the state or persons. No one bothered to define "hurt." Thus you get to put away a professor in jail because he said, "religious education may not be mandatory."

"Hurt" is also if you speculate on the number of deaths in Dhaka after the raid on the Hifazat rally or dispute the number of deaths during the Liberation War (the official line is 3,000,000 deaths which is at least 10 times larger than actual).

This vague and broad weapon of selective revenge is clearly against the Article 19 of UDHR, which states, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers."

Compare this articulated right against something called "hurt." As my friends would say, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (WTF)!

The Lawyers for the Rabons (I am not sure they need any) would quote this built-in vagueness in Article 19, which goes as such:

"The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals."

Rabons will say the ICT is applied, to respect the phrase, "To respect the rights or reputations," in order to detain Probir Sikdar and others like him. I say piffle snort. The LGRD Minster's reputation was never threatened. What reputation I ask? His lone qualification seem to be that he is a relation to the Prime Minister. That is good enough for most of us. That reputation no one can damage!

The other thing is how the whole government apparatus has failed to catch the murderers of bloggers and journalists and provide any semblance of active protection to people who are targeted and threatened by the Jihadists, like Mr. Sikdar is.

It is an old ploy to distract everyone from the actual issue to something else. In the old days, the Pakistani trains never ran on time. So a passenger walked over to the Station Master at Akhaura to ask the when the train will leave Akhaura for Sylhet because the 15 minute stop has turned into a 7 hours layover.

The official pointed to a cow and proclaimed, "Goru ghash khay" (cow is eating grass) and smartly turned about. The present day Awami League is doing a version of the "Goru ghash khay" routine. They are imprisoning people because they cannot give those people answers or protect them from the murderous Jihadis.

Now, my personal indignation about all this. After 1971 we had great hopes that things are about to get better. We had shed blood, lost loved ones, some of us had their homes burned down and some of us were injured.

But, before we could reach Nirvana the Rabons hastily got to Dhaka. Instead of Nirvana, we got serious law and order breakdown, we got manmade famine that killed about 1.5 million people, we got hijacking of cars, we got the Rakkhi Bahini (a thuggish private army) and we got anarchy in the education system including the Universities and various colleges. The unhappiness was so intense that when the murders in the Army killed Sheikh Mujib and most of his family, the country said nothing. Not a single politician stood up to the murders. Most raced to join the illegitimate government. That was followed by years of tyrannical rule and despotic rulers.

After years of brutality, I do think we finally have a system where power can be transferred from one party to the other. This requires civility, transparency and the acknowledgement that no ruling party can rule forever. Parties are made of people and people become corrupt, venal and self-serving over time. That is why I think a reasonable term limit is a grand idea. Bangladesh should explore the term limits for the legislatures and the Prime Minister and key political appointees.

I am dismayed that a transformational paradigm will not happen soon in Bangladesh. We are not ready to embrace our achievements with our faults. We are still a rapacious bunch. That is why you see so much hide the banana game under the guise of ICT and many other anti-transparency laws and regulations. We are condemned to send new Rabons to Lonka and repeat the evil cycle until we have all withered away and pushing up daisies.