By Fazal M. Kamal
Regardless of whatever
entertaining but ineffectual verbiage administration leaders may spew and
regardless of the incredibly inane—and entertaining too—stuff law enforcement
honchos may regurgitate, the dreadful reality in Bangladesh is that nothing
that they declare is of any consequence in stemming the trend of random murders
that seems to persist unrelentingly.
As recent times have been
worse than before, with more being killed almost at will in various parts of
the country, it appears, that in spite of a whole lot of revelations (if
prevarication can be euphemistically called that) and repeated assurances, the
powers that be have been unable to substantiate their aural pronouncements with
tangible results. Like actually getting the murderers.
That purported law enforcement
personnel across the world have some rotten apples among them, isn’t anything
surprising. That in many countries—both advanced and not-so-advanced—rogue
elements in the police forces are known to engage in atrocious behavior
sometimes leading to torture and death of innocent persons, is also not an
unknown or unheard of fact of life in the real world replete with human flaws.
Given that backdrop, the
inefficiency, a lack of discipline, an obvious absence of appropriate training
mingled with politicization and avarice can and in fact do create both a toxic
environment and brutal modus operandi for law enforcement entities which often
lead to offensive declarations (to state it mildly) that can only be described
as unbridled hubris. Consequently, the benefits from such noxious bodies are
barely discernible, if at all.
In the Bangladesh instance,
it’ll be most inadvisable to ignore the very recent uptick in mayhem and murder
especially given the perception that anything’s possible in this country, and
that it’s easy to, literally, get away with murder. And in view of the facts
it’s, at the very least, difficult to deflect these and similar beliefs plainly
because over the years murders, rape, torture, et al have received indulgent
passes, astounding the citizenry.
As
Prof. Ali Riaz of Illinois State University stated: “The official explanations
for these incidents have been quite confusing and somewhat contradictory. On
the one hand, the government has insisted that these are unrelated incidents
and that they do not pose any challenge to the security of the country; on the
other hand, it has claimed that these are ‘homegrown’ militants who are engaged
in these heinous acts. While the country's home minister does not see any cause
for concern for the safety of citizens, the chief of police has asked the
citizens to create their own ‘security circle.’”[!!! -- Couldn’t help adding
those exclamation marks given the contents of official statements.]
Simultaneously, compounding
the confusion, administration leaders have often—and within hours of a
murderous incident—declared that these are the handiwork of the political
opposition. This has by now become an extremely predictable ploy with clockwork
regulatory but comprehensively failing to convince anyone except only the author
of these bizarre contentions themselves.
Here, then, is one reaction to
this game plan: “The government is increasingly targeting the opposition and
closing off its legitimate political activity, but it’s precisely that
polarized political environment and limiting of the opposition’s space to
participate in the political process that is creating new space for the
extremists,” observed Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage
Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington.
And in an opinion piece London
journalist Gwynne Dyer asserted: “She [Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] also
insisted that these murders were the work of the main opposition party, the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), or more precisely of its political ally,
the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party. She firmly denied
that foreign extremist forces such as Islamic State or al Qaeda (which would
certainly approve of the killings) were active in the country.”
Having stated that background
Dyer concludes, “This probably seems to Ms Hasina to be sound, practical
politics, in a country where 90% of the population is Muslim. … It's also good
politics for her to blame the violence exclusively on the opposition parties,
since admitting that foreign Islamists are involved would mean that she was
failing in her duty to defend the country. But the result of her pragmatism and
passivity has been a rapid expansion in the range of targets that are coming under
attack by the extremists.”
Of course, it’s a known fact
that not all the victims were “atheist bloggers” or “irreligious thinkers”
because some of those murdered, in reality, had absolutely nothing in common
with “atheists” or “bloggers” but were law-abiding and God-fearing individuals who
were simply going about their business. And then, there are the yet-unsolved
(and possibly never-to-be-solved) cases of young women raped and killed.
But that’s a whole other
story.
In the meantime, let’s be
clear here: To the honorable members of the Cabinet: No, these cannot by any
stretch of anyone’s imagination be isolated episodes; they’ve been occurring
with shockingly tragic frequency. And to the law enforcement kahunas: The
people of the country expect salubrious effects from your actions and words;
not pontification in any shape, size or color primarily because that isn’t any
segment of your mandate.
ENDS
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