E-Bangladesh

[An E-Bangladesh report.]

Teachers of Dhaka University will attend classes wearing black badges Sunday to demand immediate release of 12 imprisoned professors of Dhaka and Rajshahi University. They also demand immediate release of currently imprisoned university students. DU teachers will go forward with their protest plan Sunday and stage a sit-in in front of Aprajeyo Bangla Monday ignoring requests and threats from the military intelligence agency DGFI and the education adviser.

Earlier Saturday afternoon a three-member DGFI team — Brigadier General ATM Amin, Colonel Abu Saleh and Colonel Almas Raisul Ghani — met Dhaka University VC SMA Faiz, DUTA (Dhaka University Teachers Association) acting president Tazmeri SA Islam, acting general secretary Mamun Ahmed, Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique and Professor Muhammad Akhtaruzzaman. The meeting took place in DU Senate building. During the meeting the DGFI team tried persuading DUTA leaders to call off their protest programs. “They even issued veiled threats and warned of consequences,” a senior DUTA member, himself not present at the meeting, told an E-Bangladesh correspondent in Dhaka.

Later in the evening, education adviser, Aiyub Quadri, had a dialog with VC SMA Faiz, Professor Tazmeri Islam and Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique. He urged DUTA leaders to withdraw their protest program saying that the government will consider demands put forward by the teachers association. “His [Aiyub Quadri] approach was positive but noting concrete… we will go forward with our program as we have issued the government an ultimatum to release all the teachers and students by December 12,” a DUTA member told E-Bangladesh.

“Our program was chalked out at a general meeting Friday. We can not cancel it without the consent of another general meeting. Executive committee has decided to go forward with Sunday’s program,” DUTA acting president, Tazmeri Islam, told newsmen Saturday evening, emerging from an urgent one and half hour long DUTA executive committee meeting. “After today’s talks with the education adviser and army officials, we think government has taken a positive attitude towards the release of those detained. DUTA will hold another urgent general meeting Sunday evening to review the situation. That meeting will decide whether to continue the silent sit-in scheduled for Monday.”

Meanwhile, according to reports from DU campus, teachers are being threatened through anonymous phone calls and SMS, “Certain quarter is pressuring DU teachers not to wear black badges Sunday and not to state any sit-in Monday. Many senior DUTA members have received phone calls and SMS,” a DU professor told E-Bangladesh. He said he himself received two such calls asking him to refrain from wearing a black badge Sunday or participate in Monday’s sit-in. Another senior DU professor showed an E-Bangladesh correspondent a text message from an unknown number in his mobile that read: “Stop campus politics. Shut down your DUTA program.”

[Photo/Banglar Chokh: Selim Reza Newton, Moloy Bhoumik, Dulal Chandra Biswas, Abdullah Al Mamun.]

[Tasneem Khalil, Sweden.]

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

– Henry David Thoreau

In Bangladesh, mouths are not moving these days, it seems. Well, there are exceptions: tongues busy licking military boots stained with blood, tongues moving fast singing hymns for monsters in khaki. For the rest, 160 million men and women, putting a plaster over the lips is the fashion statement of the day, silence has become the best policy. Smartest policy, some say.

It all started on January 11, one eventful evening that saw messiahs coming out of the cantonments, trucks after trucks, clad in olive, armed to their teeth. Bangladesh saw the birth of a new religion: “reform,” with a stylish birthday: “1/11,” with a ear-splitting mantra: “keep your mouths shut,” and one supreme law: “who dares, pays.” Barracks became prayer-halls and “Emergency Power Rules,” the holy book.

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Yet, they dared and now have to pay the price. Four professors of Rajshahi University have been sentenced with two years of rigorous imprisonment for bringing out a silent procession on the campus on August 21 violating the “Emergency Power Rules.” Silence, in this case, apparently proved lethal to the military-led interim government.

The Daily Star, one of the leading pro-government newspapers in Dhaka, has published an account of the verdict. Slightly off topic but may prove interesting to readers: two editorials in the newspaper Wednesday are “Upbeat on revenue collection” and “Recovering siphoned off money.”

A speedy trial court of Rajshahi yesterday sentenced four Rajshahi University (RU) teachers to two years’ rigorous imprisonment for violating Emergency Power Rules (EPR) 2007 by bringing out a silent procession on the campus on August 21. The court also fined the teachers — Moloy Bhoumik of management department, Dulal Chandra Biswas, Sayed Selim Reza Newton and Abdullah Al Mamun of mass communication department — Tk 1,000 each, in default of which they will have to suffer one month more in jail. Two other accused in the case — former RU vice chancellor Prof M Saidur Rahman Khan and syndicate member and convener of RU Progressive Teachers’ Society Prof M Abdus Sobhan — were acquitted. Both the teachers were released from Rajshahi Central Jail at 1:30 pm following the verdict. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ruhul Amin, who was the judge of the speedy trial court, pronounced the verdict at 11:35 am in a packed courtroom.

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Judge Ruhul Amin said the accused had three charges for EPR violation against them — taking leave en masse on July 26 to protest Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina’s arrest, bringing out a silent procession on the campus on August 21, and holding a secret meeting to instigate violence the next day. The judge said photos published in a Bangla daily prove that the accused four teachers were involved in the silent procession on August 21. “As there was a state of emergency in the country, bringing out of the procession violated [the EPR] rules,” he said.

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He added that the prosecution could not prove the charges of observing a strike in the name of leave en masse and holding a secret meeting to instigate students to attack law enforcers. “There is no law against taking leave en masse and there was no evidence that these teachers took such leave… The photos of the secret meeting was taken from behind. The investigation officer could not identify anyone except Prof M Abdus Sobhan in the photo, nor could he say what was told in the meeting,” the judge said.

On August 21 this year, a few RU teachers brought out a silent procession on the campus, protesting the previous day’s police attack on Dhaka University students. RU students called a strike the next day. A rickshaw puller was killed on that day, around 200 including police and journalists were injured, vehicles were torched and properties including the vice chancellor’s residence were damaged during day long clashes between the police and students on and around the RU campus. The student demonstrations also demanded withdrawal of the state of emergency and removal of the police from the campus.

On August 23 night, members of the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested Prof Saidur Rahman and Prof Abdus Sobhan, and Moloy Bhowmik the next day. The then officer-in-charge of Motihar Police Station Khondoker Ferdous Ahmed filed the case against the three teachers on August 26. The teachers were placed on remand and taken to the Joint Interrogation Cell in the capital on August 28. The charge sheet of the case, including the names of Dulal Biswas, Selim Reza Newton and Abdullah Al Mamun, was submitted on September 1. The three teachers surrendered before the court four days later.

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[Emphasis added.]

Meanwhile, another newspaper, New Age has presented us with the latest gem from the chief clown in General Moeen U Ahmed’s facade cabinet, Mainul Hosein: “In building a just and orderly society, law and its application are more important than anything else. A just society is built by just laws enforced justly.” Alright, Hiru, coming to you later.

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[Photo/Banglar Chokh: Sheikh Hasina, Sheikh Rehana, Sheikh Selim.]

[A quick review by E-Bangladesh.]

An attempt by the military-led interim government in Bangladesh to try former prime minister and president of Awami League, Sheikh Hasina, in an extortion case stumbled Monday as the trial commenced in a Dhaka court. In a clear setback for the prosecution side, Sheikh Selim, former minister and co-accused in the extortion case filed by businessman Azam J Chowdhury, retracted a confessional statement he issued earlier. Selim, through a written application filed and read out before the court by his lawyer, disowned the statement that implicated Hasina and himself in the case. On a graver note, Selim alleged “intolerable physical and mental torture” by members of the security forces in an “undisclosed location” and threat of extra-judicial execution that coerced him to issue the statement under section 164 of CrPc.

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[Rezwan, Germany.]

Shahidul News has a touching story on the protest to halt sending Bangladeshi artifacts to Musee Guimet, France.

Reasons:

However, there are other sides of the story.

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[Photo/Banglar Chokh: Waiting for relief.]

[Abu Jar M Akkas, Bangladesh. Back from Sidr-devastated Patuakhali.]

Future looks bleak for about a thousand and a half cyclone survivors in two Mirzaganj villages of Patuakhali, at an aerial distance of about 153 KM from Dhaka, as short-term aid activities, which could ensure them a bare living for now, would hardly hand them a means to earn their living in coming days.

There are many who were partially affected by Sidr that struck the coast on November 15, yet there are many others who lost all they had — homesteads, family members and a meager living.

The villagers of Charkhali and Golkhali are now left with a dream of better days only if they are given the support they need to start farming and that too not before November, when they were supposed to harvest their aman crops which were washed away or damaged by the cyclone, as the paddy fields now lie waste.

Most of them also need to leave behind the trauma, still evident in the face of many, they had gone through on the night of November 15.

Forty-five-year-old Rizia Begum, who lives on the road passing by the villages at Subidkhali that became cratered for a stretch of about five to 10 feet every 20 feet, Friday said her house was damaged when tidal surges, whipped up by the cyclone to a height of six to eight feet, rushed in at about 10:30 PM.

All her family members clung to a floating auto-rickshaw that got stuck between the damaged house structure and an electric pole for about 10 minutes the surge lasted. When water flushed out, they found themselves half-naked. The strong current took their clothes off. And they had to search for about four hours to find a boy of the family who is one year and a half old about a quarter kilometer away.

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… government and French Embassy officials have, without informing either the committee or the media, taken the items out of the museum in what resembled a police protected museum robbery…

– Shahidul Alam, Photojournalist, Activist.

[Photo/Banglar Chokh.]

[Dhaka Correspondent, E-Bangladesh.]

Ignoring a writ petition pending, Bangladesh government officials and representatives of the French embassy in Dhaka Friday sent 10 out of 23 boxes of museum pieces to the Guimet Museum in Paris for display. People, holding protests against the move, gathered near the National Museum, attacked the vehicles carrying the artifacts and attacked government officials as they fear the pieces will never be returned. Bangladeshi and French authorities in Dhaka began the process at the National Museum Thursday, a museum holiday, in presence of French embassy and Bangladesh cultural ministry officials.

“The process for sending the artifacts was not transparent and it created mistrust among the people,” architect Shamsul Wares said. The exact number of the artifacts in the 10 boxes could not be gathered, as Bangladeshi or French officials did not answer any questions regarding the matter. Several museum sources reported that there are about 200 artifacts in the 23 boxes.

Protesters present in front of the National Museum attacked the cargo trucks headed for the airport with the artifacts. They also assaulted government officials sitting inside the car at around 3 PM. Police picked up an artist in connection with the attack, but he was released at the intervention of journalists present.

An Air France cargo plane, scheduled to take off at 12.05 AM Saturday, is carrying the artifacts. Homebound trucks and forklifts reached the museum early on the day. The Homebound trucks and forklifts sported banners reading “Save the Children cyclone Sidr emergency relief.”

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