E-Bangladesh

Today marks 37 years of independence for a tiny country I love, a country that gave me birth before it was itself born, a country founded on the belief that freedom is precious and worth dying for, a country of brave martyrs and brave survivors, a country of unfulfilled promises called Bangladesh.

Thirty seven years ago today the Pakistan army and their Islamist allies launched a campaign of genocide against 75 million of its own citizens. The army was intent on massacring into submission 75 million Bengalis who had committed a singularly unforgivable crime. Months earlier the Bengalis had gone to the polls and voted for a candidate of their choice to become the next Prime Minister of Pakistan. The Pakistan army responded to the vote with a genocide. In the name of “God and a united Pakistan” the killing began.

In the end, the Pakistan army failed in its purpose. Nine months later, an army that had engaged in the killing of millions of its citizens surrendered in humiliation to the Indian army and Bangladeshi freedom fighters. An army that was so adept in machine gunning unarmed civilians proved to be no match for men and women who could shoot back.

A new nation was born. But at great cost. Up to three million Bengalis were killed in nine months of genocide. Two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Bengali women were raped. Ten million refugees had fled to India. Cities were devastated, villages had been razed, and the new country’s intellectual class had been massacred in a last minute frenzy of madness.

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They claim it never happened: one of the worst nightmares of human history. They claim monsters never existed: those who feasted on their own brother’s blood. Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, Shah Abdul Hannan and their comrades in Oxford or the Bangladesh Election Commission have their agendas to propagate revisionist rubbish: “No genocide,” “No war,” “No war criminal” from 1971. Digging through archives, Mashuqur Rahman compiled a video presentation on Bangladesh, 1971: genocide, rapes, war crimes, war criminals. As Shada Kalo puts it, our agenda: “I will not forget. I will not let you forget.”

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NBC News 1/7/1972: Dhaka University massacre. Video of Pakistani soldiers executing students, professors and workers at Dhaka University on March 26, 1971.

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CBS News 2/2/1972: Evidence of mass graves and widespread killing in Khulna. Approximately 100,000 people were killed in Khulna.

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NBC News 2/20/1972: Rape victims. Genocidal rapes of Bangladeshi women and girls during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The report interviews pregnant girls held at Pakistani army barracks and repeatedly raped. Some of the girls are as young as 13.

[Headlines: Straits Times, March 27, 1971... The Age, March 29, 1971... New Age, January 22, 2008.]

In their March issue, Daily Star newspaper’s monthly magazine Forum has published the article on Bangladesh’s declaration of independence. The article, entitled “Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro and Bangladesh’s Declaration of Independence“, is based on the post we wrote in January.

The March issue of Forum commemorates March 26, 1971, Bangladesh’s independence day. Of particular note are reprinted articles originally written in March 1971 by Rehman Sobhan and Dr. Hameeda Hossain, who were Executive Editor and Editor respectively of the original Forum. These articles offer a fascinating glimpse into the days leading up to the independence of Bangladesh.

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[Mashuqur Rahman with MMR Jalal.]

The last message from Dacca Betar Kendro was from announcer Nazma Akhtar:

The 75 million people of Bangla Desh, freedom-loving as they are, have been subjected to brutal genocide by the army. The people of Bangla Desh will shed more blood rather than forget the injury. We will never allow the sacrifice to go in vain.

Soon after the Pakistan army took over Dacca Betar Kendro in the early hours of March 26, 1971, they renamed the radio station as “Radio Pakistan Dacca” and used it to announce martial law orders. The Pakistan army’s attempt at silencing the voice of the Bengalis had begun. Bengalis however fought back. The war of Bangladesh’s liberation had begun.

On the evening of that same day a small radio station started broadcasting defiantly in the face of the Pakistan military’s bloody onslaught on the Bengalis. The clandestine radio station, located in Kalurghat, north of the city of Chittagong, declared to the world: “The Sheikh has declared the 75 million people of East Pakistan as citizens of the sovereign independent Bangla Desh.” The station called itself Swadhin Bangla Biplobi Betar Kendro (Free Bengal Radio Station). At a later stage, the word “Biplobi” [revolutionary] was dropped from the station name.

For the next four days the radio station engaged in a propaganda battle with the Pakistan army. While the Pakistan army claimed all was calm in Bangladesh, the clandestine radio station declared liberation forces were marching on the capital and Pakistani soldiers were surrendering. While the Pakistan army claimed it had crushed the will of the Bengalis, the clandestine radio station declared that the Pakistani military governor General Tikka Khan had been assassinated. While the Pakistan army claimed the Bengalis had been defeated, the clandestine radio station claimed to have formed a provisional government of Bangladesh.

In those early days of the genocide, Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro declared to the world that Bengalis would not give up, that Bengalis would fight, and that the sacrifice would not go in vain. And the world listened. The small radio station in Kalurghat in those four days refused to be silenced. It rallied the morale of the Bengalis and it frustrated the Pakistani army.

The men and women of Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro and the men of the East Bengal Regiment who defended the station from attack, announced to the world that an organized Bengali resistance was fighting back, ensured that Pakistani tanks and airplanes could not silence the voice of the 75 million people of Bangladesh.

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[Mashuqur Rahman, USA]

Last week I received an email from a dear friend. The email came from Sweden, on Valentine’s Day. I have spent the better part of this week trying to craft a response. I have failed. This post is my attempt at a response.

My blog is anti-torture. There is a logo on the sidebar of this blog that declares the unequivocal position of this blog and its author. Being anti-torture seems to me to be a commonsense position to hold. It is however not a position that is universally held. There are torturers in this world and there are those who aid and abet the torturers. Then there are the victims. My friend, Tasneem Khalil, is a torture victim.

On May 10th of last year I received an urgent email from a friend. It was 4:04pm and I was at my mundane day job. Soon many other emails arrived with the same news. Tasneem Khalil, a Bangladeshi journalist and researcher for Human Rights Watch, had been picked just hours earlier by the Bangladesh military. Just before 1am on the morning of May 11 (Bangladesh time) members of Bangladesh military’s intelligence services, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), had taken away Tasneem from his home in Dhaka. Tasneem’s wife, left alone with their 6-month old baby boy, managed to get word out of his abduction.

Via email and SMS Bangladeshi bloggers from all over the world came together within minutes of hearing the news. Soon blog posts were going up everywhere. American and British bloggers joined in and the news spread quickly. Soon Human Rights Watch put out a press release demanding his release, and CNN and the Associated Press put the news out over the wire. After sustained pressure from human rights organizations, foreign diplomats, and the press Tasneem was released 22 hours later. He was alive, but he had been tortured.

After his release, Sweden offered Tasneem, his wife Suchi and his baby boy Tiyash, political asylum. Today they have begun a new life in Sweden, in exile.

On February 14th Human Rights Watch released a 44-page report  (PDF) entitled “The Torture of Tasneem Khalil: How the Bangladesh Military Abuses Its Power Under the State of Emergency”. The report, in first person testimony, details how the DGFI brutally beat and threatened Tasneem during his 22 hour ordeal.

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[Update: Sunday, February 3.]

– Mehedi Hasan has been released, a WRC spokesperson confirmed:

… Mehedi Hasan was released Sunday afternoon, Dhaka time. We have confirmed it directly with Mehedi himself. We also understand that the pending charges against him have been dropped, this is what the police have told Mehedi’s lawyer. Documents confirming this have not yet been received, however. We hope to know more soon about the government’s official position on the case and their intentions going forward.

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[Mashuqur Rahman, USA.]

The newspapers in Bangladesh fed us the party line. They declared that a “foreign body” had been provoking labor unrest in Bangladesh’s garment industry. Never mind that rising food prices and unpaid back wages have driven those who already live on the edge over the edge. The military government, faced with the fruits of its incompetence, has found the convenient foreign bogey man. The Daily Star tells us about this foreign hand:

Law enforcement agencies have confirmed that a foreign organisation and leaders of a section of garment workers were involved in provoking the recent unrest in garment factories in the city’s Mirpur area.

After investigation, an intelligence agency arrested Mehedi Hasan, Bangladesh representative of the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), at the Zia International Airport prior to his departure for Bangkok on January 24.

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Court sources said Mehedi reportedly confessed to interrogators that he used to collect information about workers’ problems and send it by email to the WRC headquarters in Washington DC in the USA. He was also learnt to have disclosed that he incited garment workers to press for their demands and held several secret meetings with the leaders of a section of garment workers.

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