Information Minister Inu egged in London TV studio as diaspora disgust grows at 6th May Dhaka massacre and coverup

Bangladesh Minister for Information Hasanul Huq Inu was egged as he walked into a TV studio in London. He was in London on a Digital Bangladesh junket.

In the context of UK politics egging is pretty main stream, John Prescott attracts a lot of it, Peter Mandelson got green custard and Fathers4Justice made a purple powder stunt occur in the House of Commons.

In this BanglaVision TV analysis of the protest intervention to the right, Inu Skypes in and gives an account of the incident. The dishonourable Minister for (mis)Information was at his very best, terming it "an attack on Bangladesh's Democracy (4:45)".

Coming a close second is his performance on the Channel S talk show Obhimot, where he justified the closure of popular opposition daily Amar Desh and now 6 month detention of its editor Mahmudur Rahman through the analogy of mirror cleaning. I fear that Mahmudur Rahman will not make it out of detention, where he has been tortured, alive.

Who is Hasanul Huq Inu, why is this important?

For those who do not know, Inu is the head of the JSD (National Socialist) party and as Information Minister has played a leading role in the cover up of the Dhaka Massacre on 6th May. Questions remain unasked and unanswered as to his participation in the massacre itself.

His ministry's exchange of letters with local human rights group Odhikar who documented the massacre, and the Government's subsequent arrest of its secretary Adilur Rahman Khan made even the most fawning governmental yaysayers cringe.

Odhikar's fact finding report on the Government attacks on Hefazot's Assembly on 5th and 6th May remains the most detailed account of the terrible state crimes committed that day. Its incompletion is a function of the corrupt  media and a very real fear of government reprisal. On this matter it is very much a police state.

That defenders of the regime have reduced  the massacre and the report to a silly numbers game is par for the course. It reminds us also of the need to create new forms of protest that elude the censor and which are less predictable than huge protests, hartals and agreeable rants.

These images have been swirling around Facebook to much applause.

These young people who egged Inu probably performed the most democratic act Bangladesh has seen for a while. The deshi press, for example The Daily Star and its more OC-inspired stepdaughter The Dhaka Tribune,  have failed to rise to the (business) challenge of the government account of the Motijheel Massacre and their own roles in making it possible.

As the current government makes moves to tell itself and the world what a good job it is doing on development (over the carcasses of those it has slain), we should  make sober assessments of their records and step up the lampooning.

Transnational Localism through further Civil Disobedience

I remember those bloodied twitching bodies on the streets of Dhaka in May breathing their last, and the video of the young boy being shot in the head at point black range earlier in the spring. I believe that a whole load of deshis (and people who love desh more than an NGO ever could) have been politicised over the state brutality from the Bangladesh Awami League led government this year, in new ways that elude partisan capture.

The Prime Minister has announced her intention to attend the 68th session of the UN Assembly which takes place on 23 Sept to 4 Oct in the coming weeks. I notice a special session on "disability and inclusivity" and my heart goes out to the disabled people her regime has created..

New York will be crawling with high officials of the regime, family members and taggers on.
I practically hope that they should be met patiently and theatrically for the sake of peace, with egg, red dye, clearly expressed arguments and camera phones.

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The red dye is significant because that is what Prime Minister and Awami League head Sheikh Hasina Wazed accused the victims of her security forces of smearing on themselves (see below). In a related not, if you want a path into the mind of the psychopaths who run Bangladesh and the lengths the Awami League leader will go to for political and financial gain, please read the Rentu Memoirs carefully.