20.1.15

Dictatorship in Bangladesh and the political economy of camouflage attacks

One's heart does tend to wander deshwards from time to time. We are several weeks into opposition protests to mark the one year anniversary of the phoney 2014 election.

It is inevitable that critical pillars of the regime will have to be either destroyed, bypassed or transformed in order for this face of the regime to change.  The security infrastructure and human rights make up artists are amongst these pillars.

The newly promoted Benazir Ahmed, who delivered the Awami League the Shapla Chottor massacre in 2013, now threatens protesters as the head of the notorious Rapid Action Battalion.  And the human rights make up artists are at it again. From Muntasir Mamun of the Nirmul Committee, now celebrating 23 years of hate, to David Bergman Enterprises. While the former is a blatant loon, calling for the physical elimination of the opposition, the latter renders a new forum of hypocrisy to make a common sense that makes no sense.

A group of people are throwing fire bombs at buses and killing members of the public. The regime would like us to believe the perpetrators to be their opposition and the reverse. In the absence of 'Bishwajit' levels of visual triangulation, Bergman, the Dhaka Resident finds the government's perspective more 'reasonable'.

This narrative has a familiar ring to it, we have seen it deployed and swallowed ridiculously over the years, usually with Sultana Kamal and Shahriar Kabir somewhere close by. The 2013's attacks on minorities were pinned on the government's bogeyman at the time, as if they had nothing better to do. Alternative data was actually collected to challenge this accusation at that time, but the facts were not acknowledged until recently in an Indian op ed.

The fake minority attack card was such an issue that between their huge marches Hefazot e Islami took the step of modifying their list of demands to include protection and dignity for minority religions and their adherents.

When the regime deployed it's British trained scorched earth tactics on Satkhira in late 2013, they took with them some useful human rights make up artists and hack journalists.  This year the tactics are bludgeoning  Rangpur and beyond. And the familiar, fire attackers killing the public' reports are at play again. They are a discursive aide to trigger intellectual anaesthesia and war on terror bountyhunting.

Several things bother me about this picture; that the regime has form for producing atrocities then blaming the victims, that voices evidencing such shenanigans are dismissed, and of course, the Rentu Memoirs.

The memoirs of the late Matiur Rahman Rentu speak volumes of the ability of Hasina and her advisor's set off wild and outrageous operations that grow more and more ridiculous with time. Both he and his wife were close aides to Hasinas beforehand turned on them. The memoirs were banned just before the last electoral rejection of the Awami League in 2001 and Rentu died exile.
From planning to assassinate her once ally Kamal Hossein to throwing away the lives of others for the sake of political street theatre, the book paints a detailed portrait of a psychopath and has been translated into English.

This regime knows which buttons to press in order to manipulate white and brown people. Those who seek to supersede these murderous Islamophobic bastards are advised to up their game.

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