Again you churn over the bones of the dead
Exploit survivor sorrows
Whilst devouring the hopes of the living.
Its an easy sell.
Another witnesses admits perjury.
On the orders of the Wicked Women herself.
His name is nanu. Or was that nunu?
Having to respond to the White Telegrapher
You wheel him out to meet the press and deny anything is amiss.
Its like one of those crappy Hindi soaps.
Predictable.
Repeatable.
Deletable.
Just like Reshma, that miraculous 17 day survivor of the rana plaza disaster.
Wheeled out to bury the news of the May 6th massacre.
A velatrope of images from your showreel.
To seduce the casual observer
In jeans and a t shirt.
Hmm
Some petrol bombs thrown at vehicles and the drivers die.
If they were american vehicles you would apologise in a showy way.
Not hide behind durura, leaderlessness and optionlessness.
When the mountains shake and the earth herself is inspired to utter what went on upon her,
Will you still be believing your delusions?
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.
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.
***
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.
Two parents were murdered in Dhaka last week, apparently by their drug addicted 16 year old daughter, who they had committed to the Oxford International School. Given recent events however, it is difficult to take anything the Dhaka police, coroners and courts say at face value. In response, drug addicts and English medium schools have been getting gunned by society. Ex military dictator Ershad suggests that killing a few addicts and dealers would be a useful step to take.
Killing your parents and killing your deobandis (hefazot) are symbolically linked. They are the heritage of our political and spiritual reform.
It is disgusting that this case has garnered and mobilised more middle class outrage than the massacre of 6th May in Dhaka.
I put this to a chappy on twitter, who responded,
My sreni (class) does not really care unless we ourselves are hurt directly. Too busy to give thought to the general stuff.
In relation to the English Medium educated group
Well, I am from the direct group you speak of. And to be frank, I dont carry much of a respect towards it either
***
There is much money to be made in educating excolonial deshis in the English. There should be extensive and longitudinal studies of the people emerging from these institutions, and the moral risks that parents take when choosing between such schools for their children.
A freind of mine, an alumni from Green Herald School in Dhaka, one of the older ones, was telling me how the kids had got so immoral, that the Chistians who ran it were bringing back Islam to the school in exasperation.
***
So what to do?
Compulsary education in practical ethics, ie. akhlaq, for all.
Frank and candid sharing of key information about privileged schools.
Louder and wiser debate on the rights of the parent and child in Islamic discourse.
Nepotism and corruption are politically disfiguring Bangladesh. We owe it to deshi futures to smack it around the head a few times by challenging these moronarchies. The slavish support of dynasties must be lampooned and made difficult to hold onto.
Two prime deshi cases in point are: Tareq Zia and Sajeeb Wajed Joy, the sons of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina respectively. Nepotism within the Jamaat is socially and institutionally apparent, it is essentially the same social stock we are talking about here.
Tareq Zia's misdeeds were rightly, if not always accurately, seized upon by the seculib press during the last-but-one BNP led government in Bangladesh. His back was physically broken by the caretaker government which was then ushered in with international support and he continues to mobilize the BNP B team from London, with comical effect.
Hasina's son is insidious on another level, including marshalling WarOnTerror bullshit for political advantage. There is no shortage of this individual opening his mouth in public, from cheering on his mothers killing machine to Indian TV audiences, farting out loud about Digital Bangladesh and proclaiming knowledge of the unseen regarding his family party's forthcoming victory.
His influence on the government needs investigation. His candidacy for the seat of Rangpur-6, where his late father hailed from, should be the focus of an electoral decapitation campaign aimed at encouraging debate, electoral scrutiny and challenging passive acceptance of moronarchy as status quo.
The Awami League won a mega landslide victory in Rangpur-6 in 2008, winning this north western constituency on the border with India from Noor Mohammed Mondol who won in 2001 on a Jatiya Party (Ershad) ticket but then tried to defend it as part of the BNP alliance. It will be interesting to see how far Ershad's shadow still stretches in this area. Local Bangladesh war scars and proximity to India make this natural terrain for the Awami League.
Pirganj literally means the The Storehouse of the Spiritual Leader and is 400 sp km in extent and covered in important wetlands. Just under 400 000 souls reside there, a quarter of a million of whom can vote. Joy, rather the Awami League engine, would need to convince about 100 000 people to vote for him.
Glancing at the news today the boy seems to have been summoned the the US. oo-er.
The world of the Bangladeshi Awami Moronarchy is not impenetrable to the outsider, because its braggishness knows few bounds.
In this video we can see the Prime Minister of long suffering Bangladesh, her sister Rehana Siddiq and associated sycophants of the Awami-Labour Party rally to celebrate the wedding of a youngling Tulip Siddiq, soon to be crowned Labour candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn.
I trust they were all personally rooting for principles of social justice, egalitarianism and human dignity. Not.
***
There is no accounting for tastes amongst the vicious thugs that control Bangladesh, but that is a secondary concern.
I wonder how much blood was in that badly designed banqueting suite in Newham. From the power-wielding family members and spooks to the Chatro League brown shirts and I wonder how much of this skull duggery the youngling Tulip would know about and condone, given her history of lobbying and campaigning for her family's political concern.
The most feared people in Bangladesh are the Awami Leagues brownshirt Chattro League, even the police are scared of them during their joint operations on the Bangladesh publics.
***
Which reminds me. Earlier in her famous 'Hefazot Smeared Red Dye On Their Chests' speech to Bangladesh Parliament on 29th(ish) June, the Prime Minister had 'rewritten' Islamic jurisprudence, lashing out at Barrister Kamal Hossein's daughter Barrister Sara Hossein's marriage to the Journalist David Bergman, who has a Jewish background, in order to present her son Joy's marriage in a virtuous light.
