Reading and reflecting on Odhikar's report on the Motijheel Massacre in Bangladesh

On Monday of this week, the 19 year old human rights group Odhikar published a fact finding report in English and Bangla on the terrible events of 5th and 6th May in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They have also compiled some video footage. They are not as well resourced as the 300 strong Ain-o-Salish Kendra which have been supporting the government.

The significance of this report, speaking up and encouraging
This is an important document for growing our understandings and inquiries into the worst incident of government and police brutality in Bangladesh since the  slaughter of Biharis in the Khulna Jute Mills in early 1972. People who know a lot are afraid to speak up and bear witness to what has happened. In the words of Glenn Greenwald on the whistle-blowing intelligence worker Edward Snowden and his leaking of the CIAs plans to snoop on everybody, lets hope his courage is contagious.

So what is in this report and who have they been talking to?
As well as an analytical account, the report includes real-life and informative contributions from many of the people (and non humans ) that have become part of the Motijheel assemblage. The people featured are diverse, and realistically contradictory voices are included for the reader to engage with and puzzle through.

Four relatives of four difference victims who did not survive , a manager of a hospital that tried to treat the injured, a nurse, the organising secretary of Hefazot, the commander of the fire services, the Dhaka City Corporation's Waste Disposal Unit, its Transport Unit, the Director of the illegally shut down Diganta TV, the Public Relations Officer of the Border Guards, the Director of Rapid Action Battalion-1, a Media guy from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, the guard of an ATM booth nearby, a madrassa teacher injured during the massacre, an anonymous journalist , a young boy working on a ward, a morgue official....

We learn a lot that we did not know already, that we weren't allowed to know by a corrupt, inbred press and largely self-serving political parties. It challenges the government's own disinformation campaign on multiple counts and expresses dismay at the silence of the 'educated sector of society.

Cruelty Layercake

I know how cruel our deshis can be, whether they wear secular or non-secular underpants. You might not however. Here's a narration of a part of the experience of an 18 year old student who was sleeping by the Water lilly monument to the 1971 victims, when the firing started.

"...while running, he saw 10-12 men lying still on the ground. He was found by two policemen and hit with sticks. He was then shot by the police in his right thigh and immediately lost consciousness. After a while, a splash of water on his face by a person wearing jeans and a shirt made him gain consciousness. The man then said to him ‘you did not die yet’, and kept hitting him. Majedul Islam then grabbed his leg requesting him to stop; however he was hit even more after that. At one point the police asked him to stand up and run. He was physically unable to run and was hobbling away when the police hit him from behind and he then tried his best to run away and managed to enter a nearby street."

The report is like an exhibition. Its strength is not in visual glam, but in the human accounts and the resourcefulness of the authors who have been speaking to participants in an atmosphere of extreme fear and silence. It closes off with a demand for a credible investigation led by a retired supreme court judge and 5 starting points.

Will this document render this injustice legible, or will it be disinterest or terrorism marketing as usual?
Its a shame that after three days there is little acknowledgement in the local press, other than one dismissive presence in the new Dhaka Tribune which employs the Double Standards of Evidence of expecting methods to be shared (and no doubt authenticated by its corporate masters). Dismissal is one of the characteristic bumprints of the Bangladeshi establishment's  Liararchy*.

So many question remain despite and because of this document, which is a beginning to 'unfold the truth'.


*They are not the only ones with characteristic bumprints however, another political segments mimicry of mediocrity leaves a lot to be desired.

Joining the dots in Bangladesh: #eyesonashulia, Development as Deceitfulness and a Muzzled Press

The Internet upload throttle idea has been shelved by the Bangladesh government in favor of a ban on a month-long ban on all forms of meetings, processions and demonstrations. The reasons given by the government range from 'law and order' to smoothing relief and rehabilitation work in the wake of cyclone Mahasen. Bloggers are not a much of a threat, street politics however is.

Whats there to protest about?
Following the Savar garments factory disaster, the brutal government clampdown on religious protesters that ended in a massacre on the 6th May, and a longer term brutality on protest at the unfairness of the War Crimes Tribunal, there certainly is a lot to be angry and organise about in Bangladesh. Not least in the garments factories of Ashulia, where workers are asserting their legitimate rights to a better life and non-exploitation by garments owners who can run up to 40 % profit margins on their backs.

International and national outrage at the garments sector has been Superficiality as Usual, clearing the way for Business as Usual for the government's war on workers rights. Last week a 19 year old sewing machinist operator Parul Akhter was found dead in the factory bathroom, in what the police say was a suicide. Workers were angered by this, and underlying conditions enough to agitate and compel factories owners to declare 'Holiday'.

Beyond Media Monitoring
Note how the Daily Star devotes much coverage to the reasonable factory owner and the factory owners lobby group, and the workers are represented as a baying mob not fit for quoting. The Hameem Group, which owns the factory also runs the pro-government Samakal newspaper.  The need for independent, and socially committed coverage in Ashulia is the demand of the times.  It would be great if some of the crocodile tears over Savar would translate into it.

For those who are interested, let's keep #eyesonashulia with attention to | police | paramilitaries | media coverage | owners | government | workers | families | organisers | international solidarity.

What I have observed  recently is that

• the international human rights infrastructure prefers its victims angelic liberal and without back story 
• media people like to make spectacles, collaborate with their clones and are lazy
• photographers peer at politics over the shoulders of the police, or between their legs
• the development industry talks about the practical, but runs away from the political
• feel-good imagery and storytelling from the Savar disaster is used to bury even badder news.
• between third rate journalism, selfish and complicit activism,  not enough is being done to connect the dots, here are some dots.

Relieving political violence, or cloaking violence with relief?
Government minister Syed Ashraful Islam's attempt to crown the latest strategy with relief is  par for the course in a country where much of the middle and ruling class are part of an intellectually and politically paralysing complex called Developmentshire.

Developmentshire is a series of relationships that is maintained when powerful agendas collude to 'develop' others. It is particularly strong and full of BS in Bangladesh, where selling and (not)solving poverty is a lucrative industry, with minor but increasing mIslamist participation. In recent months and days it has proven deadly, having been complicit in making the mood music and covering up for government brutality on religious protests. It can be quite funny|tragic to see when you encounter it, and should be delegitimised in the public interest.

This way of looking at the development industry, for what it is rather than what it says, helps us to understand networks of power. As the power elites of Bangladesh scramble to cling onto power and prevent us from knowing what they are really doing, is it in the public interest to know about their mutually beneficial arrangements with the development industry. After all, a comfortable job in an air conditioned office is a safe, unassailable place for an apprenticeship in bullshit, and who better than a member of the ruling dynasty to play the role of the Native Informant?


Some media editors finally resist the government's clampdown, but not the Dhaka Tribune
Yesterday, 15 newspaper editors and a web portal editor signed a letter demanding the release of Amar Desh editor Mahmudur Rahman , the restoration of Amar Desh, as well as the reopening of Diganta TV and Islamic TV which were shut down for their live coverage of government brutality at Motijheel.

However, the newly established  (read licensed), Dhaka Tribune's editor, Zafar Sobhan did not sign the document. Maybe he agrees with the Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, President of the aptly translated National Socialist Party, that such an appeal was 'not in the best interests of the media.'

[New Word] Political load-shedding

The troublesome process of contesting power (re)distribution. Although better timetabled these days, the hartal, or strike, causes problems for the public, which in addition to their existing problems is not the politics of mercy.

By mixing metaphors we avoid depoliticizing strikes, their need, and their impacts on people, power structures and pauperisation.

Political load-shedding is a non-solution to the problem of sustainable and just power generation and distribution.

So if you think that you, or your tribe, have what it takes to lead the people. Find another way. Don't (mis)lead dedicated young people to their martyrdom, bring sakina, or tranquility, to the streets and lives of the people.

As The Tailor once said, the prison has escape encoded in its very bars.

What should not have been

The toxic odour of betrayal
Wafted along the breeze
What was becoming apparent (over recent days)
Our hearts could not believe

Developmentia organised
In pathetic technicolour.
Brittle technocratic souls
Engaging foreign power.

How fucking dare you sell them down,
That god forbidding river
I await your untold side to this
And long to be your brother.

BRAC Loan collector killed in Afghanistan

Though the New Age Newspaper headline was 'Bangladeshi Aid Worker killed in Afghanistan'. Innalillahi wa inna ilayhi rajiun. Abdul Alim (Lebu) hailed from the district of Tangail. I wonder if he will recieve greater posthumous respect than the construction workers who die in malaysia, the restaurant workers who get stabbed in London and the cleaners who dont get paid in west asia.

I wonder who will support his family and dependants now.

The term 'Aid worker' accords an primordial agency that the Bangladeshi 'modern' third sector does not have. It is unnessesary flattery. BRAC would be the middle man, operating under someone elses incentive network and patronage. 'Hired-hand' is another word for it. We rarely 'give' anything (think sink, not source), our ngo sector is varied but on super cynical inspection fall into two categories, the beggars and the plunderers.

There are 2 ways of supporting ones activities in the absence of decent internal fundraising networks and slow grown organisational technique. The first is to play the Development game and suck up to donors and their policy cycles. The second is to look into raising money from operating as a bank to poorer sections of society.

A brutal truth is that in the anarchy, the circumstance has come about where in a given locality it is possible for a poor person to have taken loans from 4 or 5 different micro banks and be caught in a trap. NGO field workers several years down stream scratch their heads with a humility that their institutions should have had well before over stretching operations into an action scenario that they had no hope in hell of comprehending.

Microfinance Institutions try to make money and increase the horse power of individual people. Contrary to the beleif that is widely spread, microfinance institutions do not really work with the ultra poor, who are never a profitable investment. They work with the less poor, who are needy and agree to the terms and conditions of the loans.

Those who suffer from public revulsion with respect to high interest rates, stupid weekly instalments and bailiff practices are not the policy people sitting in the offices of corporate NGOdom, it is the field workers who are stigmatise and in this case tragically victimised.

I dont trust the Afghanistan police to properly investigate this matter, and wonder whether anybody else will bother.

I hope there is some deep reflection going on in BRAC about its limits and validity. BRACs Health and Education work could have been jeapordised by this. When you work with the poor and desperately submissive and beleive that it is you who are saving them, it is very easy to get deluded and enjoy your God complex.

As an organisation they arent exactly accountable to anybody other than themselves. Smaller NGOs and other developing world NGOs thing of them as hegemons, though that could be envy. I know that Bangladeshi organisations with much more funky capabilities restrained themselves from getting involved in pseudo occupied Afghanistan due to their non pragmatic interpretation of Principles.

Interestingly BRAC have opened office in the UK... should be interesting. I wonder if the 'poor' here will answer back?