Bangladesh: The Wages Of A Noxious Mix

Fazal M. Kamal

Regardless of whatever entertaining but ineffectual verbiage administration leaders may spew and regardless of the incredibly inane—and entertaining too—stuff law enforcement honchos may regurgitate, the dreadful reality in Bangladesh is that nothing that they declare is of any consequence in stemming the trend of random murders that seems to persist unrelentingly.

As recent times have been worse than before, with more being killed almost at will in various parts of the country, it appears, that in spite of a whole lot of revelations (if prevarication can be euphemistically called that) and repeated assurances, the powers that be have been unable to substantiate their aural pronouncements with tangible results. Like actually getting the murderers.

That purported law enforcement personnel across the world have some rotten apples among them, isn’t anything surprising. That in many countries—both advanced and not-so-advanced—rogue elements in the police forces are known to engage in atrocious behavior sometimes leading to torture and death of innocent persons, is also not an unknown or unheard of fact of life in the real world replete with human flaws.

Given that backdrop, the inefficiency, a lack of discipline, an obvious absence of appropriate training mingled with politicization and avarice can and in fact do create both a toxic environment and brutal modus operandi for law enforcement entities which often lead to offensive declarations (to state it mildly) that can only be described as unbridled hubris. Consequently, the benefits from such noxious bodies are barely discernible, if at all.

In the Bangladesh instance, it’ll be most inadvisable to ignore the very recent uptick in mayhem and murder especially given the perception that anything’s possible in this country, and that it’s easy to, literally, get away with murder. And in view of the facts it’s, at the very least, difficult to deflect these and similar beliefs plainly because over the years murders, rape, torture, et al have received indulgent passes, astounding the citizenry.

As Prof. Ali Riaz of Illinois State University stated: “The official explanations for these incidents have been quite confusing and somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the government has insisted that these are unrelated incidents and that they do not pose any challenge to the security of the country; on the other hand, it has claimed that these are ‘homegrown’ militants who are engaged in these heinous acts. While the country's home minister does not see any cause for concern for the safety of citizens, the chief of police has asked the citizens to create their own ‘security circle.’”[!!! -- Couldn’t help adding those exclamation marks given the contents of official statements.]

Simultaneously, compounding the confusion, administration leaders have often—and within hours of a murderous incident—declared that these are the handiwork of the political opposition. This has by now become an extremely predictable ploy with clockwork regulatory but comprehensively failing to convince anyone except only the author of these bizarre contentions themselves.

Here, then, is one reaction to this game plan: “The government is increasingly targeting the opposition and closing off its legitimate political activity, but it’s precisely that polarized political environment and limiting of the opposition’s space to participate in the political process that is creating new space for the extremists,” observed Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center in Washington.

And in an opinion piece London journalist Gwynne Dyer asserted: “She [Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina] also insisted that these murders were the work of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), or more precisely of its political ally, the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamist party. She firmly denied that foreign extremist forces such as Islamic State or al Qaeda (which would certainly approve of the killings) were active in the country.”

Having stated that background Dyer concludes, “This probably seems to Ms Hasina to be sound, practical politics, in a country where 90% of the population is Muslim. … It's also good politics for her to blame the violence exclusively on the opposition parties, since admitting that foreign Islamists are involved would mean that she was failing in her duty to defend the country. But the result of her pragmatism and passivity has been a rapid expansion in the range of targets that are coming under attack by the extremists.”

Of course, it’s a known fact that not all the victims were “atheist bloggers” or “irreligious thinkers” because some of those murdered, in reality, had absolutely nothing in common with “atheists” or “bloggers” but were law-abiding and God-fearing individuals who were simply going about their business. And then, there are the yet-unsolved (and possibly never-to-be-solved) cases of young women raped and killed.

But that’s a whole other story.

In the meantime, let’s be clear here: To the honorable members of the Cabinet: No, these cannot by any stretch of anyone’s imagination be isolated episodes; they’ve been occurring with shockingly tragic frequency. And to the law enforcement kahunas: The people of the country expect salubrious effects from your actions and words; not pontification in any shape, size or color primarily because that isn’t any segment of your mandate.