Untold Facts

Extra –Judicial Killings Now and in the Past

Angels
The Foreign Minister of Bangladesh Ms Dipu Moni in an interview with a foreign media stated very clearly therein on the 23rd May morning as tuned in Dhaka that there had been all extra-judicial killings that continued unchecked during the last seven years that they can not stop right away. She made the excuse as extra-judicial killings have been going on just as it had been before. Her party, however, promised to the people as a pre-election promise having had no such pre-condition of anything whatsoever she has now so made the excuse for.

Definition
What is extra-judicial killing? Such killing may rightly be so labeled as of taking any sacred human life without recourse to the due process of law. Any such killing is not only considered condemnably inhuman but also illegal in civilized countries. But the crucial point is that Bangladesh since its independence in 1971 is not immune from this guilt, and there is no truth in the claim that such extra-judicial killings had been there during the last seven years from late 2001 to December 2008.

Soon after 1972
I would argue that extra-judicial killings of not hundreds but thousands have been the way of life in Bangladesh since the very inception in early 1972, if one would condone the massacres of 1971 on one side or the other. The top boss then is on record of unleashing terror by his sayings like LAL GHORA DABRIYE DEBO (I will crush everything with red horse), NAKSHAL DEKHLEYE GULI KORO (Shoot at sight of Nakshal), KOTHAE AJ SERAJ SIKDER ( Where is Seraj Sikder today, he was killed), etc.

Blessed killers
The top boss prompted hoodlums and killers during the period from early 1972 to mid August 1975, then were prominent groups led by Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Moni and SP (Dhaka) Mahbub. They controlled mainly the capital city and around through their own terror techniques and killings of presumed opponents. In other locations, there were similar killer groups but with blessings from Kamal as he happened to be the eldest son of the top boss and Moni, the most powerful nephew of the same boss and the Jubo League chief. SP Mahbub was known also as the white Zeep force. They would use bullies and terror tactics to any who in their view would be any body of the opposition groups, the JSD, the banned party workers, underground party sympathizers, etc. They would harass the imagined enemies through rent seeking, physical torture in secret locations and killings as and when they would wish to do so. How about the liabilities of those facts of extra-judicial killings?

Sheikh Kamal’s fancy
Kamal had other fancy being a youthful one at the university class role to pick up and sexually harass girls at random and particularly the more beautiful ones. His father, may be that is why, got a promising university girl married to him despite her parents’ (University Engineer) unwillingness. That did not stop Kamal going after other girls, particularly of the university classes. One of my friends then lamented to me that his youngest sister, I knew her and a very beautiful one, then a first year honors philosophy student had to be withdrawn from the university class, gave her in marriage at that young age, and for better safety sent to England with her newly wed husband as the girl and the family felt insecure from the lust of Kamal.

Rakhhi Bahini
The euphemistically labeled as the Rakhhi Bahini but unconstitutional paramilitary force planned, trained, specifically motivated and armed profusely by the Indian central intelligence agency, R&AW under the Indian General Ovan constituted the notorious killer force of the top boss with all impunity. It was estimated that this force alone killed 11, 000 worker and mid level leaders of the JSD (Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal) alone, a post 1971 breakaway faction from the Awami League and the dedicatedly fierce freedom fighters of 1971. Another estimate had the figure of nearly 37,000 of all genres of opposition workers killed in three and half years of the first Awami League first term rule in independent Bangladesh. Were they not extra-judicial killings? People’s memory being short those facts had almost been lost in oblivion.

Nasim, Shamim, Hazari, Taher, etc
How about killer groups led by Nasim, Shamim, Hazari, Taher etc. who had all free license to kill whoever they would like and deem fit from the nod of the second term boss of the Awami League government (1996-2001)? How could people so soon forget that the top boss herself openly from the P.M.’s position commanded and gave open license to kill in reprisal ‘ten for one’? Let us recall that her verbatim in Bengali quoted by some fearless writers including the BBC famous Serajur Rahman, was ‘EKTAR BADALE DASHTA LASH CHAI’. She asked further that whoever of her cadres could not do the heroic job of killing ten for one he must wear bangles like girls/women.

I don’t have exact figures of all the extra-judicial killings during the second term of the Awami League at this moment. But apart from many killings in police custody that was certainly extra-judicial killings. I recall a killing of unknown person and then dumped the body in the Madarasa compound run by Shaikhul Hadis Allama Azizul Haq for implicating him in the murder case and to cow him down to the boss’s party. The Allama was jailed for this concocted case.

RAB
RAB or Rapid Action Battalion is a new special police force formed during the 2001-2006 term of the BNP government. Despite some errors made by the RAB operations that might amount to extra-judicial killings, their jobs done in the main were appreciated by the common peace loving people for obvious reason of huge increase of terrorists in the country not without good many reasons like unemployment, widening inequality between the poor and the rich; no less crucial is the syndrome of continuing erosion of moral values. The Awami had the promise to stop extra-judicial killings, but how could they do away with the right to self- defense of the law enforcing agencies, let alone of the RAB? But the government could put immediately the perpetrators to justice in the set rules of the organizations concerned.

Private hoodlums again
Private hoodlums of the old Awami League variety have been in operation once again in since the beginning of 2009. Rent seeking and extortions are not without rationale though as many of them are unemployed, yet needs money to run day- to- day party programs. Tender snatching businesses fetch bigger booties and division of quantum of booties at times lead to same side extra-judicial killings. These are the places and issues the government needs to give serious attention, because they are left off, at times, outside the due process of law of the law enforcing agencies for unknown reasons.

The orchestration in a sort of apparent distancing away from the new genre of hoodlums by resigning from formal position of the Student League did no qualitative change in the widespread anti-social businesses of the hoodlums. What is needed immediately to cage them all and let rule of law stay supreme unhindered for each and every issue. Let not propaganda alone take over the facts of extra-judicial killings of the past and of the present.

Author: Dr. M.T. Hussain