[This interview with Reza Kibria -- son of former Bangladesh Finance Minister SAMS Kibria, assassinated in January -- was to appear in the debut issue of a weekly newsmagazine. Unfortunately, for unstated reasons, all the copies of the magazine (except a few preview copies) were sieged hours before the debut newsstand hit (at this stage, it is not convenient for me to spell out more detail account of the episode).

As I believe this interview contains valuable information and opinion that needs public attention and analysis, I am resorting to an Internet distribution. I am inviting concerned readers to freely redistribute this piece (and releasing this under a Creative Commons license).

The interview is mirrored with a photo by Nabil Shahidi at http://www.iwrnews.org/tasneem and http://www.drishtipat.org/blog

-- Tasneem Khalil]

Standing for My Father — Reza Kibria Interview Transcript
28 April, 2005

Interviewed by Tasneem Khalil. Photo by Nabil Shahidi

What is ‘Blue for Peace’? Tell us about the organisation and your goals.

We are a family organisation — my mother (Asma Kibria), myself, my sister (Nazli Kibria) and my wife (Rina Kibria) — just the four of us. We do have friends and well-wishers who assist us.

In terms of our goals, my mother has stated three goals: one is to ensure proper investigation into the killing of my father. Second is to ensure punishment of the killers. In this country, quite often we have investigations and trials do take place but the killers are not punished. And the third goal is perhaps the most difficult one: no family should suffer as we have suffered, the reign of terror that has begun in recent years must end. There should be an end to political killings in this country.

What sort of response are you receiving from the general people?

In one of our protests, there was a moving moment when I was thanking the people standing in line, holding out banners, protesting the assassination of my father.

I thanked this lady, “for coming here and standing for my father”. And she said, “No. It’s not just for your father, I respected him but I don’t stand in the streets for him”. I was a little surprised at first until she explained, “I have come for them” — she pointed to her two young daughters standing next to her. “It’s for their future. I want to make sure they do not live in a Bangladesh where such killings go unpunished and I am standing in the streets for them”.

We have received very heartening response, much more than we expected. There’s a recent trend in this country, where such killings take place. There are some immediate street protests, may be a few condolence meetings and then everything dies down and people wait for the next killing to take place before fresh protests!

This time we found that the anger against these killings has been sustained (my father’s is one of a series of killings). People’s feeling of helplessness at these killings has perhaps lessened (to some degree) partly due to the strategies my mother has introduced. New styles of peaceful protest where people are able to participate.

USA-based human rights organisation Drishtipat issued an alert after Kibria’s assassination calling for an end to such killings. Later, they came under fire from a senior minister of the government. How do you see this?

I took note of that. Actually, there are various websites and organisations that try to disseminate information about what’s happening in this country and (react to that). It’s very difficult to control the flow of information in this age of easy internet access. I am sure that someone like the Law Minister would have figured that out by now.

As to his talking about an ‘anti-Bangladesh’ campaign, he is talking about ‘the damage to the image of the country’. The question is with the ‘image of the government’ that is at stake not the image of the country.

More damage is done to the image of the country when political killings of opposition leaders, liberals, intellectuals, writers take place with impunity. That damages the image not reporting such killings which is what he seems to be concerned about.

Read Full Interview here