Unheard Voices

HRW has published a 44 page summary on the account of what happened to Tasneem Khalil in custoday.

Here is the chilling full report where there is a lot of first hand account by Tasneem.

The international media has picked up the news story widely.

Original thread from last May in UV.

Here is a reaction that we got after someone read through the piece:

My blood is boiling with rage. I have been there all along in Bangladesh but never knew a single word of it. So you see how ‘neutral’ this media has become. I was in total darkness. I read T Khalil’s blog once in a while and thought that was a smart guy. It was so appalling to see what happened to him and its even worse than Pak Army cause its our own Army. I knew DGFI is involved in some notorious activities but this is the first time I saw first hand evidence.

The report on Tasneem is outrageous, no doubt.

However, if someone reads it as a damning indictment against the whole of army in general, it will be wrong. As evident from Tasneem’s testimony, there were a number of people in army (juniors) who were sympathetic to him. But the reality is that there is unchecked and unaccoutable power to a very few. When that happens, there is bound to be misuse ot it. As a result, the image of the whole institution suffers. That is what we are seeing in Bangladesh today. That is why an institute that was not trained for law enforcements should not have taken over this job for such a prolonged period. It simply does not work. So this is damning indictment against using army for law enforcement and also an indictment against arbitrary use of power. Most importantly its a damning indictment against torture.

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pic credit: private

Jahangir Alam Akash of Rajshahi recently did something really foolish which not many journalists dared to do in today’s Bangladesh. He filed an exclusive report for CSB channel on how RAB shot to injury a local political leader point blank in front of his wife and daughter. 30 minutes after the shooting, he went to the scene and reported live for CSB. Bad news for him. RAB commandar was not happy at this national exposure. The local RAB commander Major Rashidul Hasan Rashid called him and said he better watch out. His reports were “anti-state” and RAB would be forced to take action against him. Anyone who is familiar with our Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) knows that the “action” is almost tantamount to death sentence. Ever since then, Akash and his pregnant wife Sharmin felt there was no one to protect them. They moved from their house terrified and moved outside Rajshahi in fear of getting killed in “crossfire”.

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Are we seeing a Bangladesh version of Dutch cartoon fiasco? Recently a cartoon at weekly Alpin magazine of Daily Prothom-Alo raised protests among the bigots and Muslim fundamentalists of Bangladesh.

Daily prothom Alo swiftly withdrew the issue and apologized for the cartoon. I am not sure whether that was needed, but this should have been enough for those who may have been offended.

However an alarming news just came . Bangladesh Government has arrested the cartoonist Mr Arifur Rahman.

This arrest raises serious concern about continued patronization of the religious zealots, fundamentalists and bigots by the successive governments in Bangladesh.

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