The One party, One family dynasty ruling Bangladesh

A great tragedy of the Bangladeshi people is that their own journalists have simply disappeared into sycophantic oblivion like the Pravda journalists of yore; the very idea that any newspaper or broadcast show would even ask where does the so-called Prime Minister’s uber-nationalistic son live, or who he is married to, or how he makes a living, is simply unimaginable for the chattering conglomeration of cowards known as Bangladesh’s “editors” and “broadcasters”, never mind anything more substantial A greater tragedy is that the ‘respectable’ international media–think the New York Times, the Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, etc–have their Bangladesh beats staffed by junior stringers too dependent on their New Delhi offices or too enamored with the concept of a woman ruling a Muslim-majority country or too thoroughly compromised with family ties to the Bangladeshi dictatorship (like the head of the BBC Bengali Service) to be of much use in pointing out the bloodthirsty and cruel nature of the Bangladeshi dictatorship that is little more than a corrupted family enterprise dedicated to greed. In regards to almost any other country (think present day Sri Lanka), journalists in London and New York would be making a big deal–rightly so–about such a state of affairs. But alas, poor Bangladeshis must be children of a lesser God.

And revolt we did! Happy Birthday Bangladesh!!

When the corrupt politicians dithered and tucked tail to the red-light district of Calcutta as the Pakistani military let loose its savagery on the night of March 25, 1971, a patriot, officer and gentleman stood up and fought the Occupation Forces, and led others from the front.

http://southasiajournal.net/bangladesh-i-am-zia-speaking-in-that-case-we-revolt-major-ziaur-rahman-march-25-1971/

“In that case, we REVOLT”. ..he said. And revolt we did. And revolt we did. And revolt we did.

Whether the purchased mouthpieces known as Bangladesh’s editors and producers admit these days or not, the world knows and history records. Bangladesh turns 51…and may she live long, and soon restore the democracy that her people bled for those 51 years ago.

To the consternation of the current regime and its polite faced crooked, craven, and cowardly enablers in the media and intelligentsia….proud to proclaim: Bangladesh Zindabad!!

Punitive sanctions are good; preventive ones are even better

The US sanctions on a few high level leaders of the Bangladeshi dictatorship’s brutal security establishment are not only welcome news but are already having a measurable impact: since the announcement of the sanctions until last night, not a single victim has died in staged encounters with the regime security forces, and no known cases of dissidents being bundled into unmarked vans have come to pass. That will change as the world’s attention turns elsewhere.

Yet, such punitive sanctions come too late for too many victims like this 7 year old girl pictured above whose father, a pro-democracy activist, was snatched away by the regime in the dead of the night from their family home, bundled in an unmarked vehicle, and never heard from again. No surprisingly, most of Bangladesh’s ‘free press’ studiously avoided this story, like it has much of the sordid saga of the Awami League policy of making its substantive critics simply ‘disappear’. After all, much of the ostensibly ‘private sector’ press is owned by regime affiliated businesses; in some cases the ownership is far more direct with the ruling party politicians, “MP”s and central committee members outright owning media outlets.

A far better approach will be to take preventive sanctions early on targeting a regime’s ‘polite’ apologists of brutality: the publishers and editors of regime-affiliated newspapers along with their families; the executives of regime aligned corporations and business conglomerates along with their families; and high ranking members of the university faculties and bar associations whose credentialed prestige is put to use as a cover for regime atrocities. In Bangladesh, there is a singular desire for all these elites to help their children, spouses, and ultimately themselves migrate to the democratic West, even as they mouth off condemnations of that very West in public. From both a moral and pragmatic perspective, such a preventative approach to sanctions is far better suited to save more lives.

The middle-school apologia for dictatorship: predictable, uniform, unoriginal

Blame the “western media”, blame “conspiracy against us”, blame “lack of patriotism”, blame “colonialism”, blame “but what about..”…that’s in a nutshell the toolbox of every barbaric dictatorship–and its paid and unpaid interlocutors–which is criticized for the horrid treatment of its own citizens. That apologia is pathetically old and worn out; it may impress the usual Lefties of the Noam Chomsky and Edward Said kind but is little more than the typical middle school set of excuses of the intellectually unsound, morally compromised, and spiritually bankrupt dumbasses.  Nowhere is this state of manufactured apologia so predictable, so uniform, and so standardized as in Bangladesh where the rapacious one party regime of Awami League has astutely used its cronies in what remains of the Bangladeshi intelligentsia to conflate loyalty to the ruling family and ruling party with loyalty to the country. And across Europe and America, younger Bangladeshis whose parents depend on Awami largesse for their businesses and professions at home, have taken up this bizarre unoriginal apologia with gusto. At least such men and women in their 20s and 30s are in ‘respectable’ company: barring a few brave souls in the likes of New Age, the entire English-language press in Bangladesh has proudly donned the mantle of foreign ministry spokesmen for the Awami League dictatorship in a manner that emulates the mannerisms of the “journalists” of the English- and German editions of Pravda and Izvestia of yore.

Dictatorships rot not just a society but the conscience of those associated with them.

Democracy vs Development: the phony ‘debate’

Have you noticed that all those politicians, journalists, ‘experts’, and ‘civil society’ types who engage in ‘profound’ debate on “democracy vs development” have their own spouses, children, and investments safely abroad in capitalist, democratic societies? In fact in many cases they themselves either live in such free societies or have residency/citizenship in those countries? See, as is wont in the intellectually and morally bankrupt Bong upper middle classes, it comes down to a simple “democracy for me, not for thee”. Even the late Enayetullah Khan–perhaps second only to Manik Mia in genuine stature–who was big into “Leftist” politics and beliefs and all that “pro peasant” stuff…where are his kids and siblings? They ain’t in China, bud!

The dichotomy of ‘democracy vs development’ is an utterly false one, as is its cousin “which path to development..democratic or autocratic”. It’s a narrative delved into by those politicos who benefit from being in unaccountable state power or those who benefit from these primary beneficiary politicos in terms of prime ministerial palace (ie Gonobhobon) invitations, plots of choice residential land in Purbachal and Uttara, scholarships and fellowships (again to democratic countries..see a pattern here?), generous make-believe jobs in the quasi-public sector (what the heck does “head of corporate social responsibility” even do in a five branch bank in Bangladesh except be the spouse of an editor who wisely kept quiet about the terrorism of BCL??).

Unfortunately for Bangladesh, the utter phoniness of this dichotomy has been studiously avoided as a subject matter of comment by the stringers for Wall Street Journal, WaPo, the Economist, the Telegraph, and their ilk. Maybe these stringers pine for those invitations to Gonobhobon as well? Or perhaps the drinks regularly bought for ‘journalists’ by the “Clown” Prince of Bangladesh in Alexandria, Virginia’s downtown shopping district are too exquisite to pass over? Err…yes….the son of Bangladesh’s dictator lives in a palatial home in northern Virginia off of the ‘IT contracts’ his momma sends him for creating a “Digital Bangladesh”….a highly successful initiative if there was one, or something https://bdnews24.com/aviation/2021/12/23/meet-an-airline-that-doesnt-sell-tickets-online-biman-bangladesh

Bangladesh’s real civil society faces the same assault, but you wouldn’t know

Kudos to WaPo for publishing this https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/08/kashmir-civil-society-khurram-parvez-democracy-summit-india/story. Such a frontal assault is also what’s happening in Bangladesh, albeit sans the religious angle. But Bangladesh being a much ‘smaller’ and perhaps ‘backwater’ country, the journalists who cover her, as I mentioned in my previous post, are simply too incompetent or compromised to be this bold. Or perhaps they’re starry eyed liberals not too far removed from grad school who simply want to hang out with the ‘cool peeps’ (read ‘elites’ of the upper middle class in Bangladesh, a segment of society thoroughly codependent vis-à-vis the ruling one family one party dictatorship).

Quality matters and integrity matters. Both traits are in short supply among those in mainstream Western news outlets, think tanks, and research centers who are given the “Bangladesh” desk.

The second stringers who ‘cover’ Bangladesh

In the first 20 years of her existence, neatly coinciding with the last 20 years of the Cold War, Bangladesh was decidedly a backwater in the global scheme of things; as such the “Bangladesh beat”–at foreign offices, major Western media, university research centers–was the place where ambitious late 20 somethings went to dabble in things “South Asia” while waiting for their big “promotion” to the affairs of newsworthy Pakistan, exciting India, exotic Sri Lanka, and cutesy Nepal. I knew several such worthies during graduate school via my years of participation in Model UN conferences where wannabe globetrotter college students and their graduate school counterparts would get together to, in their own minds, try out for the world stage. Not much has changed even as Bangladesh has become more of a presence in South Asia. Unfortunately, that lack of quality in the “Bangladesh expertise” in foreign offices, major Western media, university research centers seeps into the intellectual laziness that produces “scholarship” and “journalism” across much of Western Europe and North America which relies on tropes like “imperfect democracy” and “Battle of the Begums” and “questionable elections” and similar euphemisms that simply ignore the fundamental fact of governance in Bangladesh: it is a brutal, one family, one party dictatorship that is a cross between Kim’s North Korea and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe…except that North Korea and Zimbabwe actually get/did get critical coverage in US, UK, and Canadian newspapers, magazines, and web outlets whereas it’s almost impossible to find any decent scholar or journalist on either side of the Atlantic asking tough questions about, say, the thuggery of the Bangladeshi regime’s para-statal militia BCL or the presence of almost every cabinet member’s family permanently in Toronto in palatial homes paid for by the Bangladeshi taxpayer, or the shadowy activities, income streams , and family of the Virginia-based son of the Bangladeshi dictator. On the contrary more than a few such “experts” in newsrooms and foreign offices and research foundations are often wined and dined by the heir apparent Sajeeb Wazed in Fairfax and Alexandria to make sure that the “correct” narrative is continuously peddled, albeit with the usual mealy mouthed caveats to appear serious. The network of the ruling family’s elite retainers in Bangladesh and abroad do a very good job keeping the “Bangladesh” desk experts mollified; and anymore, it’s only those retainers (and their children) who are able to learn English and train abroad to become more cosmopolitan.

Thus goes the tragedy of Bangladesh which, in the words of the current crop of Bangladesh “experts” in London and New York and Washington and Toronto, is merely a case of “imperfect democracy”. Talk about calling domestic violence merely a “family dispute”.

Finally….sanctions by the US on the Bangladeshi dictatorship’s chief henchmen

About time…but more needs to be done

The sanctions imposed on 5 of the regime’s security leaders and human rights violators by the United States this month https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0526 is a case of better too little and late, than never. Years of engagement by thoughtful individuals in the diaspora has helped move this effort to this point. But far more needs to be done if the slide of Bangladesh to an irreversible Cuba-type dictatorship is to be avoided. Organizations like the regime’s Basij-type militia, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) should be put on par with the sanctioned Rapid Action Battalion; the BCL’s reign of terror, once limited to university dorms, has spread across the country, and the terror squad remains the dictatorship’s preferred option to intimidate, torture, maim, rape, and beat up democratic dissenters all over the country. Similarly, regime enablers in the judiciary, the media, and the useless election commission need to be held accountable: neither the United States nor the rest of the civilized world should allow this supporting cast of the Awami League dictatorship to visit Disneyland, the Sorbonne, and the Royal Albert Hall with impunity while their deliberate actions provide a veneer of legitimacy to a bloodthirsty dictatorship.

What NYT, Economist, WaPo won’t admit

It’s a decided surprise when occasionally the once respected Prothom Alo newspaper in Dhaka (a sister concern of the Daily Star of regime pet ‘critic’ Mahfuz Anam) spills out the beans on the nature of the ‘democracy’ that that the graduate interns at the Bangladesh beat at the New York Times or Washington Post or the compromised Susannah Savage at the Economist are too lazy to investigatehttps://www.prothomalo.com/politics/%E0%A6%8F%E0%A6%95-%E0%A6%AF%E0%A7%81%E0%A6%97%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%AD%E0%A6%BE-%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B6%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%81%E0%A7%9C%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A4%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%A6%E0%A7%87%E0%A7%9F%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BF-%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0 . In a daring expose with quantifiable metrics, the article points out that despite Constitutional guarantees to the contrary, the police chiefs in Dhaka and the outlying districts rarely allow public gatherings of opposition parties or any civil society organizations that are not part of the regime ideological machinery. On those extremely rare times that such rallies are allowed to fool the the likes of Ms. Savage and Tunku Varadarajan (formerly of WSJ and deeply connected to regime figures in Dhaka), non-state actors like the ruling junta’s vigilante terror group BCL (the Bangladeshi regime’s version of Iran’s Basij) descend an hour or so before the rally and randomly beat up participants and destroy audio equipment before ‘disappearing’ as the police stand mum. There have never been any prosecutions for such vandalism; on the contrary regime ministers regularly praise such para-statal violence.

Phony secularism of the Bangladeshi dictatorship

The horrendous attacks on Hindus across Bangladesh–under an ostensibly secular regime–lay bare the dirty secret of the unelected Bangladeshi regime that none of the pet press dares touch: in the absence of legitimacy gained from the ballot box, the dictatorship (like many others in developing countries) has leaned on religious zealots for a veneer of manufactured acceptability. In the case of the one-party, one-family Awami League dictatorship in Dhaka, these zealots often belong to the shadowy Hefazat-e-Islam movement who once tussled with the government but then came to an understanding of mutual reinforcement of absolutist dogma.