The surprise is not that Bangladesh’s heavily politicized one party state and its military apparatus are so shockingly full of brutality and corruption as shown by the shocking expose of Al-Jazeera’s investigative journalism team. The bigger surprise, perhaps, is the subservient, cowardly, and craven attitude of Bangladesh’s ‘free’ press and ‘intelligentsia’ which is shooting the messenger instead of acknowledging the barbaric message. True Stalinism as envisaged by the dictator father of the current dictator.
Another August 15…Bangladesh’s National Sycophancy Day
The so called “intelligentsia” in Bangladesh in its sycophancy for the ruling family’s criminal deceased spawns is no less than that of its erstwhile Iraqi counterpart in its adoration for Udai and Qusai. Legacy, you say? Where are the stories of bank loot that Mujib’s son (and Sheikh Hasina’s brother) Kamal was caught for by his own police? What about women he abducted from Dhaka University on regular intervals…including the woman he forcibly married eventually? How about the threats to the players and referees of Dhaka football league whenever a team played the ruling family’s Abahani club (which, by the way, in contravention of all laws and regulations, was ‘dropped’ into First Division of the League without the usual process of going through Pioneer, Third, and Second Divisions)?
Legacy, my a**! How craven even the most craven sycophants can be is most evident on August 15 among the pathetic, parasitic, pathological species called “Bangladeshi intellectuals”, one of whom dutifully writes another pathos filled fawning piece here https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/2020/08/15/op-ed-the-legacy-of-sheikh-kamal on this anniversary of the end of Sheikh Mujib’s dictatorship in 1975.
COVID19 Relief…another opportunity for Awami League loot
Those who lived through the famine of 1974 in Bangladesh know well how wholesale plunder of relief goods was carried out: tonnes of aid material–tents, blankets, ready-to-eat meals, medicine, toiletries–donated by the UN and major Western countries were whisked away in broad daylight from airports, train stations, and bus depots by leaders at every level of the ruling Awami League in a manner that every leader from the precinct boss to the cabinet member got a ‘cut’ commensurate with his rank. How history repeats itself. The Awami League is not in power–once again as a one party one family regime, this time under the thumb of the previous dictator’s daughter…and sure enough you can’t open a page of a Dhaka newspaper without seeing multiple incidents of Awami Leaguers looting relief goods. Sure, the cowardly journalists of Bangladesh–to stay clear of getting ‘disappeared’ by the state security forces or hauled to jail without trial under the politely titled ‘Digital Security Act’ use the euphemism ‘influential political leaders’ rather than ‘Awami League leaders’…as if in a one party state there are influential political leaders other than the ruling party hacks. Fortunately, international media–when paying attention which is rare–is not quite that afraid of the Bangladeshi dictatorship’s strictures. https://www.ucanews.com/news/corruption-mars-bangladeshs-covid-19-relief-efforts/87700
Rape…a veritable weapon of intimidation by the Awami League
No surprise in the drama called “Dhaka City elections’ where the usual Awami League tactics of a subservient election commission, a silent police, fearful mainstream journos, and pre-poll violence by the inhouse terror squad BCL made sure that there was no doubt how the results will turn out…as they always have at every election at every level since the Awami League came to power in 2008. But just to be sure everything is fully guaranteed, BCL thugs threatened female pro-democracy poll workers with violent rape–again a long standing Awami League tactic perfected by Mujib’s son Sheikh Kamal, just like Saddam’s sons did–if they didn’t leave their election monitoring duties quickly, this news report..like dozens of others points out. Of course, mainstream media like NTV, Ekushey TV, Daily Star, Prothom Alo and Dhaka Tribune have remained dutifully unconcerned lest their masters pull back the leash more. https://www.jugantor.com/politics/273775/%E0%A6%A7%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%B7%E0%A6%A3%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%B9%E0%A7%81%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF-%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%BF%E0%A7%9F%E0%A7%87-%E0%A7%A7%E0%A7%A8-%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%80-%E0%A6%8F%E0%A6%9C%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%A8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%9F%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%AC%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%B0-%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%87-%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B2-%E0%A6%86%E0%A6%B2%E0%A7%80%E0%A6%97%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%80%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%BE
Selecting Dhaka’s mayors: some call it ‘city elections’
So the old joke is back in currency: Dhaka City’s two municipal corporations will have ‘elections’ again in January now that the supposed term of the previous city bosses is over. Sounds very normal and democratic and civic, except it’s a cruel parody that most Western journalists–never mind the local ones–simply gulp in stride. Sure there will be ballot boxes and CNN style running totals by the hour and even a few candidates chosen as token ‘opposition’ by the ruling junta’s affiliated ‘parties’. But the result will be as well known from the well before the first ‘vote’ is cast as the night is after sunset. Of course, it is possible that a mixture of threats and cajoling may prompt the main pro-democracy opposition BNP to put up a sacrificial lamb but that routine is well known too: even before the ink is dry on the nomination papers, thousands of BNP activists will be locked up without charges, let alone verdicts, only to be let go the day after elections; any attempts to hold canvassing rallies by the BNP candidates will be smashed by weapon-wielding cadres of the regime’s inhouse terror outfit BCL; and finally, just to make sure of things, BCL thugs will be deployed around polling stations to make sure that the citizenry votes ‘correctly’.
The day after, the editors of the major dailies will bemoan ‘irregularities’….and in the evening line up to partake in Radisson receptions hosted by some minister to fete the new ‘mayors elect’. This pathetic mixture of cheap momentary outrage and deeply ingrained sycophancy is the new normal for Bangladesh’s intelligentsia.
Millenials–or at least the more privileged ones among them–will post selfies about their ‘votes’ and pen unoriginally profound posts about how they hope now traffic will improve and the city streets will be clean and what not. Living in a one party one family dictatorship robs even millenials of any sense of discernment. And you can’t really blame them too much: when their parents and their teachers and their bosses all sold their souls to the beck and call of 10 taka samosas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY7cEc0h8G8, you cannot but have pity on their cult-like naivete.
A little less outrage and a little more action
The outrage expressed by the chief envoys of the US, UK, and EU regarding the brutal murder of Abrar Fahad is commendable. What would be much better would be for these diplomats to exercise their reserve authority as head of consular missions, and impose temporary sanctions on nonimmigrant visa applications by members of the BCL terror group which is affiliated to the ruling junta and whose members tortured and killed Abrar Fahad.
A vassal state like Hungary and (former) DDR
The de facto prohibition in Bangladesh of any peaceful protests against India’s unfortunate actions in Kashmir remove one more figment of doubt that Bangladesh–under the current unelected one party, one family dictatorship–is little more than a vassal state of India. Kind of like Hungary, Poland, and the former East Germany were of the USSR back in the day.
Rape and threats of rape: the tools of intimidation Bangladesh style
It seems not a day goes by where even the muzzled mainstream media of Bangladesh doesn’t report some girl, infant, woman being raped or threatened with such barbarity by some local leader of the BCL–the ‘student’ wing or actually the inhouse terror squad of the ruling one party Awami League junta. Two days ago the victims were the doctors in the emergency room of Sylhet’s Women’s Medical College who had dared to ask BCL members to step outside while their comrade was being treated for an appendix problem. Of course, the police routinely refuse to not only help victims but even record complaints, lest the BCL thugs get their masters in the ruling party to ruin careers of police officers. This is not new for the Awami League: their first government–of 1972-1975–routinely used sexual assault as a tool of coercion with the brother of the current ‘Prime Minister’ well knows for his rape exploits like Saddam’s sons decades later. This is the regime, by the way, that too many Western feminists and progressives defend and whose apologists get space in the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post to regularly bellyache about their supposedly ‘progressive’ ‘Prime Minister’. Commonsense and decency would dictate that Western governments would classify the BCL as a terror organization just like the Revolutionary Guard of Iran and Zimbabwe ‘War Veterans’. But I guess in Washington, Ottawa, and Brussels, some victims are far more worthy of sympathy than others, if for no other reason than intellectual laziness. That said, it is hard to blame the Western civil servants given that almost all of the mainstream press in Bangladesh has set a new record of cowardice in ‘seeing no evil’; even in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe there were actual journalists who wrote the truth regularly.
Fire hazards in a dictatorship
Almost every week another building goes up in flames and dozens die in Dhaka. For those wondering why nothing is done to fix the zoning, structural, and fire code violations, ask yourself this: what is the incentive for an unelected government to do that ESPECIALLY when the violators—almost always big businesses with ownership interest held by those close to the ruling junta—are literally bankrolling the machinery of the dictatorship in the absence of any popular legitimacy. The issue is not laws or regulations…they exist in abundance. The problem just happens to be that there is no incentive for an unelected dictatorship to enforce those regulations when such enforcement potentially undermines one of the elements in its own very narrow base of legitimacy. Bangladesh’s press and television stations—ostensibly private but under the strong thumb of the government’s intelligence agencies and often led by rent-seeking cowardly producers and editors—will never mention this angle…because they themselves are part of that thin sliver of manufactured legitimacy.
The Cadre’s Training School ULAB
Every dictatorship needs its own institution of higher learning to train cadres outside of the military academies. China has its Central Party School; the USSR had its The Higher Party School or VPSch. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had its Saddam University (now called Nahrein University). The purpose for all these was to train smooth faced interlocutors to connect with the civil side of things—and even internationally—to become the ‘modern’ face of the regime. Bangladesh’s regime has been a step ahead by farming out the thing to an entity called the University of Liberal Arts of Bangladesh or ULAB, which is owned by the family of one of the ruling junta’s “Members of Parliament” and his American wife, and where an assorted set of pro-regime European or American third rate ‘scholars’ teach or lecture or sound off or on, including the Scandinavian Arild Ruud, the American Forrest Cookson, the British Tim Steele, and a few others of similar ‘my loyalty for any dictatorship for the right amount of dollars’ vintage. It is a smart move since Bengalis are mightily impressed by white people saying nice things about them and graduate interns in Western think tanks and newspapers are equally impressed when a white guy writes something profound defending a dictatorship.