RIGHTS-BANGLADESH:
Fear Mixes with Anger after Journalist's Death
Qurratul Ain Tahmina
DHAKA, Feb 6 (IPS) - On Jan. 15 this year, in broad daylight less than 50
yards from the press club in the south-western divisional city of Khulna,
Bangladesh, a powerful bomb killed Manik Saha, a journalist known for his
courage and professional integrity, horribly mutilating his remains.
Manik Saha, a stringer for the British Broadcasing Corp Bengali Service
and correspondent for two national dailies, was going home to join his
family - wife and two kid daughters - for lunch. Saha was 48.
His wife, Nanda Rani Saha, a health assistant in a government clinic,
tells IPS in barely audible words, "If I could but see him only for once, I
would ask who could do this to him. He used to tell me he had no enemies."
But the enemies had been out there all along, and not only for Manik
Saha. Over the last 10 years, 11 journalists have died violent deaths in
the 10 districts of the south-western region, Saha being number 12.
It is not just journalists who are getting killed. Newspapers reported
altogether nearly 600 killings in the south-west in 2003 alone. The
violence permeates southern districts as well and dates back to 1970, when
the Bangladeshi chapter of India's West Bengal ultra-left Naxal movement
began here.
It had started as killings of 'class enemies' - the rich and the
oppressors of the poor. Pretty soon this brand of politics was banned, but
subsequently reigned underground.
Over the years, the main groups generated dozens of bloodthirsty rival
ones, turning from their ideological basis into gangs of dangerous
criminals. They loot, they extract money from the rich and poor alike, they
kill people brutally, and they survive - as an editorial of a leading daily
puts it, with the patronage of the main political parties.
Consecutive governments have tried unsuccessfully to eliminate these
so-called 'extremists'. The latest is an ongoing combing operation executed
jointly by the police and the paramilitary border security force. Saha was
killed in the sixth month of this operation.
On Jan. 29, a bomb attack followed by gunshots killed a local government
chairman belonging to the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). After
an hour, another bomb attack led to the death of a leader of Awami League
(AL), the main opposition party.
Both took place in Khulna City, while another Awami League leader was
slaughtered the same day in a neighbouring district.
The mob at the first venue mashed up and handed over one of the
perpetrators to the police. The police says this man admitted to belonging
to a recently-sprung extremist group called Jonojudhho and killing the BNP
leader for his treachery, as ordered by the party high command and in
exchange for 2,000 takas (about 30 U.S. dollars). He also told the police
that his leaders had ordered the killing of Manik Saha too.
Additional Commissioner S M Sazzat Ali, in charge of the city police,
told IPS on Jan. 31 that this gave them clues to the case: "We now know who
killed Manik Saha and for what reasons. We hope to frame charges within a
month."
But Jonojudhho, meaning People's War, had claimed Saha's killing as
early as Jan. 17 by distributing a leaflet - and even left its cellular
phone contacts. Many are hence surprised that it took the police nearly two
weeks and fresh atrocities to make progress in the case.
Besides, in the recent past Saha himself had been feeling insecure and
had once even obtained police protection at his home.
A police subinspector stands the plaintiff in two separate cases filed
for the Saha killing. Pradeep Saha, Manik's younger brother, explains, "In
our region, the plaintiffs of such murder cases are in direct threats. With
my brother gone, we feel absolutely defenceless."
Saha's killing raised spontaneous protests and demands for justice.
Local journalists have since received anonymous threats of facing Saha's
destiny should they raise an outcry.
Those who speak to IPS seek anonymity because the continued violent
killings in the region instill a hushed reign of terror. The culture of
death rules here, as say the police authorities, with its vast supplies of
illegal arms and explosives.
Saha belonged to the minority religious community of Hindus in this
mainly Muslim country. Following the parliamentary elections in October
2001, he reported on the extensive violence committed against Hindus,
commonly perceived as supporters of the defeated Awami League. He reported
similar oppression of the leaders and supporters of the party.
Formerly a communist activist, Saha had long been reporting and
mobilising protests against the widespread cultivation of shrimps in the
region, a lucrative sector dominated by the powerful in both the BNP and
the Awami League camps, which devastated the environment and livelihoods of
the poorer farmers.
In this region with an extensive porous border with India, the
'extremists' and the underworld gangs of smugglers, the politicians who use
them to win elections and maintain influence, the shrimp farm owners - all
present a coordinated, overlapping countenance. Police officers have been
transferred on allegations of their collusion with the underworld.
A brief period of relative peace had come in the region following the
last government's negotiation of the surrender by nearly 3,000 'extremists'
on condition of amnesty and rehabilitation. Those facing grievous charges
were kept interned, but many managed to come out on bail, disgruntled.
The mid-1999 surrender had been mediated by the editor of a local daily,
who himself was killed soon after. The terror then returned full-scale,
while many of those surrendered were incorporated within the Awami League,
the then ruling party.
Samsur Rahman, another journalist commended for his bold reporting, was
shot dead in July 2000 in Jessore, a town adjoining Khulna. His widow filed
a case, but the family thinks it is a doomed one.
The leaders of the ruling BNP have been accused of sheltering those
accused of Rahman's murder. In one journalist's death, a case on which was
filed during the last regime and recently quashed, a minister of the
present government was named as one of the accused.
In August, following the killing of an opposition leader in Khulna, Saha
had told a local television channel that the fact that killers are going
scot-free is encouraging fresh killings. In only two of the 12 cases
brought around the killing of journalists have verdicts been reached in 10
years.
Today, few in Khulna believe Jonojhuddho to be the main instigator of
Manik Saha's killing. Says an independent observer, "They are nothing but
one of the mercenary killer groups."
"I want the main planners punished," says Nanda Rani Saha. Her
15-year-old daughter Moumita has no such hope, or any comment. Over the
past weeks, government officials have been pledging retribution, but the
family finds little consolation in promises. (END/2004)
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