democracy, religion and violence

Holy places: Unholy rows | The Economist: "For all the rhetoric of ancient hatred, religious rows have grown worse in modern times. Across the Ottoman empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia to Palestine, Christians and Muslims mingled peaceably at shared sacred places.

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In Bangladesh, Muslims and Hindus lived peaceably until the election of 2001. The Hindus tend to vote for the Awami League, as Muslims in India tend to vote for the Congress Party. In 2001, the League lost, and a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and an Islamist Party won.

Immediately, an anti-Hindu pogrom swept the land: there was arson, looting, raping...the nation was stunned.

Clearly, religion had nothing to do with it: it was politicians stirring up hatred, and, of course, greed for the spoils of victory, which seems to include women.

Interestingly, the parties went on to persecute a heretical Muslim sect, the Aḥmadīyahs, with almost equal ferocity. Again, secular observers blamed it on religion.

Not so.

Consider the following extract from the Britanica:

"In their theology, the Ismāʿīlīs have absorbed the most extreme elements and heterodox ideas. The universe is viewed as a cyclic process, and the unfolding of each cycle is marked by the advent of seven “speakers”—messengers of God with Scriptures—each of whom is succeeded by seven “silents”—messengers without revealed scriptures; the last speaker (the Prophet Muḥammad) is followed by seven imāms who interpret the Will of God to man and are, in a sense, higher than the Prophet because they draw their knowledge directly from God and not from the Angel of Revelation. During the 10th century, certain Ismāʿīlī intellectuals formed a secret society called the Brethren of Purity, which issued a philosophical encyclopaedia, The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, aiming at the liquidation of positive religions in favour of a universalist spirituality.

The late Aga Khan III (1887–1957) had taken several measures to bring his followers closer to the main body of the Muslims. The Ismāʿīlīs, however, still have not mosques but jamāʿat khānahs (“gathering houses”), and their mode of worship bears little resemblance to that of the Muslims generally."

You can't get more heretical than this! Yet the Aga Khanis - as the Ismailis are known in Bangladesh - are some of the richest people here. Their location is highly conspicuous (many live in flats near Bailey Road, Dhaka across from one of the best schools in Dhaka) and their mode of worship is strikingly different. They have a jamaat khanah, where they gather every evening, and regular Muslims are not allowed in there. Naturally, weird stories proliferate about the goings-on in the jamaat khanah. When I set up a poultry farm, some of my best customers were Aga Khanis: they are extremely rich, as I said.

Their influence is international.

When General Ershad arrested Aziz Mohammed Bhai, probably the richest Aga Khani in Bangladesh, Prince Aga Khan himself came down to secure his release.

All this influence and wealth explain why the pogrom never extended to these people: it wasn't a religious pogrom at all.

The fuse was democracy, and the politicians vented their anger on the weakest members of society: as happens in India during anti-Muslim pogroms.

The spread of democracy throughout the world will bring disaster for religious minorities: in Egypt, Christians are already worried - as they well should be.

Democracy and Violence

I remember the electoral fight between my uncle, Major General (retd.) M. Khalilur Rahman and the president's man in their constituency of Jamalpur.

The general was winning, when suddenly the counting was stopped on state television. When it was resumed, we found that the general was losing. General Ershad, the president, had rigged the polls.

And what a wonderful thing that was: it meant that my uncle, no matter what he did, could not win. That meant that even if he had employed thugs he would still have lost. So, naturally, neither side employed thugs. This was the benign aspect of 'democracy' under dictatorship: the absence of goons.

When Ershad fell from power, of course, thugs and murderers and rapists became the norm. Without these criminals, you couldn't win an election.

This is what 'free and fair' have meant for Bangladesh: rule by criminals.

Peace Corps Rape Victim Jess Smochek Honored By Congress - ABC News

Peace Corps Rape Victim Jess Smochek Honored By Congress - ABC News: "Smochek was attacked while serving as a volunteer in Bangladesh in 2004. She says that a group of men began to stalk her from the very first day she arrived in the city where she was assigned. The men tried to kiss her and touch her, and ultimately gang raped her.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


Jess Smochek had repeatedly reported that she felt threatened, but the Peace Corps didn't relocate her.

Bangladesh used to be a very safe country. I remember when my cousin's American girlfriend came over in the '80s, she was comparing Dhaka with cities in Latin America. She said that she would never think of going out casually in those cities, whereas she felt perfectly safe in Dhaka.

This was before our, and after Latin America's, democratic transition.

Violence was very low in Latin America under military rule; when we reverted to democracy, rapes rose from 250 in the '80s to over 900 in 1992, and soon reached four digits. I'll never understand why the Peace Corps didn't relocate Smochek. They must have known that Bangladesh was a dangerous country. Adding insult to injury, during counseling she was made to write out all the things she had done to create the rape situation - meaning, it was her fault.

The Meaning Lies in How You Use the Word

“We are scared to the point where we are no longer free.”

This observation was made by Max Price, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, to The Economist ('The Great Scourges', A Special Report on South Africa, '5th June 2010) after the murder of yet another member of the staff last March.

The murder rate in South Africa is 33 per 100,000, compared to 5.1 in the United States. The rape rate is the highest in the world. 50 murders, 100 rapes, 330 armed robberies and 550 violent assaults are recorded every day. And the violence is often mindless.

Yet - and this is even more mindless - Freedom House gives South Africa a ranking of 2 in its 'freedom of the world index'(7 being completely unfree).

If you are not free not to be raped or murdered, then what kind of freedom is that? Clearly Freedom House's definition of freedom is very different from what most of us mean by that word.

Behind Julian Assange's Arrest: Sweden's Sex-Crime Problem - TIME

Behind Julian Assange's Arrest: Sweden's Sex-Crime Problem - TIME: "Each year, Sweden records 46 cases of reported rape per 100,000 people, roughly twice the rate in the U.S. or the U.K. Yet the conviction rate is a measly 10%, one of the lowest in the developed world.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


And why is the conviction rate so low? Victims "drop their charges out of fear, shame or loyalty to the accused." That doesn't sound like an empowered lot of women; rather, the reverse.

It may well be that both claims are correct: rape has been increasing in number, and women feel more empowered to report it (but not to follow through).

It is a well-kept academic secret that men are evolutionarily programmed towards rape: it is a low-cost effort to procreate. Given female assertiveness, greater male assertiveness is likely to be the case. There's nothing the Swedish state can do about it: millenia of evolution lie behind such phenomenon. A society that regards men and women as the same is going to do its weakest members a great deal of disservice.

Bangladesh: Stalker kills victim's father

Bangladesh: Stalker kills victim's father: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"




This kind of youth violence has occurred in the past couple of months because the ruling party patronises student and young thugs.

This is how politics is conducted in Bangladesh. When ruling party thugs can get away with any crime, it encourages the others.

This explains why such events are so new - they never used to happen before.

The Flames of Freedom (short story)

The Flames of Freedom

(click on title for short story)

Opening paragraph:

"I shall always feel affection and respect for the man who wanted to destroy western civilisation. I remember clearly how we met – that was an adventure in itself. We met through Faria, and I met her at Hotel Poshur at Mongla."


This is a story of how western foreign policy affects the lives of distant people: it begins by the Poshur River at Mongla and ends at Teknaf. The themes are an insatiable longing for peace and the inevitability of violence.

News - World: 400 alleged bullies arrested

News - World: 400 alleged bullies arrested



It is interesting that whenever civilian rule replaces military rule in Bangladesh, the number of victims - male as well as female - soars.

In 1984, under military rule, there were around 250 rapes; in 1991, our first year of democracy, the figure soared to 900, and today stands at 4-digit numbers.

Under military rule in 2007 and2008, 18 student politicians were murdered; in a single year of democratic rule in 2009, 27 were murdered.

The criminal young students of both the major parties have immunity from the law and set the example for other young men - when ruling party boys get away with rape, why shouldn't other young men try to get away with less?

The Fallacy of Accent Revisited

How many women are broken into the brothels of Lahore every month? How many women are trafficked into secular Pakistan and raped into whoredom?

We don't know.

But we know that one woman was whipped by the Taliban: and since this video was circulated throughout the world, it seemed that the Taliban are serial whippers.
This single video clip was enough to galvanise Pakistan public opinion against the Taliban, and in favour of the military action against men, women and children. M.J.Akbar devoted an entire column to refute there can be anything as a 'moderate Taliban' – on the strength of the solitary video clip.

Yet nobody has ever filmed the goings-on at the Lahore brothels.

Behavioural psychologists have dubbed this the "availability heuristic": "The availability heuristic tends to bias our interpretations, because the ease with which we can imagine an event affects our estimate of how frequently that event occurs. Television and newspapers, for example, tend to cover only the most visible, violent events. People therefore tend to overestimate incidents of violence and crime as well as the number of deaths from accidents and murder, because these events are most memorable (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). As with all cognitive shortcuts, a biased judgment occurs, because the sample of people and events that we remember is unlikely to be fair and full."

The Basenji dogs of Bangladesh

The Basenji dog never barks; Amnesty International sometime does: sometimes it's just a Basenji.


And this was one of the occasions.


A bomb maker of an Islamist group, Boma Mizan, was arrested by security forces, on 14th May after a four-hour struggle.


He gave the signal to his wife, Sharmin, and the lady immediately set off explosives to try and blow up herself and her children. She succeeded only in blowing off her right wrist and wounding her two children, one two years old, the other a baby.


Why did she do that?


Naturally, she didn't want to be raped and tortured for information, as, without doubt, she will be. And with her gone, who would look after her children? It seemed the rational thing to do.


But where were the Basenji dogs of the west: Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the assorted chorus of our conscience?


Nowhere to be heard.


When jihadis are arrested, there is never any call from the Basenjis to follow due process, avoid the use of torture, the need for transparency….


Yet Human Rights Watch has been snapping like a Russian Samoyed over the arrest of BDR soldiers implicated in the murder and rape of army officers and their wives.


Double standards? Perish the thought: they just lose their voices from over-barking at times.

The great BDR cover-up

Gray car in BDR Massacre

This just in, the gray car of the BDR massacre has been identified. Information is below:

Registration number : ঢাকা মেট চ ৫১-৪৪৫৪
Model: Nissan Urvan, Third generation E24

If you know about this vehicle, please call :
Army Headquarters Control Room:

Land line : (02) 8712197,

Cellphone : 0171 3333 256.





Article by Sunita Paul

http://www.modernghana.com/newsp/208860/1/pagenum/bangladesh-manipulation-of-bdr-massacre-probe.html#continue

Barrister Abdur Razzak, a leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami received written notice from Investigation Officer with Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Abdul Kahar Akhand asking Razzak to appear before the investigation officer for interrogation in connection to Bangladesh Riffles (BDR) massacre case.

It may be mentioned here that, Kahar Akhand is known in Bangladesh as he was the investigation officer of Bangabandhu murder case and Jail killing case. He was warned by the highest judiciary in the country for his lack of experience in investigating the cases.

Kahar, basically a loyalist of the ruling party was brought back to service on contract basis from retirement. He has 'high reputation' of twisting various investigations to meet the taste of the ruling party. He is one of the very few officers in Bangladesh Police, who has direct access via cell phone to both the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. For such 'high connection', Kahar shows damn-care attitude towards his senior officers while continues to misbehave with all the junior officers in the police department as well in CID.

The present rulers in Dhaka especially assigned their own man like Kahar Akhand as the chief investigator of the BDR massacre case, as they knew, this officer will do everything in finally setting out all the names of Awami League men behind this notorious crime, thus putting several opposition leaders and figures as the accused. Since his appointment as the chief investigator of the case, Kahar Akhand is in constant contact with the Home Minister and several influential leaders in the ruling party.

Top level in the government has reportedly given repeated instructions to Kahar Akhand in entangling some leaders from Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Jamaat and some Islamist forces like Hizb Ut Tahrir etc. He also has been suggested to 'discover' militant connection to this sensitive case.

When Awami League leader Torab Ali Akhand was arrested in connection to this case and was interrogated by several intelligence agencies, including CID, it was crystal clear to the investigators that the ruling party and some opposition leaders played dirty role in giving instigation and patronization to the bloody massacre. Such message was secretly communicated to the high-ups in the government. Hearing such information from Abdul Kahar Akhand, high-command in the ruling Grand Alliance has strongly instructed him to 'do something in turning the matter to another direction or face severe consequence'.

CID officer Abdul Kahar Akhand already knows the case of Muhidul Islam Muhit, who is the plaintiff of Bangabandhu murder case. Muhit was the Assistant Personal Secretary to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and was on duly at the residence of the founding father of Bangladesh during the black night of brutal assassination of him and other members of Bangabandhu's family.

Muhit was found in a poor economic condition in Jessore after Awami League formed government in 1996. He was picked up by the government and was encouraged to lodge the case. Abdul Kahar Akhand was introduced to Muhit from the very first hour, for preparing the First Information Report (FIR) as well as statement for the investigation into this case.

Muhit received more than 3 residential plots and substantial amount of money from Awami League for agreeing to become the plaintiff of the case. This case changed the life of this poor man, who ultimately sold out all the plots, which were secretly allocated in his name to the owners of Akij Group of Companies in Bangladesh.

Abdul Kahar Akhand knows that, if he will be able to serve the purpose of the ruling party, his next few years in the contract-based job in police service will be extremely bright. He will be compensated in diversified ways. But, if he will ignore instructions from the high-command of the ruling party, he not only will lose the job, but his life will also be in extreme danger.

With such tendency in mind, Akhand has successfully saved Torab Ali from making confessional statement to the Metropolitan Magistrate under section 164. It is even claimed that, Torab Ali, instead of being interrogated, is enjoying comfortable time inside the CID headquarters in Dhaka. At the instruction of influential figures in the government, Abdul Kahar Akhand in ensuring all possible comfort to this confirmed collaborator of the BDR massacre.

And, according to latest news, the 'Walkie-Talkie' minister in the present government in Dhaka, Lt. Col. (Retired) Faruk Khan told reporters that the probe report shall be made public “within a week”. This is the fifth extension of the time limit set for the report.

According to various scoops, the investigators have so far identified a number of points and questions in identifying culprits behind the massacre. These points or questions are:

What was the intelligence report sent to the Prime Minister on February 25 in the early morning as acknowledged by the PM in the parliament,

What was the last conversation between Major General Shakil Ahmed and the Prime Minister on February 25,

Why the PM regretted her attendance to the dinner on February 26,

Who instructed announcement from the nearby mosques on February 25 and 26 asking local residents near BDR headquarters to move to a safe distance,

Why Lt. Col. Mukit sent fax messages from the BDR headquarters on February 25 evening against army and the BDR's director general,

Why members of police and RAB were not deployed within gate number 5, through which the mutineers fled,

Why the PM assigned Nanak and Azam at 1:00 pm., after 4 hours of she heard about the mutiny,

Why names and identities of the delegation of mutineers, who met the PM were not registered at the entrance of the PM's residence,

Mutiny leader DAD Towhid told the PM about the murder of director general of BDR and some other officers when he met her with his team. But, why this matter was kept secret by the government till February 26 evening,

Why Bangladesh TV was not showing anything about the mutiny or even news scroll, although the issue was being covered by all private channels,

Why the mutineers were terming the PM as “amader netri” (our leader),

Why some mutineers were chanting Awami League's party slogan 'Joy Bangla' while they were talking to the press,

There had been several overseas incoming calls inside the BDR headquarters during the massacre. Investigators are trying to find the callers,

Why Prime Minister's son Sajib Wajed Joy came to Dubai on February 27 to meet some of the fleeing mutineers,

Why Joy handed over thick envelops to each of the fleeing mutineers at the Dubai airport,

Why Joy made critical remarks on Bangladesh Army and made army liable for the mutiny during interview with various international media,

Why Sajib Wajed Joy has been instructed by her mother not to come to Bangladesh before the investigation issue is over,

Why influential members of the government phoned certain foreign government asking help in case Bangladesh Army revolts against the ruling party,

Why Awami League leader Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir tried to flee the country on February 27,

Why minister Faruk Khan said, militants have penetrated in law enforcing and disciplined forces in Bangladesh,

Why the government is trying to keep the Inspector General of Police, whose son-in-law was murdered during the mutiny and daughter held hostage, is kept aloof from the investigation process,

Why the newly appointed commissioner of police warned the English medium and missionary schools and educational institutions of possible militant attack without any reason,

Why the PM did not allow the army to storm in to the BDR headquarters to rescue the officers and their family members,

What the CID team were removing from the BDR headquarters in the name of collecting 'evidence',

What type of evidences were removed by the members of police when they were assigned to guard the BDR headquarters almost for more than 30 hours,

Why the Home Minister and other members of the ruling Alliance were visiting the BDR headquarters during dark hours of February 26, much after the surrender,

Why Awami League student wing leader Liakat Sikder is hiding since the massacre,

Why Awami League and its activists are continuing to demand trial of killers and their collaborators in civil courts instead of Court Martial,

Why a section of pro-Awami League journalists are continuing indirect campaign against army as well demanding trial in civil court,

Why the ruling party is echoing the voice of Indian media and especially the editorial commentary in The Statesman.

Reply to all these questions will surely help investigators in finding the truth and identifying the culprits. But, it is a big question as to whether the ruling party is willing to let a neutral investigation continue, which may go ultimately against many of the heavy-weights within their home.

Bangladeshi people are getting united with the demand of proper investigation and exemplary punishment to the perpetrators and collaborators of this extreme heinous crime. Anger within the armed forces is boiling like eruptive volcano. Members of the armed forces and those bereaved families can never forgive the killers and the collaborators.

People in power in Dhaka should understand this clearly!

Sunita Paul is a Senior journalist and experts on South Asian affairs



http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2009/04/01/news0634.htm

CID investigation : Awami big shots found talking to BDR rebels

Mamunur Rashid



The law enforcement agencies found some ruling party leaders' direct conversations with the BDR mutineers over mobile phone after examining the mobile phone call lists of the detained BDR jawans on February 25-26 at Peeklkhana.

The law enforcement agencies identified the names which are Home Minister Sahara Khatun, State Minister for Local Government and Rural Development (LGRD) and Cooperatives Jahangir Kabir Nanak, Awami League leader Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Dhamnondi-Hazaribagh MP Barrister Fazlee Noor Taposh and Mirza Azam.

The BDR mutineers held talks several times with the local MP Taposh.

The mutineers reportedly held talks with the leaders between 11:00 am to 3:00pm on February 25.

At least 820 BDR personnel and five civilians have been shown arrested to date for their alleged involvement in the mutiny.

Law enforcement agencies investigated the mobile numbers of more than 35 BDR personnel.

At least 10 BDR personnel had talked to the ruling party leaders over mobile phone. And 5 detained BDR personnel confessed to the law enforcement agencies that they held talks to one MP and another former MP about their demands.

Law enforcement agencies found that that DAD Touhid, Jawan Salim, Jawan Mofiz, Havilder Obaidul with other 10 BDR jawans held talks with the AL leaders.

Source said BDR Jawan Salim reportedly talked to MP Taposh at about 11: 00 am on the day of occurrence.

Investigation team found Nanak and Taposh mobile numbers from the Cell phone of Jawan Salim.

From 2:00 pm to 2:30 pm on 25 February DAD Touhid talks with the Home Minister Sahara Khatun. Touhid had also talk with Nanak, Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir and Mirza Azam over cell phone.

DAD Touhid also had talks with the Home Minister and the state minister for LGRD minister 20 to 25 times on 25 February at about 10 pm to 3pm.

Investigation officers of the BDR preferring mutiny anonymity told the New Nation that they found names of the AL leaders and BDR personnel after verification from the mobile phone operators.

But the AL leaders did not talk before the 25 February, he added.

Jawan Salim told the investigation officers that they took the Taposh's Mobile phone number from the detrained Torab Ali.

Earlier on Monday Criminal Investigation Department (CID) questioned Jamaat-e-Islami leader Barrister Abdur Razzak for more than three hours in connection with the February 25-26 massacre at BDR headquarters.

Nesarul Arif, police superintendent of the CID and in charge of the case, said yesterday that more people might be required to be questioned in the interest of the case.

A lot of big guns we may need to quiz as the case unfolds," Nesarul told reporters after grilling Jama'at-e-Islami leader Abdur Razzak at the CID headquarters.

Meanwhile, The CID again took 8 suspect BDR personnel to remand yesterday.

The Dual Dictatorship

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Dual-Dictatorship-by-Iftekhar-Sayeed-090309-281.html

(click link above for article)

Western donor governments, especially America, have created civil wars in several Muslim countries by imposing democracy: in the next few months, Bangladesh will probably be added to the list.


Excerpt:

" But the unholy alliance between the army and the two politicians has been forged under the watchful eyes of the western donors. They saw it happening: true, they tried to get rid of the two 'begums' (banshees, rather) in a minus-two formula (exile or jail), but such was the tenacious loyalty of the followers (especially of Hasina's), that it proved impossible. Where, prior to 1991, we had one dictator, now we were destined to be blessed with two."

what went on for 33 hours inside Pilkhana

This photo gives us a remote idea of what went on inside the Bangladesh Rifles Headquarters for 33 hours on 25-26th February, 2009

The army and the prime minister of Bangladesh

For background, visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7911524.stm


[For those who know Bengali, it is strongly recommended that you visit this site:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=58213462185&topic=6839]




Even 10-year-old girls were raped, murdered and interred. The BDR jawans stripped the officers' wives and kicked them in the back and legs, and forced them to walk in this condition. The officers were pierced with bayonets into mincemeat.


When, on the night of the 26th, Mrs. Moeen, the army chief's wife, came to Mirpur Cantonment to see the female victims, she got an icy reception. Usually, the docile and respectful wives of the officers would rise, greet her and go towards her – not on this occasion. She left the premises silently.

What was it that prevented General Moeen U. Ahmed from sending tanks to their rescue post haste?

After the incident, the American ambassador has again and again lauded him for supporting the recently democratically elected government of Sheikh Hasina. Why?

Were these, then, his alternatives, his choices: (a) either to back the civilian government of Sheikh Hasina and abandon the officers to their fate or (b) to bypass the civilian government (that is, take over state power) and help his officers?

It is becoming more and more evident that the the events of 25th and 26th February at Pilkhana has the ruling party's signature all over it. As well as the army's – that is, a part of it.

Over the last sixteen years of two-party politics, every institution has been politicized: the bureaucracy was the first to go to the dogs, then the judiairy and the army. The most egregious example of the latter was when Sheikh Hasina took General Mustafiz out – yes, out – of retirement (he was on LPR – leave preparatory to retirement) and made him army chief again for his loyalty to the dynasty (he was, in fact, related to Hasina, and the whole family are rabid supporters of the League). Apparently, the General was only 'slightly retired', as in 'slightly dead' or 'slightly pregnant'. The other leader – Khaleda Zia of the BNP – did exactly the same in office.


So, when democracy was restored after a two-year military interregnum spearheaded by General Moeen and backed by the western donor governments, the army was more or less evenly divided between those loyal to Hasina and those loyal to Khaleda.

Now, Hasina has a greater following: she is regarded as a continuation of her father, Sheikh Mujib, the demagogue who inadvertently created Bangladesh. Her followers regard her incarceration under military rule as an unpardonable act of lese-majeste. They were baying for blood.

And, it seems, they got it.

But the unholy alliance between the army and the two politicians has been forged under the watchful eyes of the western donors. They saw it happening: true, they tried to get rid of the two 'begums' in a minus-two formula, but such was the tenacious loyalty of the followers (especially of Hasina), that it proved impossible.

Instead of drawing the ineluctable conclusion, as the late Samuel Huntington would have done, that democracy here is a no-go, the west insisted on elections.

In the process, they have ruined every institution that stands between civilisation and barbarism.

*************************************************************************************





[the material below is unedited, and is a first draft...more later]



[On 25th February, 2009, a section of paramilitary forces apparently mutinied against their army officers and killed over 150 of them, raping girls and women, and killing many of them as well]



The prime minister of Bangladesh was supposed to attend a dinner party at the Bangladesh Rifles Headquarters on the fateful day of the 26th of February, 2009. She declined to attend, and instead supervised the march past the previous afternoon. Apparently, she was warned on the 22nd not to accept the offer of dinner at the BDR HQ, but nobody at the BDR HQ knew for sure whether she was coming or not. She was sent the invitation card on the 23nd after 3:00 pm...and then her staff decided that instead of the PM, the Home Minster would attend. But the BDR HQ was nit informed.

Naturally, the PM totally refuses to acknowledge this as true – but the officers insist that this was true.

One officer maintained that the Home Minister left the officers in the hand of the rebels and walked out with only 25 weapons! How could she have done that?

In fact, if the army had been sent to succour them, those who were wounded but still alive would not have died, many women would not have been violated....

The PM's excuse is that the HQ is very big....and it was dark. The Home Minister rescued the families that she could.


Half an hour before the shooting began, General Shakil spoke with Sheikh Hasina, saying that, probably a section, the 54th battalion, of the BDR personnel had rebelled. Shakil was assured by the Prime Minister that the army was on its way.

They were told that forces were on their way from the 46th brigade ... if she had sent in forces then, the officers would not have died.

The rebels entered the Durbar Hall, where the officers were assembled, half an hour after the assurance was given that forces were en route. They started killing after 10:45 / 11:00 am. Everybody was told "They're coming! They're coming!" But nobody came.

At first only 20 to 25 soldiers were circling the Durbar Hall with rifles...They had no live ammunition, but were firing blanks. Ten to fifteen minutes later they broke into the armory and, before of the officers, started shooting inside. They still did not dare to enter the building, even though the officers were unarmed. .

Who put it into her (the PM's) head, that this had to be solved politically?

If the army chief had sent just one talk, or one platoon of commandos, they would have run like ants! [In fact, this is precisely what they did when the tanks turned up on Stamasjid Road, a couple of hundred yards from the scene – but the tanks arrived after 32 hours!]

The rebels had only one desire – to kill army officers. And this hatred for the army had been engendered by the politicians.

Parliamentary sessions broadcast on TV show that the ruling party MPs keep preaching hatred against the army. [Is a fact that both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina had been kept in a makeshift jail for two years by the army. Every person loyal to the Awami League – like everyone in my family, for instance – hates the army for this reason. Yet the army was merely carrying out the instructions of western powers!]


After General Shakil spoke with the prime minister, the army chief, the director general of the Rapid Action Battalion...they waited, in vain.

There were 2,200 soldiers who were involved in the tattoo show and they comprised the initial group of rebels [remember that on the 26th, the BDR officers were still expecting the PM to come: hence the arrangements for the tattoo]. And who encouraged them? Outside the New Market gate, civilians were shouting through megaphones "Don't worry! The people are with us!" Who were these civilians?


Shakil told the officer the troops were on their way: but they never came.

A few jawans fired blanks – they weren't even armed. It was half an hour later that they broke into the armory and, in front of the officers in the Durbar Hall, armed themselves.

The officers were forced to march in single file, and the moment General Shakil stepped outside the door, four people came from outside and shot the General four times in the chest.

They not only killed the officers, they pierced them with bayonets - after killing them. If the PM had sent in troops, they wouldn't have dared to do this. They had no leadership till 1:00 pm...and then they started becoming organized.

There were around 7,500 to 9,000 soldiers – plus their families – in the BDR HQ – and they all escaped overnight. How?

The strength of a battalion is 840; there were 4 battalions; that makes it roughly 3200 soldiers; there were over 1,200 in HQ; 2,225 soldiers came with various attachments; signal personnel....altogether 9,000 to 10,000 soldiers were posted there – and their families of the same number. Now, the question is: how did so many people creep ant-like out of the HQ...who allowed this to happen?

MP Golam Reza was able to take out 10 army officers and certain families. He warned one of them not to say anything against the BDR because then many officers and their families were still inside the BDR.


If you ask a second lieutenant which Generals will lose their jobs when the Awami League loses power and the BNP form a government....the army has been thoroughly politicized over the last 18 years of political rule.

A certain colonel had not been given promotion by the senior officers, for whatever reason, after Sheikh Hasina became PM he became deputy commander of her regiment! He had not received his comeuppance because he 'smelt' of the Awami League under BNP rule!

Why should a general be promoted on the instructions of the PM?

If it was found that the son of the paternal sister of the maternal uncle was a BNP man, then the officer so (unfortunately) related would not get a promotion!



The PM insists that the army had been immediately deployed. One soldier died and another even received a bullet wound to his head. "If it'll take a long time to send the army, then tell the air force to send a helicopter so they'll be scared and won't do anything further."

The PM maintains that she had worked with the army, and if it hadn't been made a civilian affair then many more people might have been killed. [This claim sits oddly with the fact that the mere sight of the tanks sent the rebels – indeed the entire force inside HQ – running for cover.]

"As for the soldiers escaping, gate number 5 was totally open." Why was it open? And how did thousands leave through that aperture? "

"As for the civilian processions, I asked the police why they were allowing people to come near the gate?" [It would e incredible if ordinary people were coming near the gate; they – all of us – were terrified out of our wits, and the place was devoid of people.] "There are videos of the processions; why don't you, officers, have a look at the videos and see who was involved?"

On the question of intelligence failure, the PM was heard asking somebody "How many kinds of intelligence branches do we have? What kind of branches?" [She had no idea!]



At Senakunja, officers nearly begged her to issue an immediate order to hunt down the rebels.


"The defence forces have certain rules. We have given them 24 hours to surrender; and we have to wait. We have to give them this time. Search will begin right after 24 hours" This was the prime minister's reply.

Meaning: give them 24 hours to escape?

Charles Taylor and modern 'altruism'

I was terribly impressed by Charles Taylor's understanding of modern 'altruism': it is a codified, moralized altruism and blind to the consequences that it involves (A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor).

I shudder to think how many fathers are going to be burying their politically active sons after the election imposed by western governments this year (interestingly, Taylor mentions Mandela: he lied to his people about the first election - though Taylor doesn't mention this, probably out of politeness – but he approves of the code-defying behaviour of Mandela: he was after a 'higher' good, even if it wasn't rights-based, that is, formulaic. He waived the rights of the 'victim' for peace, to avoid civil war.)

Taylor contrasts this sort of 'goodness' with agape, which is a 'gut' feeling of love. Agape extends towards the living, breathing individual: the good Samaritan crossed a line, not because any code told him to (on the contrary), but because he was moved by
a man's suffering.

So many women have been raped in Bangladesh by politically active young men in the service of the political parties - and so many of these young men have killed each other!

Doesn't this move anyone, as the Samaritan was moved? NGO after NGO has evaded the subject, never mind western governments.

Here is an article that might be of interest:


http://unlikelystories.org/sayeed0808.shtml A Defence of Religion



It is, in fact, a defence of the irrational: I come at the subject from economics, since that's the discipline I (literally) laboured under. The whole idea of a rational producer-cum-consumer seems repellent since contrary to the evidence right under our noses!

The Untold Story of Bangladesh - How Journalists Failed A Nation

For years, I tried to bring to the attention of the international mainstream media how student politicians in Bangladesh were raping girls and killing each other – and failed.


I recall writing to New Hope International, and the editor sending me a terse note saying that if I found democracy so deficient, what alternative did I propose? Earlier, the chief editor had said that they would have been happier if I had attributed the violence I described to the market-friendly policies of the World Bank and the IMF!

I approached the Christian Science Monitor – they weren't remotely interested. I wrote to The Nation – thinking that this paper would surely be concerned about the plight of teenage boys used as thugs by the political parties; I never even heard from them.

I sent an article to the New Statesman. I got a reply saying that the relevant editor would get back to me after the Christmas holidays. I never heard from him again.

Then, my own analysis told me what was going on – these major newspapers were part of what I have come to call "The Freedom Industry". Since their readers have been indoctrinated into believing that democracy is God's gift to mankind (George Bush's phrase), any criticism of democracy would not go down well with them. Prestige and money were at stake.

Finally, I learned about the Alternative Media/ indymedia.

My first break came when Csaba Polony of Left Curve published a cycle of poems on the murder of student politicians by student politicians. I was grateful: I realised that criticism of students – who were supposed to have overthrown a dictator in 1990 – would only be acceptable to low-budget, low-circulation. non-mainstream newspapers and magazines.

And that turned out to be the case: I sent my article to an online journal called Axis of Logic. The editor was breathless with excitement: he immediately published it, and even tried to call me from America – but it's not easy to get through to Bangladesh!

You can access the article here:

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml

It's called THE FREEDOM INDUSTRY AND STUDENT POLITICS IN BANGLADESH: every year, on the average, 50 student politicians were being murdered after the democratic transition of 1990. Why? Because these kids were being used by the political parties to bring down the incumbent in street battles and campus violence. Those street battles are called 'hartals' (these are not 'general strikes'!). Here's a description of a hartal: " Salahuddin (33), a fisherman, was killed in a skirmish between the two student wings of the political parties in the latest hartal. Two rickshawpullers – one of them unidentified, the other Badaruddin (32) - were bombed while they were pulling their rickshaws during hartal hours. It took them 24 to 48 hours to die. An auto-rickshaw was burned to ashes, and when the driver, Saidul Islam Shahid (35), tried to put out the flames, he was sprinkled with petrol, and burned to death. It took him more than two days to die. Truck driver, Fayez Ahmed (50), died when a bomb was thrown on his truck. And Ripon Sikder, a sixteen-year-old injured by a bomb, died on 4th May at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital after struggling for his life for eleven days." The whole idea of a hartal is to keep traffic off the roads to paralyse the country and discredit the ruling party – and that's where you need the boys.

The boys were allowed – even encouraged – to rape with abandon. According to the Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, the number of rapes skyrocketed from 407 in 1990 to 2224 by 1997.

In September 1998, a committee investigated allegations of sexual abuse at Jahangirnagar University against boys from the Chatra League, the student front of the then ruling Awami League. It revealed that

“more than 20 female students were raped and over 300 others were sexually harassed on the campus by the "armed cadres of a particular political party. "

No one was charged.

In desperation people resorted to lynching: lynching was unknown in Bangladesh. If people caught a thief, they used to give him a good beating and hand him over to the police. Now, they started killing them. And then came the public torching of muggers and robbers – they were cremated alive in broad daylight by a populace that had had enough.

Then, I realised that reading newspapers – ranging from The Economist to the Guardian to the New Statesman – would not give me a true picture of the world.

Only anthropologists could do that.

The first eye-opener was Stanely J. Tambiah of Harvard University. In his book, Ethnonatioalist Conflict and Collective Violence in South Asia (a book that, to my knowledge, no mainstream paper ever reviewed), he blames the rise in violence throughout South Asia on the party political system.

He says: ‘...participatory democracy, competitive elections, mass militancy, and crowd violence are not disconnected. (Stanley J. Tambiah ,Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1996), p. 260)."

I noticed that none of the NGOs ever raised their voices against student politics. Odd: these were supposed to be "civil society". Then two anthropologists revealed the truth.

The writers speak of an "aid market" that local NGOs know how to exploit.

“The political significance of such a massive proliferation of NGOs in Africa deserves closer attention. Our research suggests that this expansion is less the outcome of the increasing political weight of civil society than the consequence of the very pragmatic realisation that resources are now largely channeled through NGOs.”

The authors also - like myself - attribute the spread of democracy since 1990 to foreign donor pressure, and reject outright the notion of an emerging civil society: “It cannot simply be a coincidence that, now that the West ties aid to democratisation under the guise of multi-party elections, multi-party elections are taking place in Africa.” (Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford: James Currey, 1999)23, 22, 118).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, donors insisted on multi-party elections. The Economist finally acknowledged the truth after fourteen years: “...the cold war’s end prompted western donors to stop propping up anti-communist dictators and to start insisting on democratic reforms” (December 18th 2004, p. 69).

Then, when democracy threatened to turn Bangladesh into another failed Muslim state, western governments intervened: they again allowed the army to take over on January 11th 2007.

The number of student politicians murdered plunged from 48 in 2006 to 10 in 2007 and 6 so far this year. The restoration of (colonial) democracy in December means that more kids are going to be killed every year, and more women raped by these kids.

But no newspaper will ever tell you that.


(For more articles on Bangladesh and violence, you can visit my website.

The British-period relics

31st December 1999.

A young woman named Badhan went out to the university area to celebrate the coming-in of the new millennium.

She was stripped nearly naked by the student politicians of the ruling party, the Awami League. She somehow got away.

On January 25th, the subject came up in parliament – by means of an Awami League MP, a criminal called Joynal Hazari. The opposition was, of course, absent – that is what the opposition does in Bangladesh: it stays away from parliament.

"How could a Muslim woman go for an outing in the dead of night during the month of Ramadan?" he queried rhetorically. "Was it wrong that the drunk young men jumped on the lady who was dancing on the street with half her body exposed? It was natural that she was treated this way. (Star Magazine, February 11 2000, p. 22 "(That Muslim boys are not supposed to drink seemed to have slipped the MPs mind.)

Now, the above might seem to have issued from a rabid, Islamist political party. In fact, the Awami League is considered (and described as such by the western media) to be "the secular party".

"The Daily Star reported that Hazari finished his statement uninterrupted. Even the Chair, Professor Ali Ashraf, did not use his power to stop him under rule 270 of the Jatiya Sangsad's [Assembly] Rules of Procedure. Under the rule, a member is not allowed to use any offensive, abusive or vulgar expressions, or defamatory word."

What the Daily Star Magazine conspicuously failed to mention (the title of the article is "Badhans of a Male Chauvinist State") was the fact that there were thirty female MPs present, and not one of them uttered a word of protest, then or later.

Among them was – you guessed it – Mrs. Chitra Bhattacharya.

Party loyalty in Bangladesh comes before everything else – decency, humanity, morality....

I must credit my family with having instilled in me such notions as that it is wrong to hang out with rapists, murderers and other criminals. (However, when I grew up, I found my elders enthusiastically supporting rapists, murderers, and other criminals. In fact, one of my cousins even sought nomination from the BNP! My elders are British-period relics who try their best to pervert younger people – and succeed.) But here was a woman I had regarded as a lady since infancy keeping the very company I was meant to abhor.

Joynal Hazari and his thugs later beat up a journalist within an inch of his life; another MP, Shamim Osman, had the prostitutes at Tanbazaar brothel evicted (after one of them was murdered to create the necessary crisis)to seize the property.

And then there was the rape and sexual assault of over 300 girls at Jahangir Nagar university by the student politicians of the Awami League – and again Mrs. Bhattacharya's deafening silence and continued membership of a barbaric party.

"Hasina, in fact, has been the biggest disappointment for even AL supporters. Throughout her term she showed incredible tolerance to her party-men, who virtually unleashed a reign of terror all over the country. She did not ask any of her cabinet members to resign even after knowing about their criminal activities. The student wing of AL the Chhatra League carried on the legacy of their predecessors, the Chhatra Dal, with equal zeal, occupying the university halls, controlling tenders and spreading crime across the country. One group became famous for their serial rape spree in Jahangirnagar University where a Chhatra League (interestingly former Chhatra Dal) leader celebrated his 100th rape on campus. Again Hasina remained silent." http://www.thedailystar.net/magazine/2004/03/04/coverstory.htm

Mrs. Bhattacharya should have resigned after this, for sure.


For details on the political parties' abuse of students (and the rapes they committed), visit:

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml

For newspaper reports collected by the author (for these devilish democratic diversions were printed in all the papers, and were known to everybody), please visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13927522@N02/sets/72157605980597097/

deepening democracy

The Forum polity is comparatively rare in the history of government, where the Palace polity and its variants are overwhelmingly the most common type. Only in the last two centuries has the Forum polity become widespread. Before then its appearance is, on the whole, limited to the Greek poleis, the Roman Republic, and the mediaeval European city-states. Furthermore, most of them for most of the time exhibited the worst pathological features of this kind of polity. For rhetoric read demagogy, for persuasion read corruption, pressure, intimidation, and falsification of the vote. For meetings and assemblies, read tumult and riot. For mature deliberation through a set of revising institutions, read instead self-division, inconstancy, slowness, and legislative and administrative stultification. And for elections read factional plots and intrigues. These features were the ones characteristically associated with the Forum polity in Europe down to very recent times. They were what gave the term ‘Republic’ a bad name, but made ‘Democracy’ an object of sheer horror.

- S. E. Finer


“All democracies are good.
America is a democracy.
Israel is a democracy.”
I leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusion.
This is the message of the latest UN Human Development Report: Deepening Democracy. The erotic nature of the title owes more to the sexual mores of Greece – where democracy originated – than to modern times. Plato felt that such penetration was immoral and unnatural; Socrates disapproved because, in his opinion, it was exploitation by the man of the boy (“the boy does not share, like a woman, the delight...but looks on sober at another in love’s intoxication”). Nevertheless, that is the title of the UN report. Perverse.
(The erotic nature of ideas has been obvious ever since Plato wrote the Symposium. In that same dialogue, the relationship between sex, love and democracy is also expounded – apparently the love of Aristogeiton and Harmodius was responsible for the overthrow of the tyrants, leading to democracy!)
The report argues that development requires democracy. Yet we all know that Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Malaysia did not develop under democratic rule. We also know that Western European nations, chief among them Germany and France, did not develop as democracies. Only the Anglo-Saxon countries developed democratically. Why, then, this tissue of lies? Why has the UN deployed its considerable financial firepower to promote an ideology that is wreaking havoc across the world?
More and more people are voting – and more and more are voting with their feet. Several hundred thousand people have been fleeing South Africa and Latin America for the last decade. All my friends have left Bangladesh (which is why they are still my friends). If democracy is God’s gift to man, why is the US busy shoring up monarchies and dictatorships throughout the Middle eastern crescent? Clearly, the Americans don’t feel safe with democratic regimes in the Middle East – and that’s understandable. Clearly democracy is good only if some countries are democracies. The rest of the world can then be treated as subhuman barbarians to be treated like a herd of cattle fit only for slaughter.
That is how the democracy of the United States spread across the continent from the east to the west – murdering the Native Americans in pursuit of a God-given right to the entire land. And that is precisely how the democracy of Israel was founded, expanded and is being preserved – at the expense of three generations of Palestinians, rendered refugees in their own country. And when these people, out of sheer exhaustion and desperation, try to defend their country and reclaim what is rightfully theirs, they are branded ‘terrorists’, not martyrs or patriots. After all, the Palestinians are not a democratic people; Israel has its Knesset, and America its Congress. These institutions serve to justify violence against unrepresented people – from Afghanistan to Iraq. 1,700,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of western sanctions. According to Madeleine Allbright, “It was worth it”.
This then, is the real purpose behind the UN publication – to legitimise an ideology that justifies the use of force. The western world has never tried to conquer the world without an excuse. Prince Henry the Navigator – the father of the Atlantic Slave Trade - sought money to build ships to Africa ostensibly because he wished to convert these people to Christianity and counter Muslim influence. Hogwash and balderdash! All he was interested in was gold, and when he didn’t find it, he plumped for the next best thing – black gold! Thus began the misery of the black Africans – it is incredible that religion was used as an excuse to enslave 11,000,000 human beings! And then came more secular theologies – such as, commerce and civilisation. In the novel Heart of Darkness, the narrator Marlow is told that the Company – whose sole purpose was to rob the Congo - exists to wean “those ignorant millions from their horrid ways”. When Marlow hints that the company is run for profit, the retort takes the form of a Biblical quotation ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire”.
The historian Norman Davies observed: “Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or as bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government: in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany in 1933-4, it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters”.
This explains why democracy has been abandoned where it was born – in Western Europe. Europe today is run by the European Commission, a bureaucracy of unelected wise men. The attitude of the European elite towards democracy was summed up by Louis Michel, the foreign minister of Belgium, when he said that voters can be “naive” and “simple”. Of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, he said that to be a democratic party “you must work by democratic rules, you must accept not to play on the worst feelings each human being has inside himself”.
In India we recently witnessed the slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat just because an election was approaching. According to the Indian magazine, Frontline:

“In less than 12 months, Gujarat's Hindu Right will face Assembly elections. Discredited by its record on the economic front, and its less-than-creditable handling of the 2001 Kutch earthquake, few people had given the Bharatiya Janata Party a serious chance to retain power. Now, after February 28, the Hindu Right is again on a roll. It has learned the lessons of the 1998 Lok Sabha elections when a string of attacks on Christians and Muslims in south Gujarat helped the BJP wrest key seats, including Godhra, from the Congress(I)....”

George Fernandes, the Indian defence minister, has gone down in history as the man who asked “What’s new about rape?” to defend the Gujarat pogrom. In Bangladesh, we have got used to the fact of ruling party boys raping our sisters and butchering our brothers. Democracy unleashes the worst feelings each human being has inside himself.
What both Louis Michel and Norman Davies were referring to were the “the worst pathological features” of democracy pointed out by S.E.Finer in the quotation at the head of this essay. What could be more pathological than to burn Muslims to win an election, or to test nuclear bombs to garner a few more votes, or for a man who led the rath jatra to the Babri Mosque, initiating its destruction and unleashing violence across the nation, becoming the Home Minister of India? What could be more pathological than for Slobodan Milosevic to recall what happened 600 years ago to launch a pogrom against Muslims in Bosnia? What could be more pathological than for 10,000 people to be murdered in Nigeria by politicians stirring up ethnic and religious hatred to win votes? What could be more pathological than for a man to win the presidency of Russia by bombing the Chechens? One could go on and on....
Those who find democracy an attractive form of government should keep in mind those who are not represented, but affected, by such a form of government – the victims of democracy. Highly efficient pressure groups, on the other hand, can wield the entire apparatus of the state against an unrepresented people. The Jewish lobby comes readily to mind; so do the farm and steel lobbies, for instance. Blacks in the United States, however, have had to riot on many occasions to make their presence known to the majority – notwithstanding the efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. The under-representation of African-Americans in the American political decision-making process is underscored by some stark statistics: though only 12% of the population, by 1990 blacks had come to represent over 44% of prison population - in 1994, 7% of all black men were behind bars, compared to less than 1% of white men. Since incarceration deprives one of the right to vote in the most populous states, and since prisoners are usually prevented from voting, African-Americans have been significantly disenfranchised.
Blacks, therefore, are not ‘effectively’ represented. And neither are most foreign peoples. As James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute observes: “When we do focus groups, Americans say, ‘I know who the Israelis are, I don’t know who Palestinians are.’ And they sympathise and identify with the one they know.” Consequently, the following hair-raising passage from a respected international weekly, The Economist, comes as no surprise:

‘The last presidential election saw about 4m evangelical conservatives, once reliable Republican voters, staying at home. Mr Bush may be able to re-engage evangelicals by getting cloning banned. But this will count for nothing if they conclude that he is putting pragmatism above principle on Israel, a country evangelicals revere both as a home for God’s chosen people and as the scene of the “end of days”. The stakes are particularly high because the impending ban on soft money, which will kick in after the November elections unless it is ruled unconstitutional, will make the Republican Party far more dependent on the sort of small donations that come from grass-roots activists.
‘The make-or-break issue for Mr. Bush, however, will be Iraq. Mr. Bush aroused huge expectations on the right when he promised to confront the “axis of evil” and extend the war against terrorism into a war against heavily armed toxic states. He has repeatedly stated his determination to mount a war against Saddam Hussein to damp down criticisms of his Middle East policy.’

The bombing of Afghanistan and the future bombing of Iraq are aspects of what can best be described as ‘democratic theatre’. Democratic theatre consists in the use or threat of use of symbols of power – bombs, processions, marches – both to cow the victim-populace as well as to display the might of the victor before the electorate. Thus even ‘communal’ violence must be construed as democratic theatre. The anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983, the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984 and the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 are examples of democratic theatre, as was the slaughter at Sarajevo by Serbians. It is the psychology of the mob, as Plato pointed out 2,500 years ago in the Republic, describing it as ‘the madness of the majority’. Here is a description of democratic theatre:

“In 1990, there was a procession to build the platform (Ram mandir) of the temple. The most dramatic features of this campaign was BJP President Lal Advani’s 10,000 kilometre rath yatra, planned to start at the Somnath temple in Gujarat and conclude at the disputed Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya.....
“On December 6, 1992, as mahants, pandits, and sadhus were getting ready to start the puja on the newly built platforms for the temple to Ram, the Babri Masjid was demolished by karsevaks....All the leaders of the movement – Advani and Vajpayee of the BJP, Joshi of the VHP, and leaders of the RSS, the Bajrang Dal, and the Shiv Sena – were present.”
Today, L. K. Advani is India’s Home Minister and Atal Vajpayee its Prime Minister!
As Stanley J. Tambiah has observed: “The Indian media have been effectively harnessed and deployed in various ways to propagandize causes such as the Ayodhya temple issue, notwithstanding that India is a country in which 65 percent of the population are illiterate (and only 2 percent know English)...Aside from radio and films, followed by television, perhaps the most sensational recent development is the use of VCRs and audiocassettes, by means of which both villagers in remote rural areas and the unlettered in cramped urban slums can hear messages and see visual images propagated by leaders and ideologues from metropolitan centers. Moreover, the further import of these new cassette media, widely available and cheap to acquire and distribute, is that they can serve as a counterweight to, and a subverter of , governments....”
What is true of the Indian media is even more true of the American media. CNN has brought the destruction of Afghanistan straight into American living rooms; and Americans can expect many more hours of horrific footage directed at them from the smoldering ashes of Iraq.

Amartya Sen’s remarks remind me of the learned theses presented by the scholars of Europe to defend and justify slavery. John Locke, for instance, said that slavery was justified in war – never mind that Britain was not at war with Africa! John Locke, you see, had shares in the Royal African Company. Thus I was not surprised to see this quote from Amartya Sen at the head of chapter three of the UN report: ‘In earlier times there were lengthy discussions on whether one country or another was yet “fit for democracy”. That changed only recently, with the recognition that the question was itself wrong-headed: a country does not have to be judged fit for democracy, rather it has to become fit through democracy. This is a truly momentous change.’ Just as John Locke had a stake in slavery, so Professor Sen has a stake in democracy – after all, nobody criticising democracy can expect to win the Nobel prize. I don’t expect Dr. Adrian Leftwich of the University of York or Dr. Stanley J. Tambiah of Harvard ever to win the Nobel prize for their critical views of democracy.
I would recommend any reader of the UN report to skip the formidable graphs and charts (very sexy, no doubt) and go straight to chapter four. At the head of that chapter is a quote from a Nigerian tailor, a man at the receiving end of the ‘deepening’ of democracy, like Socrates’ boy. His name is Muhammad Umaru, and he condenses more wisdom into one line of observation than all the Nobel laureates combined:

“When we were in the military regime, we didn’t get anything from the government, but we had peace. Now we are in a democracy, we don’t get anything from the government,
and we don’t have peace.”

The title of the UN report, “Deepening Democracy” is very erotic – but then some people find rape erotic, don’t they?

the positive stereotype of the western woman

The first thing to note is that western women do not suffer any harm through war – they ‎are at the delivering, not the receiving, end of the missile. ‎





A UNIFEM report has it that " The economic cost of violence against women is ‎considerable — a 2003 report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‎‎(CDC) estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone ‎exceed US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care ‎services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion." ‎





In peaceful Geneva, Switzerland, a randomly selected study of nearly 1,200 ninth-grade ‎students revealed that 20 per cent of girls had experienced at least one incident of ‎physical sexual abuse ‎‎(http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php). ‎





According to The Care Center (www.teencarecenter.org ):‎

‎• Of rape victims who reported the offense to law enforcement, about 40% were‎
under the age of 18, and 15% were younger than 12.‎
‎• Of 1,000 representative female students at a large urban university, over half‎
had experienced some form of unwanted sex. Twelve percent of these acts
were perpetrated by casual dates and 43% by steady dating partners.‎
‎• Female adolescents are frequent victims of sexual assault and rape. The‎
incidence of rape in the United States peaks among young women 16 to 19‎
years of age. The reported incidence of rape and sexual assault reflects a
fraction of the actual frequency of this crime. The National Victim Center
estimates that almost 700,000 women are raped each year, and that 61% of the
victims are under the age of 18.‎
‎• Female adolescents are at high risk for becoming victims of acquaintance rape‎
or “date rape.” Studies have shown that the highest incidence of acquaintance
rape occurred in grade 12 and during the freshman year of college. Of the‎
‎25% of college women surveyed who reported having had unwanted sexual‎
intercourse, 84% knew their assailant, 57% of the episodes occurred on dates,‎
and 41% of the women stated that they were virgins at the time of the assault.‎
Again, this is probably an underestimation of the true incidence of date rape

Alcohol a factor:‎
‎• It is estimated that approximately one-half of assault cases involve alcohol
consumption by the perpetrator, victim, or both. Moreover, while alcohol
consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does
not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault. Rather, alcohol contributes to
sexual assault through multiple pathways, often exacerbating existing risk
factors. For example, the desire to commit sexual violence may actually cause
alcohol consumption in that a male perpetrator drinks alcohol before
committing a sexual assault in order to justify his behavior. Whereas, among
college-aged males, fraternities encourage both heavy drinking and the sexual
exploitation of women.‎

Date rape drugs:‎

‎• Date rape drugs or drug-facilitated sexual assault causes sedation and amnesia
to the extent that a potential victim cannot resist or may not be aware of the
assault. In fact, about 25% of the women who contacted the Canadian Sexual
Assault Center reported that drugs were a factor in a rape. The most
commonly reported drugs in addition to alcohol to facilitate sexual assault are
flunitrazepam and gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), which is now touted as
a new recreational ‘club drug’.‎

Long term effects:‎
‎• Victims of marital or date rape are 11 times more likely to be clinically ‎depressed, and 6 times more likely to experience social phobia than are non-victims. ‎Psychological problems are still evident in cases as long as 15 years after the assault.‎





That's not a pretty picture for any society, especially one that claims to be the universal ‎conscience, with the ability to tell right from wrong. Why should a society that respects ‎women as individuals, unlike (remember) Muslim society, why should such a society ‎present such awful statistics? ‎



I will let Andrea Dworkin speak on the subject of western man's perception of western ‎woman. ‎



‎"The skin of white women has a meaning in pornography. In a white-supremacist society, ‎the skin of white women is supposed to indicate privilege. Being white is as good as it ‎gets. What, then, does it mean that pornography is filled with white women? It means that ‎when one takes a woman who is at the zenith of the hierarchy in racial terms and one asks ‎her, What do you want?, she, who supposedly has some freedom and some choices, says, ‎I want to be used. She says, use me, hurt me, exploit me, that is what I want. The society ‎tells us that she is a standard, a standard of beauty, a standard of womanhood and ‎femininity. But, in fact, she is a standard of compliance. She is a standard of submission. ‎She is a standard for oppression, its emblem; she models oppression, she incarnates it; ‎which is to say that she does what she needs to do in order to stay alive, the configuration ‎of her conformity predetermined by the men who like to ejaculate on her white skin. She ‎is for sale. And so what is her white skin worth? It makes her price a little higher. ‎‎(http://www.voxygen.net/cpa/speeches/dworkintxt.htm)"‎



What Andrea Dworkin had to say about women being objectified in western society ‎cannot be easily denied: and one does not have to go as far as pornography to see it (though we must keep in mind the fact that pornography in the US alone constitutes a $10 billion industry). ‎Advertisements routinely use women; there are women's pageants still; the diversity of ‎lingerie that western, consumer society has dreamt up – and which is almost totally ‎missing in a place like Bangladesh – can leave little room for doubt that women are ‎meant to be gazed on – consumed - by men....

In conclusion, what are we to say about the positive stereotype of the western woman against the negative stereotype of her easter sisters?

They are both completely wrong.

THE FRREDOM INDUSTRY AND STUDENT POLITICS IN BANGLADESH

THE FRREDOM INDUSTRY AND STUDENT POLITICS IN BANGLADESH





http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23393.shtml


The freedom industry comprises western governments and ngos, local politicians and intellectuals – everyone who hopes to gain financially and in terms of kudos from the spread of "freedom", covering up all traces of violence and whitewashing the darkest crimes. Read this definitive account, with an introduction by Les Blough.