January  2003 
Year 9    No.83
Cover Story
Bangladesh

Gag in Bangladesh

The imprisonment of writers and journalists under draconian laws and outlandish charges shows the determination of the new Islamic fundamentalist propped, anti-minority regime to silence all dissent

BY MAHFUZ ANAM

We are glad that Pricilla Raj (Channel Four) is out, but only on bail. However, it must be regretfully mentioned here that it took five days for the High Court order to be implemented. This we think was a gross and deliberate miscarriage of justice as a result of which Pricilla was kept in prison for five additional days. Will our government kindly explain how it could take five days for the jail authorities to receive the High Court order when both are located within less than five kilometres of each other? We recall how the ETV verdict was implemented within hours of its delivery.

Here it took five days and that too after proactive moves by lawyers and family members of the defendant. Given the process of "law taking its own course" - a phrase our law minister loves to quote - God only knows when the High Court order would have reached the Dhaka Central Jail and when Pricilla would have breathed the blessed air of freedom.

If "justice delayed is justice denied", then justice has been denied to Pricilla for at least five days (we are not even talking of her detention since November 25 and claim of electric shocks to extract a ‘confessional’ statement) by the present government which is established on law, elected through free and fair elections and professes to uphold democracy. Do we really need others to malign our image when we ourselves seem to be working overtime to do the job?

While Pricilla enjoys freedom on bail, historian, author and
columnist professor Muntasir Mamun, writer and social activist
Shahriar Kabir and freelance journalist and writer on development
issues Saleem Samad suffer in prison for nearly three weeks under
vague charges of "sedition’ and section 54 of the CrPC. (As we go to press, we have heard from Samad who has just been released – Editors).

We waited patiently all this while for the government to tell us why these eminent writers and social activists of our country are in prison. What are their crimes for which they are being so brutally treated? They have no criminal record. They have never been known to have violated any established law of the land. Their professions are among the most respected in society and in the world. And yet they are denied bail as if they are such notorious elements and such a menace to society that their continued freedom must be prevented at any cost, even by bending or violating the law if necessary.

Is there any action in their past which cannot entitle them to treatment with dignity, respect and civility? Are they such a dangerous group that they cannot be out on bail while the government conducts the necessary investigations? Why have they been treated like common criminals? Why did they need to be interrogated by so many different intelligence agencies of the state? Why were they denied the due process of law, deprived of timely access to lawyers and not given ‘’division’’ in jail, which their profession, past record, public esteem in which they are held, and general eminence entitle them to?

Above all, no plausible charges could yet be brought against them after nearly four weeks in prison and yet they continue to rot in jail and their bail petitions continue to be almost automatically rejected without assigning any serious reason. In the latest act of harassment, professor Muntasir Mamun has been shifted to the Dinajpur district jail and Shahriar Kabir first to the Kashimpur Central Jail in Gazipur and later, to the Chittagong jail. This has been done, we think, to make contacts with lawyers and family members difficult, infrequent and logistically burdensome and expensive.

Let us refresh our memory a bit about their cases. In doing so, we have been deliberately elaborate, to prove how the law was bent or violated and the arrested persons were deprived of the true process of law. Professor Muntasir Mamun and Shahriar Kabir were both picked up on December 8, the day after the terrorist bomb blasts in the four cinema halls of Mymensingh. Having no specific charges against them, they were arrested under section of 54 of the CrPC. Predictably, bail was refused and they were sent to a three-day remand for questioning.

Along with the same order, the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court also asked that none but the investigating officer was to question them. Violating this court order, both were taken to the joint interrogation cell (JIC), a body composed of the CID (Criminal Investigation Department), SB (Special Branch), both belonging to the police, and the NSI (National Security Intelligence) under the home ministry. The DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence) belonging to the armed forces sometimes sits among them but never officially.

On December 10, the high court cancelled the remand order of both
Mamun and Kabir and ordered that both be sent to jail. The police
ignored this order. On December 11, Kabir was implicated in the same
sedition case brought against two Channel Four foreign journalists,
though Shahriar’s name did not appear in the FIR (First Information
Report), the initial report that is submitted by the police following
the initiation of any investigation.

On the following day, December 12, both Mamun and Kabir were given one month’s detention under the Special Powers Act (SPA). Till date, no reports have been submitted to the court as to what has been found, if
anything, during interrogation while on remand. On December 14, the
high court issued a rule nisi on the government, asking them to show
cause why their detention order should not be declared illegal and
why they should not be given compensation.

On December 18, the high court division bench approved anticipatory bail for them for the future. The present position is that both Mamun and Kabir have been given bail for the cases under section 54 and "sedition’’.But as they have been given detention under the SPA, they are not being released. The hearing for the SPA detention will be held on January 5, when the high court will open after vacation.

In one of their court appearances, Kabir said that following his
arrest for 25 long hours, he was given nothing to eat or drink. He was blindfolded for days and repeatedly interrogated by the JIC. He was not allowed to sleep for five nights. He was not given clean water to drink and had to drink bathroom water.

In his statement to the court, Mamun said that he was kept blindfolded for two days and repeatedly interrogated. He was made to sleep on a wet, cold floor, in spite of his frail health and made to sleep in the same room with a notorious criminal.

Saleem Samad’s story is even more horrific. He was arrested on November 29 and taken in on a five-day remand, following which he was produced before a court on December 4, but was transported to prison without giving him a chance to move a bail petition.

While being spirited out, he shouted from the prison van to waiting journalists on the court premises, "I have been subjected to inhuman torture." The bail was heard in his absence and predictably, rejected. On December 14, bail was once again moved in absentia and was again rejected. So, from December 4 till date, he has been rotting in prison. Till today, Samad has had no chance to properly appear before the court, make any statement before the court nor has he been allowed proper and regular access to lawyers.

It may be recalled that when the two Channel Four journalists came to do a documentary on Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh and the
possibility of existence of the Al-Qaeda network here, he acted as their contact person. When it was discovered that they came on a faulty visa —tourist, instead of journalist — and that they had supplied incorrect information regarding their professions — one as a teacher and another an architect — they were arrested for entry under false pretences and charged with ‘’sedition’’ and put in jail.

Samad and Pricilla were arrested at the same time (with a few days’ difference) and also charged with ‘’sedition’’.

What were Samad’s crimes? The visiting journalists used Saleem as a local contact. It is a very common practice. Journalists being a global fraternity, national contacts are expected to help visiting journalists do their story. Often, visiting journalists come to newspaper offices requesting use of their files, e-mails, Internet, computer and sometimes, even a desk to work from. On occasion, we even assign one of our reporters to take them around and help out with the language. We extend this courtesy because we expect them to do the same when we are in their country.

Can anybody imagine working in France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, etc. without a translator or a local contact? We have deliberately chosen examples from developed countries, to prove that local contact is not a developing-country phenomenon as the information minister derisively referred to our journalists, doing all this for a "few dollars".

The constitution, which guarantees our rights and limits the power and authority of the government, the laws that regulate our lives, and practices that form our legal tradition, all hold personal freedom to be sacred. All laws of our land guarantee our individual freedom, which can be curbed only under specific conditions and after a very elaborately laid out legal process has been fulfilled.

It is this core value of our legal system that our government appears to be flouting at will. The attitude seems to be to "arrest first, and look for proof later", or better still, "use what has happened to punish those who write against us". Otherwise, how can one explain the arrest of Prof. Muntasir Mamun within hours of a bomb blast in Mymensing? Prof. Mamun has never been known to have participated in any activism remotely linked to anything violent in nature. Dhaka University has known many violent clashes, both among students and teachers. Prof. Mamun’s worst enemies have never linked him to any violent act. So how could he be among the prime suspects in the most horrendous of terrorist act s in the recent past?

The same holds true for writer-activist Shahriar Kabir. We recall here his arrest more than a year ago, when he was charged with "sedition" but set free by a higher court when the government failed to produce any evidence of his "seditious" actions. His documentary films, which were supposed to have denigrated our country, were never shown to the public or to the media, which Kabir challenged the government to do.

We conclude with the clear demand that prove their guilt or set our writers and journalists free. The detention under the SPA, a black law, which the BNP is pledge-bound to scrap, only makes the government look oppressive.

(Shahriar Kabir and Muntasir Mamun were released from jail in mid-January. As we go to press, Combat spoke to Saleem Samad who has also just been released.) 

(Courtesy: The Daily Star, Dhaka. The above article was published on December 23, 2002. The writer is an eminent journalist from Bangladesh).