Remembering Rana Plaza, one year on

The Rana Plaza tragedy sparked strong public outcry and calls to improve factory safety and conditions for Bangladesh’s garment workers. (Photo by Stephan Uttom)

It’s been a year since the Rana Plaza textile complex collapsed, killing 1,135 workers and injuring more than 2,500, making it the worst industrial disaster in Bangladesh history.

Fatal accidents are all too common in Bangladesh’s US$20 billion garment industry, the second largest in the world after China's. In the past decade accidents have occurred an average of two to four times per month. It’s ironic—and outrageous—for an industry that employs four million people and fetches 80 percent of country’s annual export income to be so poorly regulated.

About 2,000 workers have been killed in work-related accidents in Bangladesh in the past ten years. These accidents, and the easily preventable deaths that occurred as a result, have largely been due to lax safety standards and atrocious working conditions in the factories. Disasters like the Rana Plaza collapse and the Tazreen Fashions factory fire, which killed more than 100 people in Dhaka in 2012, are a product of the collective negligence of everyone who has benefited from the Bangladesh garment industry. They have occurred under the noses of the authorities, trade bodies and Western buyers, who remained astonishingly silent as workers perished. The catalysts for these events did not just appear over night. Year after year, a wide range of monitoring bodies and agencies put their stamps of approval on thousands of factories, despite the fact that structures lacked proper fire doors, fire escapes, smoke-proof stairways and automatic sprinkler systems.

Some analysts have drawn parallels between the Rana Plaza accident and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York that killed 146 workers and led to lasting safety reforms in the US garment industry. Well, seven times as many individuals died at Rana Plaza. The scale of suffering in the wake of the collapse was almost too much to swallow, even for the most apathetic of companies or governments. It triggered an unprecedented outcry from the media, labor advocates and consumer groups, which is paving the way for long overdue reforms in Bangladesh’s garment industry.

Indeed, a year after the collapse, Bangladesh has seen a major push for changes.

More than 150 mostly European companies have signed the legally binding Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, while 26 mostly North American companies including Walmart, Gap and Target have formed the separate Bangladesh Alliance for Worker Safety that commits the companies to invest in upgrades in more than 2,000 factories. The Bangladesh government and the International Labor Organization have pledged to conduct safety inspections in the remaining factories.

Under intense pressure from foreign governments—including suspension of US trade privileges for Bangladesh—the government has amended its labor law to make it easier for workers to unionize. To date, more than 100 new trade unions have been registered and workers are speaking out strongly against poor working conditions and walking away from jobs if necessary. Their collective efforts have led to an increase in the minimum wage from $37 to $68 per month.

The owners and managers of Tazreen Fashions and Rana Plaza are being prosecuted for culpable homicide charges in a country where garment manufacturers wield immense political power and have never been held accountable for previous accidents.

These are all positive changes, despite the fact that they have only come about as a result of such a massive loss of lives. But, we would be foolish to believe that everything has been cleaned up and will henceforth be on the straight and narrow.

Though Western brands have begun a major push for safety improvements, they have divided into two oft-feuding groups—those that signed the Accord and those that signed the Alliance—which is an arrangement that analysts say hinders the overall effort.

Members of the Alliance claim that they have so far performed more factory inspections than the Accord brands, while Accord members say that the Alliance’s inspections are far less rigorous. Accord members also say they work closely with trade unions and have input from workers, while Alliance members assert that some Accord brands have not provided wages to workers who were laid off after their factories were temporarily closed following inspections that discovered serious safety violations.

The Alliance has been widely criticized for not being legally binding and for its lack of transparency. The Alliance claims to have inspected about 400 factories so far, but it does not make its inspection reports public. Meanwhile, the Accord has published reports on 10 factories and asserts that it has inspected about 300.

In a sense, the competition appears positive on the grounds that they are attempting to raise the bar higher in terms of safety standards. But at times it also seems like an unappetizing neo-colonial battle in the globalized world.

The Accord inspection reports paint an ominous picture of dangerous conditions in the factories. Inspectors found structural, safety and fire faults in every factory they visited including dangerously heavy amounts of storage, which has led to cracked walls and stressed, sagging support beams. They also found basic fire equipment missing and exit routes that didn’t lead to the outside. Viyellatex, considered one of the best factories in Bangladesh, received multiple citations.

If massive, top-of-the-line factories have such issues, one can only imagine how bad the reality could be in smaller factories. In Bangladesh, there is a vast underworld of small factories operated by subcontractors working for larger manufacturers. These businesses often operate in shoddy apartments, basements, shops and rooftops where underpaid workers sew clothes under fierce pressure from bosses who abuse them and care little for workplace safety.

Unauthorized subcontracting is common. International buyers often know about it, though they don’t admit such things officially. The reality is they can’t stop it.

Flaws of the labor law 

At its core, the labor law is not that worker friendly. Theoretically, workers are free to form trade unions, but in practice it’s not that easy. In a country where corruption is widespread, officials can be discreetly paid off to prevent the formation of a union. Likewise, factory owners can obtain a list of prospective union members from corrupt officials and fire the workers who intended to unionize. If workers take their case to the labor court, justice is rarely the outcome. Most garment workers are too poor to afford protracted unemployment, and the legal system is too expensive and too drawn out for them to stick out their case.

The labor law guarantees $1,282 in compensation from a factory owner if a worker dies or is seriously injured in a workplace accident. But is this money worth a person’s life? For years, the labor law has remained friendlier to owners than to workers, largely because owners wield immense political power. Some have even become parliamentarians or government ministers.

Meanwhile, the government has reportedly raised $16 million in compensation for the victims of Rana Plaza, while the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has raised some $1.8 million. However, some victims’ families say they have received nothing, and not a single family has received the full amount of $1,250 in cash and $19,000 in a savings scheme the government promised.

There is a serious lack of coordination among authorities and various organizations working to help victims and families. No one seems to know when the compensation payments will be made.

“It seems everyone is considering it as an act of charity, not as an act of responsibility,” a labor export said recently.

Rana Plaza could go down in history as a big turning point for the Bangladesh garment manufacturing industry. Like the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York, it might be the wake-up call that international brands and factory owners need.

But if it’s not, and better safety standards aren’t enforced, there’s no telling how many more Rana Plazas there could be.

Read the original opinion piece here Remembering Rana Plaza, one year on

Killing innocents is no mark of a great nation

India's border guards have killed hundreds of people along Indo-Bangla border in the past decades

All living things will die some day. In fact, every day about 150,000 people die around the world because of illness, accident and, increasingly, from war, acts of terror and ethnic or religious conflicts.

In Bangladesh, a growing number have died in the last decade for the most trivial of reasons – gunned down by Indian border guards for allegedly trespassing on Indian territory along a 4,100 km border

About 1,000 people have been killed in the last 10 years at the hands of India’s Border Security Force (BSF). Most have been unarmed Bangladeshi villagers as India maintains a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy.

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and Bangladesh is India’s largest trade partner. The popular culture of India has been enthusiastically embraced across the border. And yet, border guards shoot first and ask questions later.

Ironic, then, that Indian media has claimed that Bangladesh was found to be the most trusted nation in a recent online survey, with Russia a close second. 

If this is the case, then why does the BSF kill so many people along the Bangladesh border? Or to put it another way, if the survey truly reflects the mindset of Indian citizens about Bangladesh, then is there not a disconnect among India’s politicians and government officials?

India has every right to prevent illegal immigration, smuggling and anti-government militant activities, but that right does not extend to the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents. There is no justification for a shoot first policy.

The killings went largely unabated and with no formal investigations or punishment – despite high-level talks between the two countries and promises to end the policy – until the death of a teenage Bangladeshi girl more than two years ago.

Felani Khatun, 15, was returning home from a visit to India with her father on January 7, 2011. Neither had travel documents, so they opted to use a bamboo ladder to scale the barbed wire fence installed by the BSF to protect the border.

Felani’s father made it safely across the fence, but his young daughter’s clothes got snagged on the fence and a BSF guard shot her dead.

Her lifeless body hung on the fence for hours, later becoming a symbol for Bangladeshis of the ongoing injustice of the border policy. It prompted an unprecedented global outcry.

In the years that followed, the number of such killings dropped while diplomatic and international pressure increased. And last month, after massive criticism at home and abroad, a trial was started to prosecute the border guard who killed Felani.

Bangladeshis had high hopes for justice, at least in one case among hundreds of others, from the world’s largest democracy. But their hopes were short lived.

A special court in West Bengal last Friday acquitted Amiya Ghosh, the man who killed Felani Khatun.

Outraged Bangladeshis believed that the trial held symbolic value and that if justice was done, then BSF guards would think carefully before they fired on unarmed civilians along the border.

India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh has said the verdict is not final, but few have any faith that Felani’s killer will ever be brought to justice.

As a much larger, more prosperous neighbor, India must behave more responsibly with its smaller and less powerful neighbors. Moreover, it should set an example in the way it delivers justice, and its future as a superpower is not only contingent upon resolving its disputes with arch-rival Pakistan, but on its relations with all of its neighbors.

It’s worth remembering what Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote: “No man ever got very high by pulling other people down.”

Third World View is the pseudonym for a Bangladeshi journalist based in Dhaka

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It's time to face the Rohingya issue head on

Rohingyas are one of world's most persecuted and neglected people

Unwanted in Myanmar and unwelcome in neighboring Bangladesh, Rohingya Muslims are literally ‘God’s forsaken’ people.

For decades, they have remained ‘one of world’s most persecuted people’, according to the United Nations, due to years of persecution in Arakan (Rakhine) state in Myanmar, yet their suffering looks set to increase further in the near future with recent hostile moves in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Recent media reports say Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has reaffirmed a discriminatory two-child policy to control the Rohingya population.

This has sparked outrage from various quarters including the US government, Human Rights Watch and Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The move coincides with the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry’s drafting of a strategic plan to tackle undocumented Rohingya refugees that it says are living in the country illegally.

The plan, currently being reviewed by several government bodies, contains 25 proposals including conducting a survey to determine the exact number of Rohingya refugees, forming a taskforce to stop Rohingyas entering the country illegally, and installing an embankment as a barrier along 50km of the Naf River that separates Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Most importantly, for the first time it proposes a special law that will make it a punishable offense to provide shelter and support to "illegal Rohingyas."

The plan needs to be cleared by an inter-ministerial cabinet body, which will not take long. Once in place the government intends to establish detention centers along the border and repatriate illegal Rohingyas back to Myanmar.

“The government is getting strict on Rohingyas because they have tainted the country’s image internationally with their illegal activities. Moreover, the government thinks the international community is not doing enough to press Myanmar on the Rohingya crisis,” said a Foreign Ministry official who did not want to be named.

In the past four decades, thousands of Rohingyas have fled a series of bloody crackdowns and sectarian violence in Rakhine and entered neighboring Bangladesh. Most were eventually repatriated, but 30,000 have refused to leave, for fear of further persecution.

In 1993, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) granted official refugee status to these Rohingyas, which allowed them to stay in two camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, where they depend on government and NGO aid for survival.

The UNHCR, however, estimates there are about 300,000 undocumented Rohingyas, residing outside the official camps; Bangladesh authorities put the number at around 500,000.

Bangladesh has been relatively friendly in the past. Rohingyas look very similar to native Bengali people physically and their language is related to a Bangla dialect spoken in southeastern Bangladesh.

Many have found a home in Bangladesh by utilizing their physical and linguistic similarities. They have married locally, found jobs and run businesses, albeit illegally.

In recent years the local media has reported many unlawful activities allegedly committed by undocumented Rohingyas. These include Rohingyas being arrested in Middle Eastern countries with fake Bangladeshi passports, damaging the environment by forest encroachment, and involvement with militant groups and drug smuggling.

These allegations and revelations which many say taint the country’s image have led to closer and more critical government monitoring of the Rohingya issue.

The government denied entry to thousands of Rohingyas fleeing bouts of deadly sectarian violence in Myanmar in June and October last year. The decision was criticized by the UNHCR, various Western governments and international rights groups.

In August last year, the Bangladesh government banned three international NGOs – Doctors without Borders, Action against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK – from operating among the Rohingyas.

Rosaline Costa, a rights activist and lawyer, says they deserve shelter and support in Bangladesh on humanitarian grounds, but sympathy has been lost because some vested groups have "misused" Rohingyas for their own interests.

“I worked with the UNHCR for eight years … and found that Rohingyas were being abused by several organizations. Rohingyas were also sent abroad illegally, they were recruited by extremist outfits and coerced into illegal activities like robberies, drug-smuggling and the sex trade,” said Costa, coordinator of Hotline Human Rights Bangladesh, adding the government has yet to develop a workable mechanism to deal effectively with the refugee problem.

Professor CR Abrar from Dhaka University’s International Relations department says a solution to the problem has been elusive because no one has ever tackled it properly.

“Bangladesh, Myanmar and the international community have failed to find a solution, because the issue was never part of long-term development plans for this region. What Bangladesh and Myanmar are doing now won’t be effective in the long run because they fail to tackle the root causes and lack efficient policies to redress it,” Professor Abrar said.

The plight of the Rohingya is rooted in history. For hundreds of years they had a happy and peaceful existence which was snatched from them in recent times. Without effective and efficient attention and concerted efforts from all parties involved to address underlying historic, social, economic and political issues that affect their hopes for a better future will remain elusive. Hasty and imprudent efforts won’t improve anything, but will only make things worse.

The Third Eye is a commentator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh

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Time to end modern-day slavery in Bangladesh

Rana Plaza might prove to be the wake-up call required to fix Bangladesh garment sector, but at a huge cost

With the rubble cleared and the dust settled, all seemed quiet at the former eight-story Rana Plaza site, home to a bank, shops and five garment factories before it collapsed last month, killing 1,129 workers and injuring about 2,500.

Only a few dead roses hang from the fence around the building alongside several altars erected by friends and family grieving in the wake of the April 24 tragedy.

On that fateful day, hundreds of dead and wounded were pulled out from among the smashed walls and furniture of the destroyed tower as wailing relatives watched in horror. The scene at the nearby Adhar Chandra High School was equally heart-wrenching, and pathetic.

It was here that authorities gathered bodies. About 300 remain unidentified.

I felt ashamed – as the building owners and factory bosses themselves should – because collectively, as a nation, Bangladesh had demonstrably failed to give any kind of protection to its workers and it had shown this shameful truth in grim close-up for the whole world to see.

That this was not the first ‘accident’ of its kind is perhaps the biggest disgrace.

Nearly 2,000 workers have died in fires, stampedes and other accidents in garment factories in recent times, all tragedies which were avoidable. In none of these cases was a factory owner or boss punished, many of whom appear to be guilty of cutting corners for profit.

Bangladesh’s roughly four million garment workers earn a minimum wage of just US$38 per month, half the level in Cambodia, for example, which itself has received scrutiny over poor labor conditions in recent years.

For the millions of poor Bangladeshis who leave their rural homes to seek financial independence in the shape of a stable job in a garment factory, in reality they are simply condemning themselves to the closest thing to slavery in today’s globalized world.

This is an industry worth $19 billion to Bangladesh, very little of which trickles down to those who put in most of the work and shoulder most of the risk: Not financial, perhaps, but mortal, certainly.

Even in death, Bangladeshi garment workers are treated like slaves. According to current labor law, a factory owner is supposed to pay 100,000 taka ($1,250) compensation for a worker’s death.

Since the industry accounted for 1,129 additional deaths last month there are signs that, finally, some are saying enough is enough as Bangladesh comes under strong pressure from labor groups, the media, some consumers and even some garment buyers which employ the services of factories like those in Rana Plaza.

The US government is holding a hearing which will determine whether Bangladesh will continue to enjoy Generalized System of Preference (GSP) access to the world’s largest economy.

“Bangladesh has two choices. They can go to the future and they can assist in providing safe working conditions, safe factories and programs for fire prevention,” said Congressman George Miller who visited Bangladesh this week as part of the US enquiry into the country’s GSP status. “Or they can struggle in the past and lose the value of the Bangladesh label.”

The European Union, Bangladesh’s largest market by export value, has threatened to revoke duty-free access if the industry doesn’t reform.

In response to the threat of serious damage to the country’s biggest earner, the government has hastily inspected all factories across the country, promised to set up a separate wage board and amended the labor code. Money talks, especially amid threats that it could disappear.

But question marks remain as to whether these changes are substantive or mere window-dressing. Bangladeshi media remains unconvinced.

“Theoretically, laborers can go to court to file a complaint against their bosses. But in practice it is expensive and too lengthy a process that most workers can’t afford it,” said Jafrul Hasan, a lawyer.

Unsurprisingly, the industry body – the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association – appears to be trying to protect their members' interests behind the scenes amid the backlash.

A key dilemma is whether it is right and ethical for global retailers to pull out of Bangladesh altogether? A superficial answer would be ‘yes.’

Just before the Rana Plaza tragedy, the Walt Disney Company – the largest media conglomerate in the world – stopped sourcing products from Bangladesh in the wake of a fire at Tazreen Fashions last year which killed 112 people.

But having profited from these workers for decades, is it really right for companies like Disney to wash its hands of Bangladesh? The result is that this giant company has shunned its responsibility and let slip the leverage it once had to promote tangible reforms for the better.

“On the labor issue, absolutely, buyers have a critical role and they must be engaged,” Wendy Sherman, US undersecretary of state for political affairs, said during a visit to Bangladesh this week.

Major European retailers including H&M, Inditex, Primark, C&A, Tommy Hilfiger and PVH, Tesco, Benetton, Marks and Spencer and Carrefour, have all signed an accord on fire and building safety in Bangladesh.

Tuesday was the deadline to sign onto the accord, but at least 14 North American retailers including Walmart, Gap, Target and JC Penny, joined by Asia’s largest retailer Uniqlo, declined to participate, citing legal concerns.

The agreement demands a five-year commitment from participating retailers to conduct independent safety inspections of factories and pay up to $500,000 per year toward safety improvements.

This amount is nothing to global giants like Walmart. But it would surely contribute to improving the hellish working conditions for garment workers in Bangladesh. It would surely make all the difference for them.

Third World View is the pseudonym of a commentator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh

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A battle for the soul of Bangladesh

Religion and nationalism are locked in a bloody battle for primacy in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is going through turbulent times.

It can partly be blamed on the ongoing political struggle between the main political rivals, the ruling Awami League and the opposition alliance led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). As national elections loom, this impasse has sparked a series of bloody street clashes.

But as well as the usual party political friction, there is also a war of ideology sweeping through the nation between radical Islamists and secularists. It’s a question of primacy: which should come first, religion or nation?

Last weekend, radicals from the Hifazat-e-Islam group marched en masse through Dhaka to parade their staunchly Islamic 13-point agenda.

It includes the death penalty for bloggers who defame Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. They also want an anti-blasphemy law, a mandatory Islamic education system, exclusion of members of the Ahmadi sect from the Muslim faith, abolition of a pro-women development policy and the restoration of a pledge to Allah in the constitution.

It’s a manifesto that would make the country a fully fledged Islamic state, perhaps even a Taliban state.

On Monday, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said 'no' to their demand for a blasphemy law. This, unsurprisingly, led to another round of violent clashes and wildcat strikes.

The sworn opponents of the Islamic radicals comprise activists, progressives and secular groups. This loosely connected coalition, which has attracted attention from the international press and garnered massive public support, is no less trenchant in its views or pugnacious in its demands.

It called loudly for the death penalty for those found guilty in the recent war crimes tribunals, most of whom are leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic political party, It also wants confiscation of Jamaat-owned institutions and a ban on Jamaat and religion-based politics.

Its advocates will tell you the nation has suffered repression and victimization in the name of religion for far too long, from the orthodox Hindu Sena era a millennium ago to the effective rule of pro-Islamist West Pakistan in the mid-20^th century.

They will also tell you that Jamaat and its forebears historically supported attacks on Bengali culture and nationalism in the name of Islam; that they sided with the Pakistan army during the 1971 war of independence; and that they have consistently persecuted religious minorities and even moderate Muslims.

Yet although these radical Islamists only represent around 5 percent of the population, their medieval ideologies continue to torment Bangladesh.

And even though the majority of people dislike the country’s dysfunctional political culture, it seems we just can’t get rid of it.

Which brings us back to the endless wrangles between the major political parties – the Awami League, the BNP and the others. For the sake of winning a vote, they will claim to be both nationalist and/or religious – whichever they think people want to hear at the time – although of course they are neither. They are just opportunist politicians who trade on nationalism and religion for personal gain.

Tragically, the history of Bangladesh is littered with monumental blunders; the British partition of India and Pakistan on religious grounds was possibly the biggest of them all. It’s a pity those reactionary forces that still hold us to ransom don’t seem to have learned a thing from those blunders.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym of a commentator based in Dhaka

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A practising Catholic's simple wish

Pope Francis needs to ensure power of the Church handed down to people

In many ways, the new pope is full of surprises -- the first Jesuit, first Latin-American and also the first non-European pope in about 1,300 years.

He is the first Pope Francis and the first to ditch the red papal mozzetta and to wear a simple wooden cross as he emerged onto the balcony of St Peter’s basilica.

The very way Pope Francis presented himself is in contrast to his predecessor Benedict XVI. Does it send a powerful message to local bishops, clergy and religious? Will it change those ‘line breaks’ in the local churches like ours?

I would like to believe these ‘firsts’ are signs of better things to come in the Church.

I take pride in my Catholic faith not for what the Church can do or cannot, but because I’m a member of the world’s largest faith organization. Because I believe that no matter how rich or poor, my joys and hopes, grievances and anxieties count, and there is someone with authority to listen to me.

I am among those faithful whose tiny local Church had no hand in choosing their supreme spiritual leader.

Catholics here are a tiny minority – about 350,000 people in a Muslim-majority country of more than 150 million. In 1986, on the only papal visit to Bangladesh, the late Pope John Paul II called us 'God’s little flock,’ whose life of faith is influenced by a multi-religious culture, a common reality in churches in Asia.

Most of the ‘little flock’ considers the pope no less than a demigod.

Most of us are devout and listen to what the pope says and does, rather than caring who he is or where he comes from. They care little (actually they know little) about the clerical abuses and financial scandals, or the dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy haunting the Church at the moment.

They see the new pope as ‘a source of hope and joy’ as he comes from a developing country which they too live in, because like the Vatican, the local Church also needs changes.

All these years, the local Church has been a ‘light of hope’ in the ‘vast sea of Islam,' making significant contributions to education, health and development sectors, especially to the poor.

Besides spiritual nourishment, by improving their socio-economic status the Church has developed a small but devout community of faithful. Thus, the laypeople have grown up.

But sadly, they have failed to find a sturdy position in the Church -- either nationally and locally. From episcopal commissions to parish level or at Church programs, with few exceptions, laypeople are merely participants, not decision-makers.

With due respect to the bishops, clergy and Religious who are close to the people, many of their colleagues think that by the virtue of ordination or religious vows they are the be-all and end-all when it comes to the Church.

It’s not that laypeople are less educated than the clergy or Religious, or they have too little theological and apostolic training opportunities. Not because they know little about Vatican II and changes in the Church it was intended to bring.

There is a fear among many clergy and Religious that empowerment of the laity will decline their power to rule them. Also, they are afraid that laypeople might rise against things that are not going well in many places, like what happened in Europe and America?

I guess this tendency is a legacy of Eurocentric Vatican bureaucracy as well.

But in his sermon during the installation Mass, Pope Francis emphasized the Church’s role as the "protector of the poorest, weakest and vulnerable" and reminded people that "authentic power is service."

Does this signify real hope for the laity in the near future?

With each passing day, the pope's style, words and actions ignite hope and joy in 1.2 billion Catholics around the world.

We have seen some signs of hope, but real change and reform are yet to happen. Our leaders need to realize that authentic power comes from God and lies with people and empowering people they empower themselves.

If that happens during Pope Francis' time, the Church will become not only ‘of and for the poor’ but also ‘for the poor’ in the real sense.

Third World View is the pseudonym of a commentator based in Dhaka

Read original post here- A practising Catholic's simple wish

Seeking justice from a flawed war crimes court

Many people in the country rejoiced this week as one of two special courts prosecuting alleged war criminals convicted a former leader of the largest Islamist party and sentenced him to death.

Abul Kalam Azad, a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami, was found guilty on seven of eight charges against him, including murder, rape, looting and arson, and sentenced in absentia.

The Islamic cleric who used to appear regularly on state-run and private television channels, is thought to have fled to Pakistan when the war crimes tribunal announced charges against him in April last year.

The tribunal’s verdict on Azad, announced January 21, was widely hailed in local media and celebrated by people across the country.

Such joy over the prospect of a death by hanging is understandable in part because many in the country have waited decades to receive justice for atrocities committed during Bangladesh’s War of Liberation from Pakistan in 1971.

The conflict saw the deaths of an estimated three million people, the rape of about 200,000 women, widespread looting and arson attacks, and the displacement of nearly 10 million people to neighboring India, according to government data.

Atrocities committed by military forces on civilian populations were widespread because they were helped by local collaborators – particularly, by members of Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed secession and saw independence and separation from Pakistan as an implicit attack on Islam.

Those tensions began with the partition of India in 1947 and have persisted ever since, causing political and economic turmoil that continues to plague Bangladeshi society and inflame religious conflict.

But the justice celebrated this week in Bangladesh is something of a mixed bag.

Since its creation three years ago, the tribunal has been criticized by rights groups for not meeting international legal standards and concerning itself with retribution rather than justice.

To date, nine party leaders from Jamaat-e-Islami and two from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party have been charged with war crimes, but both parties have dismissed the proceedings as unjust and politically motivated.

The nation’s ruling Awami League (AL), which led the push for independence, has made the war crimes tribunal a centerpiece of its administration.

But the AL has played more on public emotions rather than the strict demands of justice in a nation struggling to follow through on the promises that shaped its drive for independence.

Amid the outpouring of joy over this week’s verdict, one might be tempted to see progress towards a post-extremist and more democratic society, as well as a vindication of the AL’s administration under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

That would be a mistake. Much of the support for the tribunal has been linked to the tragedies of the war years that left few families untouched. Moreover, many have also seen the trials as an effort to put an end to the religious extremism that was for so long promoted by parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami.

But as continued dissention in the country over the tribunal shows, rooting out extremism is more easily hoped for than accomplished. And it is unlikely to proceed primarily from a flawed tribunal.

Until pluralism and tolerance are embraced by all members of society, Bangladesh will continue to struggle with political and sectarian conflict.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym of a journalist and commentator based in Dhaka

Read the original post here- Seeking justice from a flawed war crimes court

Our priests have become mediocre mediators

Let's have homilies that are brilliant, not boring

Whether at home in Dhaka or abroad, I attend Holy Mass every Sunday unless sickness or an urgent duty requires my attention.

My fidelity to Mass is not a response to any Church mandate. I would not call myself a traditional or a particularly devout Catholic.

For me, it is a spontaneous inner call to spend an hour or so with God and listen to His words, to rejoice over the good things in my life, to find solace for earthly pain and to receive encouragement to face future challenges.

Too often, however, I find myself in a miserable situation – as many others in the pews next to me do – because priests continue to fail in their duties as preachers to deliver an inspiring and thoughtful homily.

There is growing discontent among Bangladeshi Catholics over the quality of the preaching during Mass, which as a result has become a burden rather than a joy to attend.

Homilies these days comprise either well-worn retellings of the Gospels or the random thoughts of a particular priest. This is not simply unprofessional but also a failure in one of the signal duties of a shepherd of the Church.

They fail to imitate Jesus’ duty to the poor, hungry and worn-out crowds who followed him from the mountains to the sea to hear his words. Our priests run out of fuel while trying to offer spiritual nourishment to those in such desperate need of it.

I feel badly for myself, but worse for others, who take great pains to carve time out of their day for Mass before or after office hours, and on Sunday – a workday in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Priests should use their homilies as a tool to explain the Gospels to the congregation in a way that is precise and specific. Parishioners are not abstractions. They are flesh-and-blood people with real joys and sorrows, and they seek honest answers to serious questions that have dogged believers of every age.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does evil seem to hold the upper hand over good?

If a doctor fails to prescribe the proper medication or treatment for a patient, his reputation will suffer, patients will go elsewhere and he may even face legal consequences.

This is not the case with priests, of course.

Most Catholics remain devoted and hopeful that things will improve. They continue to endure banal preaching but make no effort to confront the issue by demanding better nourishment.

Over the many years that I have attended Mass, I have discovered two principal causes for bad preaching.

First, many priests seem to feel that what they were taught decades ago in seminary should still suffice. They remain ignorant either to significant developments in theology and homiletics, or to the changes and challenges of modern life.

Second, they seem to spend much more time examining their own needs, experiences or concerns, and then projecting them onto their audience – in effect, telling their parishioners what they should be concerned about rather than equipping them with Gospel-based guidance on real-life challenges.

Our priests need to come down from their ivory towers and get a good look at life as it is lived in the back streets, markets and humble homes of the People of God.

They should be inquisitive about the lives, joys and sorrows of the people God has put in their care. They should be curious about the world and eager to explain in compelling ways how the Gospel remains sufficient for every crisis in an age of multiplying crises. They should be eager to help their flocks find the answers to increasingly complex questions.

I am not arguing that all priests must rise to the rhetorical level of such noted orators as US President Barack Obama, but they should at least employ the humility and love of St John Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests.

Our priests are mediators between God and His people. Their role is to communicate the wonder and joy of faith and the deep love between God and his creation.

So they should be ever mindful of the great responsibility of this office and remember that Mass is not a moribund ritual. It is the feeding of a hungry flock that is desperate for real, substantial and informed guidance.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym of a journalist and commentator based in Dhaka

Read the original post here- Our priests have become mediocre mediators

Honor, disgrace and the call of duty

The world was struck by shock and grief over last month’s brutal gang-rape and tragic death of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi.

This inhuman crime drew immense media coverage and provoked an unprecedented outpouring of public anger in India.

The victim is dead and buried and her molesters are facing murder charges. Yet the name of the girl is unknown. The authorities have remained tight-lipped on revealing her name in order to save her honor from possible social disgrace.

Before the Delhi crime, a 14-year-old Bangladeshi schoolgirl was gang-raped for several days. The vicious crime went unreported for weeks because the family tried to keep the girl in hiding, to prevent it being widely known that she had lost her "topmost honor" -- her virginity.

The girl’s mother was worried for the health of her daughter, but even more anxious about her future. A typical Bangladeshi parent, she believes that no one will marry a girl once she has been defiled in this way.

The girl is now out of danger physically, but no one knows what is going to happen to her. It seems all but inevitable that she will have to bear a social stigma for as long as she lives.

This may sound astonishing to Western ears, but in countries such as India or Bangladesh, where the social system is still medieval and male-dominated, rape cases meet mostly with apathy, both from the authorities and society at large.

If a woman falls victim to rape, even more than the pain and humiliation she will surely feel, she and her family mostly feel ashamed about what happened. Society indirectly blames the victim for inviting disaster.

So, the victim’s family show reluctance to file a complaint; the law enforcers and judiciary tend to treat such incidents lightly; cases are poorly investigated and sentences are often all too short. Rapists can get out of jail quickly and many soon start raping again.

The government records a total 174,691 cases of violence against women including torture, killing, rape and sexual harassment between 2001 and last year. No exact figures on rape cases are available, largely because of the social disgrace factor.

Rape is not simply a crime, it is a serious inhuman act, like all other forms of violence against women. A better and more human world is possible only if men learn to respect women, and help create an environment where women can feel proud of who they are.

The Third Eye is a pseudonym for a Dhaka-based journalist and analyst

Read the original post here- Honor, disgrace and the call of duty 

Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

Rohingya Children at a refugee camp in Bangladesh (photo: Dr. Habib Siddiqui)

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries, rarely makes international headlines for good reasons, so if you see something hit the wires of the international press, prepare yourself for the worst.

Whether it is an expose of the country’s dire poverty or the toxicity of the drinking water; whether the lack of infrastructure or political unrest; bad news is a safe bet from a country where half the 160 million population can’t read and earns only about 50 cents per day.

But some issues are more pressing, if not more widely reported, in the country.

One example is the issue of refugees – a longstanding issue that has again come to the fore with the outbreak of violence in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Allegedly sparked by the rape and murder of a young Buddhist girl and the subsequent retaliatory killing of 10 Muslims, the violence drove hundreds of Rohingya towards the Bangladesh border.

Authorities on the Bangladeshi side have continued to refuse entry to Rohingya refugees, despite incurring criticism from Human Rights Watch, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the US State Department.

Since last week, border guards have turned back boats carrying hundreds of refugees seeking a safe haven – though authorities did provide food and water before sending them on their way.

Apart from its international commitments as a member of the United Nations and the dictates of common decency, has the country forgotten the assistance it received at a time of great need?

An estimated 10 million people fled to India during the 1971 war of liberation.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni defended the refusal of entry to the Rohingya by saying, “Bangladesh never signed any kind of international act, convention or law for allowing and giving shelter to refugees. That’s why we are not bound to provide shelter to Rohingyas.”

The statement fails to address the most critical issues, ones that have deep historical roots.

In 1978 and again in 1991, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled Rakhine state to Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence that some have equated to ethnic cleansing by the then military junta ruling Myanmar.

Many later returned, but a large number refused out of fear for their safety. Bangladesh authorities say that about half a million Rohingya refugees still remain in Bangladesh, residing in largely makeshift camps in the southeastern border districts.

The UNHCR puts the figure at between 200,000 and 300,000, with only 28,000 granted official refugee status.

Authorities are obviously trying to prevent another influx of refugees that may not want to return once order is restored.

Despite maintaining a presence in Myanmar since at least the 7th century, the Rohingya have been denied citizenship by their government, which refuses to include them in a list of 135 recognized ethnic minorities.

Today the Rohingya are numbered among the world’s most persecuted minorities, unrecognized as citizens at home and unwanted abroad.

Descendents of ethnic Rakhine, Bengali and Arab seafarers, they continue to be unwelcome in Bangladesh as well.

Relegated to ill-equipped and unhealthy camps, and subject to exploitation and abuse by border security guards as well as local residents, the Rohingya receive little in the way of official support from the government, which sees them as an additional burden on a country already groaning under the substantial weight of other social and political problems.

The Rohingya problem is not without precedent.

Bangladesh’s three million ethnic tribals continue to fight for their rights despite being recognized as citizens of the country.

And what of the 160,000 Bihari Muslim refugees who fled to the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from India after the partition? They have always considered themselves citizens of Pakistan, though they were not born there and most have never even visited that country.

They have been locked in the country since Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan in 1971, proving that dividing countries on religious grounds was a historic blunder.

For more than 40 years, the Rohingya have endured international neglect and dire living conditions. Bangladesh remains adamant about its refugee policy, and efforts by the international community have to date been largely ineffective.

The international community must decide on a better course of action. The limbo in which the Rohingya have lived for so long is not sustainable. And tensions in western Myanmar, and Bangladesh’s resistance to change its position on refugees, will likely spell even more bad news for the country.

The Third Eye is the pseudonym for a Dhaka-based journalist and analyst

Read the original post here- Bangladesh loses sight of own refugee past

A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion

Recently, I picked a war of words with one of my close friends over his derogatory remarks on Islam. “Not all Muslims are bad people, but Islam is a religion with wrong principles,” he said to my utter disgust.

We were talking about widespread corruption and other social vices in Bangladesh and trying to find out their socio-historic roots. One of the discussion topics was the recent attack on a Buddhist community here, by an angry Muslim mob.

Hundreds of years ago lower caste Hindus converted to Islam en masse, largely to escape injustice and torture by the upper class in a society heavily based on social caste system. My friend says the decision to embrace Islam was wrong.

“No religion is inherently bad, because every religion teaches people to be good,” I said, but he didn’t change his stance. He countered by saying he had read Qu’ran and found its teaching ‘unacceptable’.

I tried to find some practical reasons behind his prejudice and misconceptions.

My friend has been a non-practicing Catholic for a long time, since even before we met four years ago; he was born in a Catholic parish to a Catholic father and Protestant mother. The family moved to a predominantly Muslim area due to his father’s job and he grew up in that area.

There was no Catholic church nearby, only a small evangelical Protestant church with about a hundred believers. Most of the children he knew were Muslims and some of them treated him like a crow among peacocks. So, he grew into adulthood hating Muslim, but also with ignorance about his own religious faith.

Then, a few months ago, his world came crashing down when a bad road accident left his right leg smashed. Most people didn’t think he would walk again, and he didn’t think so either, but he made it within six months. It was around then that he started believing ‘God does exist’!

But the more he turned to the Church, the more critical he became about Islam and Muslims.
While my friend’s case has unique aspects, most Christians in the country share the same views on Islam.

Taking sporadic cases of injustice and torture by opportunist Muslims, most Christians vilify the whole Muslim world. Is that fair?

Original Post: A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion