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However, even after 38 years of independence, the question remains whether the nation has achieved real victory or whether it is still struggling to achieve the goal it set out to accomplish four decades back. Bangladeshis are struggling to rescue themselves from repression under the military, which has allocated a chunk of the nation’s budget to itself while the poor starve.
This year, Victory Day is being celebrated with fear and hope that a credible general election will bring democracy back to Bangladesh, although people are doubtful whether that will happen based on the events and incidents of the past few days.
The military-controlled government received a blow from the Supreme Court on Dec. 5, when a bench of the High Court Division declared some of the emergency measures taken void and unconstitutional. Some clauses of the emergency law, such as clauses 11(3), 19(D) and 19(E) of Section 5 of the Emergency Power Ordinance-2007, took away people's right to seek bail from the higher branches of the judiciary and denied their right to challenge the order of lower courts in superior courts. The military regime has abused these arbitrary clauses at random and put people unjustly behind bars.
On Dec. 14, the government decided that it would lift the state of emergency starting from Dec. 17, which is good news for human rights groups both in Bangladesh and abroad, as well as the politicians of major parties who were putting pressure on the military-controlled government to lift the state of emergency.
But, happiness does not last long in Bangladesh. On Dec. 15, retired Brigadier General Shakhawat Hossain, who is also the election commissioner, announced that the armed forces would leave their barracks on Dec. 18 to perform their "duties" during the election starting on Dec. 20. This implies that the day following the lifting of emergency rule, the military will again be deployed, albeit under a different excuse.
Gen. Shakhawat argued that the deployment is necessary, as law and order could deteriorate after emergency rule is lifted. None of the political parties have protested this decision.
An army officer cannot remove his ingrained way of thinking, which leads him to exaggerate the importance of soldiers, while undermining other institutions responsible for maintaining law and order. This way of thought can be implemented in different ways, such as the employment of armed forces for policing instead of taking care of the country’s borders or the creation of a police force similar to the armed forces for maintaining law and order in the country.
During election duty, the military will have power to arrest any person without warrant. It is assumed that there will be numerous incidents of human rights abuses in the country at the hands of the military, on top of those that may be perpetrated by other paramilitary forces and the police.
In the midst of this situation, the major political parties declared their respective election manifestos last week. These parties are accusing the government of violating human rights in the country, but are only making the case when it is politicians who are detained in prison. Ironically, none have made any specific commitments to address the country's general human rights problems.
There have been serious allegations of custodial torture and ill treatment at the hands of law-enforcing agencies. For example, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's son, Tareque Rahman, alleged that he was brutally beaten while in detention. However, Zia’s party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, did not utter the word "human rights" in its election manifesto.
The Bangladesh Awami League cursorily stated, "Good governance will be secured through the establishment of human rights, rule of law and fundamental rights on strong footing." However, no specifics were mentioned, nor have they said that they will create new legislation to protect people's rights in compliance with the international instruments to which Bangladesh is party.
In Bangladesh, it is a known fact that the torture and ill treatment of individuals under the custody of law-enforcement agencies is institutionalized. The rule of law institutions have been willingly abused by ruling parties in the past. These parties have made no comments as to how they will stop such practices, nor have they explained how the recurrence of abuse of power can be stopped.
This proves that politicians have zero commitment to sanction the criminalization of torture under domestic law. This is simply one of many reasons why Bangladesh has failed to achieve real victory even after 38 years of independence.
The current situation does not offer any hope that these problems will be addressed in the next 38 years, nor that people will be able to see Bangladesh become a truly free nation.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)
