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One family’s experience provides an example. On Dec. 30, 2002, at around 12:30 a.m. a group of army officers led by Major Sagir Ahmed, commander of the force in Paikgachha Upazilla, Khulna district, went to the house of journalist F. M. Abdur Razzak to arrest him. Their action fell under a government crackdown on crime code-named Operation Clean Heart, though no lawful reason was given for seeking to arrest Razzak.
During the raid Razzak’s house was ransacked. The panicked family did not disclose Razzak's whereabouts when asked, so the soldiers tied the hands of Razzak's 70-year-old father Nur Ali Fakir and 16-year-old brother Bodiuzzaman Bodi with rope. When Razzak's wife Rahima asked the officers the reason for the raid and requested them not to harm her family members, she inadvertently committed a grave mistake.
Nur Ali, Bodi and Rahima were beaten with rifle butts, boots and sticks for about two hours. Sagir Ahmed stamped on Rahima's toes with his boots. After this physical brutality, the soldiers poured three pitchers of cold water on Rahima and forced her to sit in the open in the cold night for two-and-a-half hours in her wet clothes.
The cries of Nur Ali, Bodi and Rahima echoed through the neighborhood, but nobody dared to step forward and save them, fearing they would face similar treatment. Rahima's seven-year-old daughter Irani heard their cries and woke up to witness the brutality. She was so traumatized that for months she feared her mother and could not come to her, which compelled the family to send her to her aunt's house.
Nur Ali was detained at a military camp and later charged under the Special Powers Act of 1974 and sent to the Khulna District Jail under a preventive detention order issued by the administration. After a few months he was granted bail by the High Court, which came at a high cost, with money spent on lawyers and corrupt staff in the various branches of the country's judiciary.
Bodi and Rahima were seriously ill a week after these events, when this writer met them in person. Rahima had lost a few of her toenails and the nail on her right big toe appeared like the open bonnet of a car.
The whole family has spent a lot of money to cure the physical problems caused by this undeserved attack, and continues to do so. More than six years after this brutality, Rahima is permanently ill with various physical complications. The condition of Nur Ali has gradually worsened and Bodi is struggling to maintain a normal life.
There was no way for these victims to seek justice for their sufferings. There was no question of punishment for the perpetrators. Instead, ironically, the government passed the Joint Drive Indemnity Act, 2003, in the Parliament to ensure impunity for the armed forces and other law-enforcement agencies, despite the heinous crimes they committed during Operation Clean Heart.
In addition to the physical and psychological pain of torture, Rahima faced social stigma after this treatment by the armed forces. But worst of all was the trauma to her family. As she asked, "Can any authority compensate a mother for those days when my daughter feared to come to me?"
Hundreds of similar questions have been suppressed in the hearts of Bangladeshis for decades and the cries of torture victims still fill the air in the territories of Bangladesh.
The use of torture by the police and security forces is so common that one's own story often supersedes the suffering of others. But the question is, how long will the nation endure torture? Will this brutal practice ever end?
The criminalization of torture has been demanded by everyone who has directly or indirectly been a victim. Now this demand can be fulfilled by the Parliament of Bangladesh. But the biggest question is whether the country's politicians, especially the parliamentarians, want to end the brutal practice of custodial torture or not. Many Bangladeshis, after their own bitter experiences, believe that politicians want to continue the ongoing practice of torture for their own political and personal benefit.
On Feb. 18 the Torture and Custodial Death (Prohibition) Bill, 2009, was registered in the secretariat of the country's Parliament. Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a member of Parliament of the ruling party, the Bangladesh Awami League, submitted it as a private member's bill, which is supposed to be introduced at a session of Parliament on March 5.
This bill is an acid test for parliamentarians as well as policy-making politicians. Now it is up to them to prove whether Bangladesh wants to end the culture of torture, which remains beyond the scope of challenge, and make room for victims to seek legal redress.
The parliamentarians can also prove that they have the political will and capacity to listen to the pains of the people. Is there really any commitment to say "good-bye" to torture?
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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.)
