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Ordinary people, who dreamed of a new era, are frustrated by the unlawful actions still practiced in the country. Many are still facing the same nightmares of the past. An incident that occurred last week, like many others, reveals that there is still no rule of law in Bangladesh.
This is the story as told by Kamruzzaman, who is in the public service, to the media. His son Rakibuzzaman Rakib had been imprisoned for 10 years for possessing an explosive substance. The police allegedly implicated him in four more cases while he was already in detention. However, the court granted him bail five years ago.
Hearing rumors that the Rapid Action Battalion might kill Rakib as soon as he was released from prison, Kamruzzaman decided not to allow his son to appear in public, fearing his death.
On May 10, Rakib's father made arrangements to send the court's bail order to the prison authorities. However, the jail authorities did not release Rakib on that date. Hoping that his son would be released the following day, Kamruzzaman waited outside the Dhaka Central Jail's gate the next morning.
At around 9:30 p.m. Kamruzzaman saw two white minibuses arrive at the prison. Seven plainclothes policemen with walky-talky radios and firearms stepped out of the vehicles. Three went inside the prison at around 10:45 p.m.
About an hour later, Kamruzzaman saw the jailor Bazlur Rashid and a deputy jailor coming out with the three men who had entered the prison earlier. They were carrying Rakib and holding his hands and legs. At the gate, when Rakib saw his father he cried for help. The men put Rakib in a car and left the place. The armed men prevented Kamruzzaman from getting close to his son. Later, Kamruzzaman chased them in vain and returned home fearing for his son's condition.
That day Kamruzzaman and Rakib's wife Nira visited several police stations, including the offices of the Rapid Action Battalion, to find their son. Every law-enforcement officer they met denied any connection to the incident or any knowledge of Rakib’s whereabouts. When Nira wanted to lodge a complaint with the duty officer of the Lalbagh police station, under whose jurisdiction the Dhaka Central Jail is situated, she was denied the right to lodge the complaint. Rather, the police asked her, "Who knows the whereabouts of your husband and who took him where?"
The next morning Rakib's dead body was found on a Dhaka street, with bullet wounds. Forensic medical experts found a bullet in his body, presumably from a small firearm, while conducting an autopsy.
The father of the deceased told the media and rights groups that all relevant offices of the law-enforcement agencies had denied involvement in his son’s murder. No investigation or arrests have taken place in this case.
This incident raises the question as to who has access to prisons, besides state agencies? Is the Dhaka Central Jail alienated from Bangladesh or beyond the jurisdiction of the government? If law enforcement agencies deny responsibility for killing a man, does this prove that a functional government exists in Bangladesh? If nobody is responsible for such incidents what is the necessity of spending taxpayers’ money on so-called government institutions?
If the judiciary, including the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, which has the authority to address such incidents, had any sense of dignity it would have taken legal action in this case. But even one week after the incident, the judges remain blind, although the country’s newspapers published the story. Have the judges lost their sense of legality?
Everyone knows that by committing such heinous human rights violations, which keep recurring in Bangladesh, perpetrators are killing the people's belief in law and law-enforcement institutions.
The police and other law-enforcement agencies, public officials and politicians have largely destroyed the concept of legality, which exists only in academic form. And silence from the judges is only aiding the ongoing "campaign" to bury the sense of legality in Bangladesh.
Can professionals, especially judges, lawyers and civil society members raise their voices and act tirelessly until justice is ensured? Will there ever be any resurrection of their conscience?
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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 who has worked as a journalist and human rights activist in his country for more than a decade, and as editor of publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues.)
