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People in Bangladesh have experienced torture for decades. Many think it is practically unavoidable, unchallengeable and legally unpreventable, due to the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators.
The prevailing atmosphere of torture and denial of justice to victims is demoralizing to many rights groups and those who wish to voice their concerns. But Odhikar, a Dhaka-based human rights organization, in cooperation with the Copenhagen-based Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims, organized a “Token Tribunal against Torture” last Saturday to highlight the issue in a different way.
The groups told the stories of five victims of torture that included a human rights defender, a journalist, a teacher, a student and a former public representative of a local government institution and wife of a victim, who was tortured to death by members of the Bangladesh Army, which brought tears to the eyes of the audience.
In the audience, a retired major general of the Bangladesh Army, who could have been involved in several brutal crackdowns on civilians during his military career, could not control his tears after hearing of the extraordinary brutality by the army.
S.M. Aktar Faruk Mintu, chairman of the Monoharpur Union Council of the Monirampur police station in Jessore district, told the audience his story:
“I was called in (to the police station) on my cell phone. A soldier beat me with a stick for about six minutes, locked me in the room and left. Another person came. I asked, 'What is my offense?' He kicked my testicles with his boot. I was unable to breathe and was bleeding from my groin.
“He stripped off my pants, hung me upside down and kicked me with his boot and beat me with a stick. Again, he continued to beat me on the foot, under the knee and on the thigh. Four persons stood on my legs. Then somebody hit me on the head with something. I sprang in the air and my head hit the roof. Then I can remember nothing.
“When I regained consciousness, I saw they were plucking the nails off my toes. They were pressing on the nails of my hands. I again fell unconscious. When I regained consciousness, they started pouring hot water into my nostrils with pipes and on my back, which started burning. I again fell unconscious.
“When I cried out of pain the soldiers stitched my lips with a needle, which is normally used for stitching shoes. Each of these brutal tortures continued for about two hours, with short intervals. They were insisting that I surrender arms, which I did not have and I continuously denied having. They discussed among themselves to kill me with a gunshot, but the person who was assigned to kill me disagreed to do so."
That was a small part of a long story of torture in the army camp at Shankarpur in the Jessore district. The army arrested Mintu on June 6, 2007 at around 6 p.m. and a colonel in the Bangladesh Army led soldiers to torture him.
During the state of emergency in the past two years, around 500,000 people who were arrested and detained experienced many patterns of torture. Besides, many more that were not arrested or detained were beaten on the streets by the army, paramilitary forces and the police.
Ironically, the current government led by the Bangladesh Awami League, which promised to maintain the rule of law and human rights in the country before the general election last December, ratified the State of Emergency Ordinance of 2007 in the Parliament with impunity after they were voted to power.
The police and other paramilitary forces like the Rapid Action Battalion use torture as a tool of investigation against criminal suspects. They also illegally arrest innocent people and torture them in detention to extract money.
A simple calculation provides a scary scenario of torture in Bangladesh. The country has 629 police stations. If one person is tortured each day in each police station, then 229,585 persons are being victimized in a year. In reality, however, the number of torture victims is many times more than this figure.
Unfortunately, in a country where torture is endemic, there is no scope for even a minimum legal remedy for victims. Instead, perpetrators have the power to abuse as much as they wish and enjoy impunity from the authorities. Whichever political party takes over the governmental power patronizes torture by rewarding perpetrators and providing impunity despite the fact that the same political party was vocal against the use of torture while in the opposition.
For example, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is now the leader of the opposition in Parliament, issued a statement last Wednesday, on the occasion of the U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, demanding investigations into incidents of torture committed during the emergency government. But when she was prime minister, Zia deployed armed forces to crack down on civilians in the name of Operation Clean Heart in 2002 and the Joint Drive Indemnity Act-2003. Both operations were hurriedly imposed as ordinances, in Parliament, to ensure impunity to the perpetrators. Sheikh Hasina, who was then leader of the opposition, protested and criticized Zia’s government.
Now Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister, did not consent to a draft bill to criminalize torture and custodial death when Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a member of Parliament belonging to her party, requested her to do so.
There is no difference between Zia and Hasina – both have repeatedly failed to prove their commitment to end torture. Both have protested against it when they were in the opposition, and allowed it when in power.
Political parties and policymakers should realize that Bangladesh has an industry of torture, which destroys people's faith in the state machinery, especially institutions related to the criminal justice system that should be maintaining the rule of law.
Torture humiliates people, reduces their creativity and capacity to develop, diminishes the quality of governance and prevents freedom of expression and democratization. On the other hand, it increases violence, lawlessness, corruption, abuse of power, interpersonal distrust, and the sense of insecurity and vulnerability of society.
It is time for everyone in Bangladesh, especially powerful politicians in the opposition and ruling parties and civil society groups, to do some brainstorming regarding the practice of torture. They should ask themselves what they are really achieving through the practice of torture in custody.
Why can’t laws be implemented to criminalize torture? There should be unanimous consensus on whether torture should be criminalized or whether it should continue unabated. After all, the practice of torture can affect anyone not lucky enough to control the perpetrators.
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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.)
