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The festival, one of the largest for Muslims, teaches the lesson of “sacrifice.” On that day Muslims sacrifice cattle and other animals, like goats and camels, in Islamic rituals. The "Festival of Sacrifice" commemorates the willingness of the prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God.
The Koran asserts that Almighty Allah wanted believers to keep the mindset of "sacrificing the loveliest and dearest thing" through the practice of slaughtering animals. Based on the depth of one’s belief and loyalty, one can be blessed by Allah.
The meat of the sacrificial animals is to be divided into three shares – one for the poor who are unable to afford it; one for neighbors and relatives; and one for the person who performs the sacrifice. However, a person is allowed to give away all the meat including his or her share to the other two groups. By trusting the Almighty's command and maintaining fairness in sharing with the poor, Muslims are asked to seek blessings.
But the “due spirit” reported during the festival is lost prior to the event, or for that matter prior to any similar big religious event. Instead, some messily managed issues, which are quite common in Bangladesh, are reported, such as cattle trading, transport fare hikes and traffic congestion.
Cattle traders bring the animals – cows, oxen, buffaloes, goats, camels and lambs – to highly populated cities like Dhaka and Chittagong to ensure that their residents can buy animals and perform their religious rituals, as well as consume the meat. But the process that precedes the sanctifying and offering of the animals is not so sacrificial.
“I had to pay tolls to policemen on duty on the highways at five or six points from Jhenaidah (a district in southwest Bangladesh around 240 kilometers from the capital Dhaka) to the Gabtali cattle market (in Dhaka). Each time the police took 200 to 300 takas (US$2.90 to US$4.30) from me,” said Babul Bishwas, a cattle trader, sharing his experience with a journalist of the New Age on Nov. 24 prior to the Eid festival. Many other traders made similar complaints about the police, transport workers and owners of associations.
Understandably, traders add the amount extorted by the police and others to the cost of their animals to ensure they make a profit. Thus ordinary people end up paying more than it would otherwise cost to buy the animals. In other words, corrupt police officers force people to sacrifice more money in order to fill their own pockets. This is hardly a spirit of sacrifice for Eid al-Adha.
There is some similarity between the sacrificial animals and the local Bangladeshis who buy them. Like the sacrificial animals, which make some noise before being slaughtered, the Bangladeshi people complain to the media whenever the police extort money from them. They don’t make formal complaints for fear of facing fabricated charges, torture or even death at the hands of the police.
Yet the cattle traders’ allegations are not a simple issue that can be overlooked. Talking to the media, Bangladesh’s Inspector General of Police Nur Mohammad admitted, "There have been some incidents of extortion by policemen,” and promised that “punitive action will be taken. " At the same time Bangladesh’s top cop defended his extortionist colleagues by saying, "You must understand that you cannot stop this kind of malpractice overnight."
It can be assumed that most or all police officers in Bangladesh who extort money from cattle traders are Muslim, as is the police chief. We may ask, what place does Islam have in the minds of these people who indulge in extortion from those who sell animals for a religious ritual?
This is one more result of the continuous failure to address the real problems within the policing system, which repeatedly disrespects citizens and their values. The confession, followed by the defensive statement, of the police chief reveals the reason for the recurring extortion by the police.
In fact, police extortion has been deeply rooted in Bangladesh for several decades and continues unabated because of the law-enforcers' chain of corruption instead of a chain of command. If the police chief believes that extortion cannot be stopped, then he has failed in his duty along with the authorities that have failed to control extortion within and outside the police.
Instead of making statements in defense of police officers, authorities could easily identify the corrupt officers by allowing victims to lodge formal complaints with specific information on the date, time and place of extortion. Then, by checking the day-to-day operations of the police of various jurisdictions – and ensuring that the investigating officers are not bribed by their accused colleagues – the authorities could take stern action such as the temporary or permanent suspension of the accused officer.
If police authorities, including the inspector general, are unable to control crimes committed by their own force, then the nation does not need them, as they would be morally and practically incapable of controlling the crimes of others.
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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.)
