Tazreena Sajjad

Published by the Forum on 2 November 2009.

This piece outlines the lessons Bangladesh can draw from Cambodia in bringing war criminals to trail.

Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia was under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Pot, the goal of the Khmer Rouge was to reconstruct Cambodia on the communist model of Mao’s China and create a classless society comprising of one federation of collective farms.

This radical program included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, universities, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labour was widespread. It also included abolishing all civil and political rights, enforced separation of children from their parents, and the systematic killing of lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professionals in any field (including the military) along with their extended families. Leading Buddhist monks were killed and almost all temples destroyed. Also targeted were minority groups, victims of the Khmer Rouge’s racism. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai, and also Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. Half the Cham Muslim population and 8,000 Christians were also murdered. Music and radio sets were banned. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. One Khmer slogan ran ”To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.” It is estimated that approximately 2 million Cambodians died during Khmer Rouge reign from executions, disease and starvation.

While Bangladesh experienced political instability, dictatorships and military coup d’états and the entrenchment of alleged war criminals in public spaces, Cambodia struggled with a civil war following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, a regime dependant on neighbouring Vietnam, and continued power struggles between different political parties till the formal surrender of the remaining Khmer Rouge forces in 1998.

The discussion of accountability for the genocide was as absent in mainstream discourse in Cambodia as in Bangladesh. There were, however, a few attempts to seek justice for the genocide and crimes against humanity that were committed during Pol Pot’s rule that merit mention.

First, a memorial and museum in Phnom Penh were erected and a day of remembrance was established on the date of Khmer Rouge’s overthrow.

Second, seven months after the overthrow of Khmer Rouge in 1979, a “People’s Revolutionary Tribunal” was established, staffed with Cambodian and international lawyers that convicted Pol Pot and Ieng Sary of genocide in absentia. Ieng Sary received a royal pardon in 1996 for his defection to the government and Pol Pot died in 1998 shortly after being put under house arrest.

However, the trial was considered mostly a show trial, and did not satisfy the demands for justice and accountability amongst the human rights community in the country. Although the 1991 Paris Peace Accords contained no explicit provision for justice or accountability, the parties committed “to take effective measures to ensure that the policies and practices of the past shall never be allowed to return.”1

The idea of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was initiated in 1997, when Cambodian co-Prime Ministers Hun Sen and Norodom Ranrindh wrote to the United Nations to request assistance in providing accountability for senior Khmer Rouge Leaders that were still at large. A UN commission of experts explored various options for pressing criminal charges and finally recommended that trials be held under international guidance, preferably outside the country. This resulted in a protracted period of negotiations that lasted nearly ten years before the inauguration of the court in June 2006.

The June 2003 Agreement between the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia established that the ECCC procedures shall follow Cambodian law, and the ECCC “shall exercise jurisdiction in accordance to international standards of justice, fairness, and due process of law as set out in Articles 14 and 15 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” to which Cambodia is a state party.2 Under Article 28 of the agreement, the United Nations reserves the right to withdraw cooperation from the process if Cambodia causes the ECCC to fall short of complying with those standards.

Under the final terms of the agreement, the ECCC is a hybrid international tribunal that is composed of both Cambodian and international judges, prosecutors and court staff with the mandate to prosecute “senior leaders” of the Khmer Rouge and those “most responsible”for crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and violations international humanitarian law and certain crimes under national law committed between April 17, 1975 and January 6, 1979. The majority of the judges are Cambodian, but it is required that at least one international judge must agree to any verdict. This unique arrangement ensured the primacy of Cambodia’s sovereignty without compromising compliance with international norms and standards. And although it has not yet been finalised, the court statute includes the mechanism to provide non-monetary compensation to victims who may participate in trials.

The selection criteria has pragmatic underpinningsit allows for some discretion of the court as to the number of perpetrators that will be prosecuted while recognising that the there will perhaps be no more than ten defendants. There is also the concern that spreading the net far and wide could lead to a “witch hunt” of junior Khmer Rouge leaders that do have links to the existing government. Finally, there is the financial concernthe court’s budget of $56 million spread over three years would not be able to accommodate more than a handful of trials. To date, the ECCC has arrested all five Khmer Rouge leaders indicted by both Cambodian and international prosecutors. These figures have been charged with various counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, torture and genocide.

The challenges for successful prosecutions are significant. There are logistical and procedural delays with serious allegations of political interference and corruption. There is always a niggling concern that the government can disrupt or derail trials to suit perceived political needs and because a majority of Cambodian judges will hear cases and the Cambodian prosecutor and investigating judge must concur with any trial decisions. There are other challenges to consider–administrative hurdles from finishing the courtroom preparations, hiring translators, implementing financial controls to prevent corruption and the urgent need of funding.

The ECCC will soon seek an additional $43 million to fulfill its mandate. There too is a lack of clear resolution of the appropriate response to allegations of corruption within the Cambodian side of the court. There are allegations of a kickback scheme in which employees are permanently obliged to pay a proportion of their salary to their superiors in exchange for their recruitment. Those who have lodged complaints against these practices have allegedly lost their jobs as a direct result. While the ECCC’s Cambodian administration has consistently denied these allegations, the persistence of these allegations and the willingness of some staff to publicly make these statements have done damage to ECCC’s legitimacy.

Lessons for Bangladesh
What can Bangladesh learn from the experiences of Cambodia revisiting its legacy of large-scale atrocities?

First, Bangladesh is not alone in experiencing the moral and political pressure to respond to war crimes committed in the 1970s.

Second, like Cambodia, Bangladesh has to respond to legal obligations that state there is no statute of limitations (i.e. there is no statute setting a time limit on legal action) in the event of systematic and widespread abuses committed against a people.

Third, the passage of time has had a detrimental impact on pragmatic issues such as loss of witnesses, documentation of crimes and the entrenchment of war criminals in the public sphere. That could pose challenges to judicial proceedings that at times could be difficult if not impossible to circumvent.

Fourth, in the discussion of what kind of trials, and the extent of international intervention and support, there will be inevitable concerns raised about sovereignty and pressures to ensure that it is a fully domestic led effort. Correspondingly, these will also raise questions about the independent nature of the proceedings and could engender speculation of negative external intervention and interference and give rise to rumors and allegations of “foreign” manipulation in the outcomes of the cases. On the other hand, as experiences in Cambodia have indicated, a domestic led effort is open to both allegations and realities of corruption both in the legal and particularly in the administrative departments of the ECCC.

The possibility of such discussions emerging in the Bangladesh context and the politicisation of

Amdadul Huq/Driknews

legal proceedings would have to be guarded against. While the Cambodian efforts for seeking accountability have received a significant level of international support, both in terms of expertise as well as financial assistance, Bangladesh has to be acutely aware of the extent to which the international community will be allowed to and be willing to participate in its domestic efforts and perhaps even more importantly bear the financial burdens of these trials. The costs of war crimes tribunals are not minimal; outside of the immediate court costs, there will be additional administrative and bureaucratic costs especially in the case of prolonged trials and it is critical to identify potential donors and funds in the event of such a reality.

There are other lessons that Bangladesh can draw from Cambodia and particularly from the ECCC.

First, there is no substitute for coordinated, organised and well-developed documentation procedures and a unified stance that will continue to put pressure for the war crimes trials to move forward while upholding the highest standards of justice. The Cambodian Documentation project has done a remarkable job in tracing, tracking and collecting evidence of the genocide and its network of NGOs have played a critical role in ensuring that decades after the commission of crimes, individuals are held responsible for their roles in human atrocities and that the government makes a firm and sustained commitment to dealing with those guilty of war crimes. Bangladesh NGOs, human rights activists and individuals pushing for the war crimes trials need to pay attention to the organisation and commitment demonstrated by those in Cambodia who have made ECCC possible and learn from both their strategies and their mistakes.

Second, while there are those who criticise the ECCC and are cynical of the proceedings, what is irrefutable is the discourse that is developing in Cambodia regarding its dark history and a growing sense of awareness of the need to know more and engage with those who have survived the genocide in the 1970s. In Bangladesh, a similar strain is already visible; yet it is critical to ensure that urgency and awareness is allowed to grow, develop and sustain itself so that the history of the country is neither forgotten nor allowed to be sabotaged by revisionists’ interpretation of the events that led up to 1971.

The ECCC judges’ decisions to adopt rules allowing victims to participate as civil parties in the proceedings and to create a dedicated victims’ unit has been a positive development for the ECCC’s legacy within Cambodia and also a precedent for other internationally assisted courts. In areas such as witness protection, court management practices, provision of transcripts of hearings, and an independent defence support unit that works with defence legal teams, the ECCC have also taken important steps towards modeling a functioning, fair judicial system. Those responsible for the Bangladeshi war crimes trials have much to learn from these developments. Further, the ECCC has also provided a useful way for civil society to publicise the trails and has begun to promote the public and media to reflect on Cambodia’s history. Court officials have participated in public outreach events, the Cambodian nongovermmental organisations such as the centre for Social Development and Khmer Institute of Democracy and ADHOC have been active in developing a range of public for a and reconciliation exercises. Although the scale of the war crimes trial in Bangladesh will be different, it is pertinent to take note of the various ways in which the ECCC has been actively engaged with the Cambodian public to disseminate information about its work and the reasons for its establishment while creating new venues for civil society to engage with court proceedings and outcomes. If such measures are completely disregarded in the Bangladesh context, then the trials will remain a remote and isolated project without context and without continued public support and interest in the proceedings and its outcome.

While Bangladesh and Cambodia share a history of human tragedy that unfolded around the same time and overshadowed by Cold War politics, international indifference, domestic politics and policies and the subsequent entrenched climate of impunity, both countries already have and will continue to have distinctly different experiences in trying to address questions of war time atrocities. International support and nature of the trials in Cambodia is different from the Bangladesh context as is the reality of the length of trials and the practical considerations surrounding trials of the elderly war criminals in the Cambodian situation. There are other differing aspects too, such as the confessions of the born-again Christian Duch whose statements have provided a breakthrough for the ECCC to continue to press forward on seeking prosecutions of other criminals for the Cambodian genocide.

Noor Alam/Driknews

Nevertheless, as pointed out earlier, there are valuable lessons to be drawn from our Asian neighbour which is of vital significance for the success of the Bangladeshi trials. While we may not witness full disclosures and confessions brought on by remorse and guilt of perpetrators, a vigilant, systematic and vigorous process can hope to identify and try individuals guilty of committing egregious crimes. The reality is, like the ECCC, the war crimes tribunal will be largely symbolic in its ability to try a handful of cases against the worst perpetrators; yet, if the groundwork is prepared adequately, justice can be served against those who have yet to face charges for crimes against humanity. The ECCC’s experience has already indicated that corruption and political manipulation is a reality even with international presence; in the Bangladesh context, such a lesson should promote steps to affirm the independence of such a court and barring government officials from actions that could be perceived as attempts to influence the judicial process. Individuals implicated in corruption charges should be fully investigated and removed if the charges rove to be true.

Last, but not the least, one of the challenges facing the ECCC is the lack of clarity regarding the discussion of reparations for victims. The ECCC is being advised to consider how to maximise the impact of the reparations mandate, including soliciting public input on the feasibility of a trust fund for victims and relevant cultural considerations in formulating appropriate collective reparations for the various categories of victims involved. In the case of the war crimes trials in Bangladesh, deliberations regarding reparations should not be left as a marginal issue; if, like Cambodia there is lack of clarification of what reparations should involve, there is a strong possibility that the Bangladesh war crimes trials will face a challenge of monumental proportions.

Additional Readings:
On the Issues: Cambodia, United States Institute of Peace, http://www.usip.org/on_the_issues/ cambodia.html
Official ECCC website
http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/court_doc.list.aspx
Documentation Center of Cambodia
http://www.dccam.org/

An Anatomy of the Extraordinary Chambers.” Awaiting Justice: Essays on Khmer Rouge Accountability, Jason Abrams, Jaya Ramji & Beth Van Schaack (eds.) (Mellon Press, 2005).

1 Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodian Conflict, Article 15(2) (a) Oct 23, 1991.
2 Agreement between the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia Concerning the Prosecution under the Cambodian Law of Crimes Committed during the period of Democratic Kampuchea, June 6, 2003, Article 12 (2)

Hanufa Shamsuddin and Jyoti Rahman

Published by the New Age on 29 October 2009.

The underlying cause of tension in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is the reality of continuing discrimination faced by the region’s indigenous peoples in terms of the ongoing land encroachment and eviction, often in the name of development (eco-parks, plantations, construction of infrastructure), discrimination in access to justice and protection of the law.

THE right to preserve and foster diverse ethnic and religious identities was one of the fundamental issues underpinning Bangladesh’s freedom struggle that culminated in the war of independence of 1971. Ironically, by declaring that citizens of Bangladesh were to be known as Bengalis, the constitution (Article 6 Part 1) of the people’s republic transgressed that very idea in 1972. The Bangladeshi nationalism adopted by post-1975 governments should have ameliorated the original grievance of the non-Bengali peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. These didn’t happen because those same governments militarised ethnic tensions in the region, leading to the formation of Shanti Bahini, which waged a military insurgency that raged until the 1997 CHT Accord was signed to end the conflict in the region.
   As a result of the accord, Shanti Bahini no longer exists. It has been replaced by two Pahari political groups — the United People’s Democratic Front and Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity. These groups do not seek separation of the region from Bangladesh. Their demand is full implementation of the accord within the framework of territorial integrity of the country.
   Units of the Bangladesh Army are being withdrawn from the three CHT districts as per the accord. Some commentators have cynically questioned these withdrawals on misleading or distorted grounds. (Interview to the Himal Magazine by Brigadier Genera (retired) Hannan Shah is an example; see http://www.himalmag.com/Interview-with-retired-Brigadier-General-Hannah-Shah_fnw15.html.) Interestingly, many of these commentaries highlight only the most recent withdrawal of 35 camps, neglecting to mention 200 or so camps withdrawn during 2001-06 under the last elected government.
   The commentaries typically argue that as a result of the withdrawal of armed forces, the law and order situation in the region has deteriorated. But surely it is not the military’s responsibility to maintain law and order. If deteriorating law and order situation across the country doesn’t call for martial law, then why should CHT be an exception? Historically, it is the deferential treatment to the military that has created conflicts in this region.
   Indeed, the military’s record of keeping law and order in the region is akin to the peace of the graveyard, littered with random ‘arrests’, ‘questioning’ and torture by the army of political activists. There have been incidences such as the mass killings in Longadu in 1989 and Logang in 1991, or the abduction of Kalpana Chakma in June 1997. As late as in April 2008, 70 homes of mostly Paharis were burnt in Sajek. The inhabitants have still not been able to return to their homes. Those who held press conference in Dhaka were threatened and had to go into hiding.
   Another issue frequently raised by those who question the withdrawals is that of Bengali settlers. However, these pundits seldom differentiate between those who came in the region through natural migration and those who have been settled through forced migration. The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta of today’s Bangladesh (and neighbouring regions of the Indian northeast) has seen natural migration for many centuries. However, the source of discontent in the CHT region is usually not such natural migration. Rather, it is the 400,000 or so Bengalis who were settled there at gunpoint, and given deeds over land that was customarily owned by Paharis.
   The 1997 accord recognises customary ownership of land according to the CHT Regulation Act 1900. The forced settlement took place ignoring this act, and is the source of land disputes. The Bengali settlers here are as much victims as the Paharis. And demagoguery on this issue helps no one.
   Sadly, land grabbing is still going on in the CHT region. The forestry department alone has grabbed 2 lakh 18 thousand acres. The army has been taking over land in the name of garrisons, training and artillery. In Chimbuk recently, Parjatan (the state tourism bureau) took over 250 acres of land when they were only supposed to take ten. Even NGOs have taken part in land grabbing.
   Lack of proper demarcation compounds the situation. But the underlying cause is the reality of continuing discrimination faced by the region’s indigenous peoples in terms of the ongoing land encroachment and eviction, often in the name of development (eco-parks, plantations, construction of infrastructure), discrimination in access to justice and protection of the law.
   Those who genuinely wish to see peace in Chittagong Hills should focus on the discrimination and injustice, instead of using hyperbolic half-truths to support a military occupation

Fariha Sarawat

Published by the Daily Star on 14 October 2009.

MODHUMITA, a housewife and mother of two, hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since May not since her house and the small shrimp hatchery her family owned got washed away by Cyclone Aila and her two small children almost died.

The last time I was down in her village Shakbaria: a small community of about a 40-50 mainly Hindu families on the south-western coastal belt of Khulna her family of seven was still living in a makeshift house made of straw, fronds and plastic sheeting provided by Save the Children UK.

This was almost four months after the Cyclone had hit the house that got washed away. That was an NGO-prescribed “climate-resilient” variety of the kind that had been built to stand tall even against the onslaught of violent, tropical storms. It got washed away by the fierce tidal surge of unprecedented velocity. The early warning systems in place had only predicted the storm, not the ferocity of the tidal surge. The collateral damage was not caused by the storm, but by the mighty tidal surge that it had propelled. This shows once again that we need to scale up our disaster risk reduction efforts and hone our early warning systems.

I have worked with two different kinds of climate change survivors the ones who live at the forefront, on the coast, and deal with the frequent calamities, and the ones who have migrated to the cities because they figured survival, which is hard enough in this part of the world under normal circumstances, would just be easier if they didn’t have to fight a huge storm or flood every few months.

The latter group seems to be increasing in number. But not out of choice.

For the families who live at the coast, migration to cities is not a choice; it’s a necessity. The coast now has fewer jobs, less arable land, or even dry land to build houses on; schools get flooded and closed down; trees, crops and vegetation are dying from salinity, and fresh drinking water is always scarce in supply.

But here’s the ironythings are worse in the cities.

The cities are overcrowded. The slums where the migrant families take shelter are already too cramped with their former residents. The condition of the sewerage system is abominable, and it continues to contaminate drinking water sources; housing is scarce and expensive, as is the general cost of living. Hence entire families, including the young children, have to work for food and rent. I met one ten-year-old boy in a Dhaka slum called Rubel, who’s been working since he was just five years old. His parents had moved to Dhaka after their home had been washed away by river erosion.

Sitting here at the forefront of climate change, we hear talks of helping climate change migrants cope with their changing lives in the city. While I applaud this effort, I can’t help but wonder if this is how we’re looking at reducing risks and damage from disastersby shifting people away from the disaster zones.

Is this not myopic? Will it be sustainable?

Where are we planning on whisking people away? We have no space!

As the world gears up for the December talks in Copenhagen, life is still not picking up speed in the Aila-devastated areas of Khulna and Satkhira. With scores of families still living in makeshift houses on the embankment and children still dependent on humanitarian aid for their basic needs of food, safe drinking water, and medicine, and most importantly a safe shelter, life is still far from “normal”.

But what is most jarring about the whole tragedy is that given the present trends in climate changehigher frequency and intensity in disasters, more forceful tidal waves and rising water levels this “makeshift” lifestyle can become the norm for the region.

How will these people cope? Who will help them? Or will they also be forced to migrate?

While most of the world’s brilliant minds are occupied with developing complicated models and equations to figure out the phenomena, very little is being done to help the people living at the forefront adapt to their changing situation. People like Rubel and Modhumita are the human faces of the climate change. And while the world negotiates the policy trade offs, they’re the ones left to pick up the piecesa job that is becoming increasingly difficult.

After the next disaster that strikes Bangladesh, Modhumita, like Rubel’s family, will also move to the city, which will in no way improve her situationthis is provided of course that we are able to save the family from the next flood or cyclone. Without a comprehensive disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness plan in place, saving people from the onslaught of high frequency disasters will get increasingly difficult.

Asif Saleh

Published in the Star Weekend Magazine on 9 October 2009.

I have moved back to Bangladesh recently after spending 19 years abroad. In the process of reintegration to the society, I have been amazed to see how much it has changed. I compare my teenage years with those of a teenager today and I find youngsters are so much more globalised, open to new ideas, and hungry for success.

However, there are certain things that have remained the same. Our attitude towards our domestic help have changed very little. Even though, we, the urbanites, spend a major chunk of our time agonising over our ‘kajer loks’, the issue of our treatment towards them still remains a taboo. Would I be really exaggerating if I say even though I had a full time stay-at-home mother, my life has been surrounded by domestic helps? Would it be any different a story for any of you who are reading this? Are they just our employees, or as people who share our private lives, they are a little more than that? I grapple with this issue while introducing my daughter to the domestic helps whom she calls ‘helpers’.

This write up is an ode to the invisible helpers who helped me become what I am.

My first orientation to the concept of domestic help was through Jainal who came from Bogra at the age of eight after losing his father. My mother employed him so that he could play with me and I was not bored in the afternoon. Jainal was an instant hit among our friends with his sharpness and athleticism. My brother and sister started teaching him during the time when President Zia made it compulsory for all SSC candidates to teach an elder illiterate. He was taken in for a ‘viva’ and he did so well that pretty soon all of our relatives and friends started taking him as their case study. Jainal moved on after a few years. He eloped with our chef 10 years older than him, and after a few years in wilderness came back to us looking for a job. His wish was granted in no time. Jainal runs a successful rental car company now and provides me with car service every time I need one in no time.

Much before Jainal there was Abdul bhai who taught me driving in between my trips to different tutors in Dhaka. Abdul bhai also has been with us since he was eight. His parents passed away and he came to our family in Kaptai. My mother can’t remember who brought him to us. But he graduated from a house help to chef, and then from a chef to in-house driver in a few years. Since then, through thick and thin, he has remained with us — now for 40 long years. My mother is as worried about his retirement plan as she is with hers. When my father died, Abdul bhai cried more than any body else. Till date, in his spare time he goes to his graveyard and makes sure that it’s clean and tidy.

Have you ever wondered what’s the story behind so many of the domestic helps being referred to by their son’s name?

I am wondering as I am thinking about Harun-er ma (Harun’s mother). We never asked her real name. But she was the cook-in-chief at our house for the longest time. When my sister had a baby, she asked Harun-er ma whether she wanted to come to the US to help her out. She was ready instantly. For the next five years, she took care of my nephews while my sister was at work peacefully. When I visited her there, she would often ask me to write a letter to Harun on behalf of her. I remember the indignation of a longing mother asking her child to be responsible. Harun was of my age and so Harun-er ma always had a special corner for me. After my return to Bangladesh 13 years later, Harun-er ma came to see me with tears in her eyes. Harun passed away due to some complication after a surgery. I was stunned. Harun-er ma has told my mother that she wants to cook in my house because that would make her feel that Harun is close to her. She starts work next month.

The person who gets the most emotion out of my mother still, however, is Aklima. Aklima stayed at our place for eight years. But she was notorious for her temper. She would fight with a karai if she could when she was in a bad mood, which would happen quite often. But she was a grand cook and someone my mother could rely on when she was away. She would be bitter and angry one moment, and the very next moment would be laughing away. One of her weekly rituals was to fight with my mother and make her mad as hell. We never could figure out why my mother employed a woman who made her so angry. Eventually one day it was a little too much for my mother and she let her go after a bitter fight. Aklima was diagnosed with breast cancer a year after she left our house. My mother quietly used to send her money for her treatment. She mellowed down a lot and eventually passed away only in her thirties, and talked about my mother till her dying days. Till date my mother fondly remembers her service.

When I remember these people and their stories, I often wonder about the stories of abuse I read in the paper. Only a few days ago I went to a child domestic worker drop-in center run by Ain O Salish Kendro and supported by Save the Children and Drishtipat. There I met many of these young Jainals, Abduls and Aklimas. They were trying to learn new skills and get education so that they could climb on the mobility ladder. I was fascinated talking to them. When I read their profiles, it all seemed too familiar. Sons and daughters of landless farmers coming to Dhaka for employment and getting disconnected from their families forever.

I asked the supervisor if they talk about any kind of abuse in their ‘host family’.
“All the time”, she replied.
“Do you not do anything about it?”, I asked.

“If I do anything, they will stop sending them over to the drop-in centre. I only alert people when their complaints become extreme and unbearable”.

“What kind of complaints do you get?”
“Physical abuse by the house head, sexual abuses by the young brothers-in-law of the family — it’s of all kinds. When I talk to them, they often deny it and get very defensive.”

My jaw dropped, and it explained after all these years why the middle class is still afraid to talk about this issue. We have moved ahead so much in our journey as an independent country. We take pride in the progress and liberalisation of our society. But when are we going to look at these skeletons in our closet? Too often we dehumanise our domestic helpers so that we can rationalise our treatment to them. But there lies a Jainal, Aklima, Abdul and Harun-er ma in all our houses.

Can we start with humanising them in our own houses first?

Hana Shams Ahmed

Published by the Star Weekend Magazine on 9 October 2009.

When Samia arrived at the lawyer’s office with her friend she was hoping to get advice on how to file for a divorce. The lawyer asked her some obvious questions about what was wrong with the relationship and whether she had children etc. When she told the lawyer that her husband had molested two teenage maids in the house, Samia expected the lawyer to be in full solidarity with her decision. The lawyer did not display much emotion, what she said in response shocked Samia instead. “This is quite normal for men of our country,” she said. Instead of pointing out to Samia that her husband had committed a punishable crime which she was an eye-witness to, the lawyer was showing her commiseration and in a meandering way saying that this was not serious enough for the dissolution of a marriage.

In another incident in a corporate office, a woman — involved in among other things, human rights activism — was complaining to her colleagues about how shoitan (evil) her young maid was. When asked what were among her greatest ’sins’, she replied that the maid lapsed from her work regularly when she went out of the house and watched TV and received phone calls from her boyfriend!

The attitude and choice of words of the female lawyer and ‘human right defender’ points to how deeply embedded this acceptance of abuse of the underprivileged is. The discrimination and complete disregard of a domestic worker’s right to live like a human being has been discussed in the media in small columns, but has had little effect on societal outlook. The middle-aged approach of treating domestic workers as a human punching bag (sometimes literally) of everyone’s anger and frustration stays on, and is still the most exposed, yet invisible, form of human rights violation.

Girls are the most vulnerable among all groups of domestic workers. They are brought from the villages at an age when they are supposed to be playing tag at school with their friends. Overnight they become baby-sitters, kitchen helps, caretakers and nurses all-in-one. And if the lawyer’s words are anything to go by, they have to invariably face some form of sexual abuse from a male member of the family, where she does not even know the name of that form of abuse.

A nine-year-old domestic worker Tanzina used to be tortured by her employer (a doctor’s wife) and her two sons regularly at their house in Azimpur (Daily Star: July 9, 2009) until DB of Police rescued her and a case was filed against the persecutors.

A 12-year-old girl was rescued from a house of a doctor, who in collusion with his wife, had confined the girl in their house for six years and tortured her regularly until a labourer who used to work in the neighbourhood complained and she was rescued by police (Daily Star: August 14, 2009). She was so traumatised by her experience she could hardly speak. The girl had earlier revealed to the day labourer that the doctor used to beat her up regularly and “do bad things” to her body parts which she did not understand. The previous week her face had been dipped into a bowl of hot water because she did not do her work properly. Her nearest relative, her grandfather, refused to file a case because he said he did not have the money to fight a case, so a general diary was filed at the police station instead!

Another teenage domestic worker was raped by a union parishad chairman in Dimla upazila of Nilphamari (Daily Star: July 27, 2009). While she was being rescued by her parents and taken to a hospital in a bloody state she was kidnapped by the rapist’s goons. She managed to escape after a couple of days and filed a case against him with her parents’ help.

Those who have the responsibility of protecting these girls sometime seem to be no different from a common criminal. Two lawyers raped a young domestic worker at one of the lawyers’ house in Dhanmondi Lake Circus (Janakantha: August 3, 2009) while she was sleeping. The lawyers threatened to kill her if she spoke to anyone about it.

Another little girl Rubina was beaten up mercilessly by her employer Arju who blamed this nine-year-old for causing diarrhoea to her child by her unhygienic cooking standards (Janakantha, August 31, 2009). She poured hot water over her head. Then she tied up her hands and feet and with an orna, took her to the bathroom and beat her up with an iron rod and tried to muffle her screams for help by turning on the shower. A few days earlier she had chopped off her hair with a boti. She also had other more ‘moderate’ forms of torture — like not letting her eat properly!

Unfortunately, our system has failed to protect these children from the worst forms of abuse. Ain o Salish Kendro (ASK) keeps records of girls who have faced some form of abuse in homes. In 2008, 110 cases were reported and a total of 54 cases were filed against some form of abuse on a girl domestic worker. In 2009, till date, there have been 64 reports and 38 cases filed. But these figures don’t paint the actual picture as this and other organisations only keep records of cases that have been filed at the police station and have been published in the media. Individual investigation into homes is an impossible task, which is also why there is no data of the actual number of children who are employed in homes. And it is not within the jurisdiction of any outsider to go into a house and enquire about the well-being of people who work in homes, whether they are adults or children.

Poverty drives poor parents to send their young girls to work at homes hundreds of miles away, knowing well that there is every possibility that she will be treated badly, beaten up, not fed well, tortured, raped, or even killed. The right to be protected from any form of sexual abuse is breached by these families these families, for whom it is in practice a privilege to be able to protect their daughters.

But it is not just the extreme form of physical abuse that is so worrying of this society with its convoluted moral standards. It is how this form of abuse inflicted on a certain class of people is not even considered getting outraged at or even worth acknowledging.

The only way to stop such atrocious crimes is to legislate specifically for children who work inside homes, including limited working hours, minimum wage, and minimum standard treatment. A hotline should be introduced, especially to raise awareness on abuse and sexual abuse.

Their little shoulders take a heavy burden. They are forced by our utterly inequitable and grotesquely uneven development process to leave their sheltered lives in their homes and come and work. The least we can do for them is to treat them with respect and look out for their welfare whether they are in our home or someone else’s. No social change can ever happen unless we break out of this conventional system and step forward and stop these crimes.

Hana Shams Ahmed

Published in the One World South Asia on 8 October.

Anwara Begum’s new book takes a look at women in the Bangladesh media. She argues that TV ads don’t only sell products but also attitudes and in the process set standards of beauty and mannerism, as defined by men. This piece reflects on the stereotyping of women.

Dighi is the darling of the Bangladeshi media. She has long, beautiful hair and has just the right moves that will keep the viewers glued to the TV screen. There are life-size photos of her on big billboards in the city and big roles in films and drama serials already.

It was a commercial for a brand of henna that gave her the big break. In the ad, with a face full of pinkish makeup, she flaunts her translucent pearl-coloured hands exquisitely decorated with dark henna. Her on-screen friends gaze at her hands longingly, wishing they too could look like her.

Of course, this feeling is shared by thousand of girls who are on the other side of the television screen. Although Dighi’s hands look beautiful, one doubts whether that is what the viewers are focusing on.

The attention is clearly on what she represents. As Anwara Begum points out in her book, ‘Magical Shadows: Women in the Bangladesh Media’ (AH Development Publishing House, 2008), “TV ads don’t only sell products, they sell attitudes.” At an innocent age of 10 years, Dighi is the nation’s favourite child model.

The ‘attitude’ sold in the henna commercial is the standard of beauty and mannerism, as defined by men – the fair-skinned, long-haired, bubbly girl. The consequence of the ad is the indoctrination of this attitude in girls who have not even reached puberty!

The ‘modernisation’ of the media culture over the years, with the arrival of private television channels and advertisement firms has had commensurate effects on the culture of patriarchy.

Take for example, this set of ads. An earlier commercial shows a woman, who had come to be ‘viewed’ by a prospective groom, pleasing the family with her fine culinary skills, indicating that she remains within the four walls of the house.

The next version shows a woman who is not domesticated, she does not know how to cook and her husband rebukes her for this. Hurt and distraught at her ‘failure’, she wins him back by whipping up a delicious meal with her discovery of readymade cooking spices. The next phase shows a man cooking.

The readymade spices are so easy to use that EVEN a man can cook. Of course, he makes a mess in the kitchen, emphasising further that the kitchen is not really his place to be.

This shows that the camera almost always serves patriarchal interests. So the heavily made-up woman’s delight at getting the keys to a beautiful new apartment from her husband seems to be perfectly logical. It’s the wife, the mother or the children, who receive privileges, like living in a luxury apartment, from the ’shonar chele’ (golden son). A man’s success in life is rated by what he brings for those who depend on him – the various women in his life.

In her book, Anwara Begum explores these relationships – like the phone which brings the man and woman together.

The man leaves his wife to go to London for a work visit, the mother breaks down because her son has found a job in the city, the little girl asks her father to scold the mother for not believing her… Again, the father is in an office and the mother at home.

Of course, companies are aware that portraying the woman strictly in the home environment is no more acceptable. So out comes a phone package for women, the “Ladies First” for working women who have to talk a lot.

Currently, there is a cement ad that proudly states: “Today’s mechanic, tomorrow’s engineer”, and shows two boys with hard hats pretend playing to be construction engineers, while their female counterpart pretends to be a school teacher.

Not that it is any less respectable to be school teacher, but on screen some professions like teaching, nursing and fashion designing seem to be reserved for women, while engineering, politics and multinational business management are for men.

Advertising agencies are doing good business: A whopping US$215 million has been spent on advertisements by corporations this year so far. New money has been poured in to get fresh ideas from these advertising power houses.

However, the general theme of the ads – be it romance, where the shy young woman is waiting to be swept off her feet by a handsome man; or marriage, where the wife, even if she is employed, is still in charge the family, are still very popular. The single, independent, successful woman is hardly represented.

Take the ad for an antiseptic soap that shows a child impressing his mother by showing her an excellent result sheet and no absence record at school. On cue the father comes home from work to tell the wife that he has received a bonus for not missing a day of work. He hands over the envelope to her because, of course, it was her conscientious care-giving that keeps the family healthy. The audience does not know what she does but the underlying assumption is that she is a housewife.

The stereotype continues

It is with hair care products that women’s images are most objectified. Commercials do show clear signs of cultural change – the woman is no longer house bound, she is wearing trendy clothes and she is seen within the work space.

The constant feature, however, is that she is embarrassed if every physical attribute of hers is not in perfect order and she is also forever seeking the attention of the man. The confident woman is the woman with the perfect hair. She has the best job, is the perfect wife and mother.

Anwara Begum talks about the effect that this desire for unattainable perfection has on women. She says, “This story of lovely heterosexual romance functions to cover up the harsh realities in relationships between men and women is a restrictive patriarchy where most suicides are committed by women.”

The electronic media does its own bit of social responsibility when covering events – from press conferences to art show openings. In a nod to affirmative action, they give equal screen space to men and women.

But the TV camera operator seeks out the most attractive-looking woman in the press conference and focuses the camera on her for much more time than is necessary.

This woman might not have any relevance to the story being told but perhaps the underlying notion is that it brings more viewers for the TV channel. Given that most camera operators are men, this kind of treatment is hardly surprising.

Someone once observed that the sure-fire sign of a more liberal and progressive Bangladeshi society was its ever increasing number of beauty pageants and catwalks. It was his firm conviction that a coy-looking model with perfect physical features walking down a ramp was a statement of the woman’s newfound independence.

A bank’s billboard reflects this thought. It shows “achievement” as perceived by three groups. The child’s achievement is learning the skill of tying a shoelace, the man’s achievement is making his first step on the moon and, finally, the woman’s achievement is getting crowned in a beauty pageant.

Fariha Sarawat

Published by the Forum on 5 October 2009.

This piece surveys the aftermath of an under-reported tragedy.

For the residents of the south-western coast of Bangladesh, John Donne’s immortal sermon has become a way of life: never send for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

With every disaster come a new batch of hardened, jaded survivors who have not only lost faith in the mercy and sense of justice of the higher powers, but also in the general populace’s will to help them out of their plight. They even give up trying to wonder how many of them will survive to see the next disaster and whether we’ll be able to save them the next time.

“Amader kotha ki shobai bhule gese?” is a question that resounds in every disaster affected area within months after a disasterof the event. After days of talking about the victims, within weeks we forget about the survivors. There are needs and responsibilities that transcend the immediate relief and rescue effortsthe need for recovery, sustenance and survival, and our responsibility to help build capacities of the survivors and of future generations because the next disaster is never too far.

The trail of devastation left by Cyclone Aila is still quite visible in most parts of Shyamnagar and Ashashuni upazillas of Satkhira, and, Koyra and Dacope upazillas of Khulna. Even months after the cyclone, the affected families are trying to rebuild their lives against the onslaught of a continuing fresh water crisis and the recurring collapse of the damaged river embankments. Schools are still closed as buildings are being repaired or rebuilt, and books and study materials are being replaced. Children are still dependent on humanitarian aid for their basic needs of food, safe drinking water, medicine and most importantly a safe shelter.

The bank of hope
The lives and livelihoods of the people who live in the southern coast of Bangladesh are intricately linked to the “polders” of embankments that protect them from the saline, coastal rivers. On May 25 2009, Cyclone Aila damaged over 1700 kms of the embankment, with complete collapses in several points that aggravated the plight of the local people.

This embankment, built in the 1960s, had not only been a source of protection from the saltine coastal rivers for the families living on the coast, but was also a source of income. Before Aila, fenced-off blocks of “ghers” shrimp and crab hatcheries and rice fields that had been the primary occupation of the residents of these villages had lined each side of the embankment. The embankment was, in many areas, the only road that reached remote areas like Bedkashi in Koyra and Gabura in Satkhira, transporting produce from farms and hatcheries, medicine and other essential supplies and allowing daily commute.

The tidal surge had washed everything away.
The damaged embankment is now home to thousands who lost their homes to the cyclone and have been unable to rebuild it partly because they don’t have the resources and partly because the embankments continues to collapse at old and new points, with every new moon tide–gon–and heavy downpours, despite continuous repair. The river mud being used for repair work either gets washed down by the rain or the high-tide, causing the weakened structure to cave in frequently. The make-shift houses on the embankment are by no means safe, sanitary or sustainable. Every time the embankment collapses, the nearby houses get flooded.

There are varying opinions on how and why such a large stretch of the embankments collapsed in a day.

In a blanket statement the government agencies had placed the blame on the shrimp farmers who had created holes in the river embankment to pipe in salt water from the coastal rivers into their hatcheries, weakening the structure.

Whilst this is true in many areas of Shyamnagar, Koyra and Paikgacha, there are other areas such as Dacope, where the residents are currently engaged in rice farming which as we know does not require salt water. Moreover, even the shrimp farmers in Dacope had been using sluice gates, built as part of the embankment, for irrigation. The locals of Dacope apportion the blame between a fierce tidal surge of unforeseen velocity and a poorly built and maintained embankment. Whilst the former claim is presently ascribed to climate change, the latter certainly can be attributed to a more definitive human folly.

While some damage to the embankment was surely done by the locals, one can’t help but wonder about the role played by the government agencies. Surely the pipes that punctured the structure were not built overnight and maintenance is not a one-off task. When the government’s Water Policy clearly states that any structural modification to the embankment must be investigated and approved by the Water Development Board, one can easily ask why the hatcheries were allowed to be built, cultured and developed on the embankment for years, why mangroves that were planted on the underlying buffer zone to keep the salt water away were uprooted to build fences for the hatcheries and why the relevant government agencies had turned a blind eye to the disaster when it was in the offing?

The discourse on why the embankment collapsed is by no means a monolith. Till date, no agency has been able to confirm if the tidal surge caused by Cyclone Aila had been entirely responsible for damaging the embankment or whether it was the punctures caused by shrimp hatcheries, decades of poor maintenance, or the culmination of all of the above. The communities who live around the embankments have the right to these answers because only by solving this conundrum will we know how to protect them in the long run. Merely building or repairing embankments in the existing manner may not help us in future if the pattern of elements that affect it rising water levels, increasing salinity, higher frequency of disasters or in other words climate change, is addressed and we build our embankments to be “climate-proof”. Furthermore, the entire process, wishful as this may sound, will need to be corruption free and participatory the communities whose lives and livelihoods depend on the embankment must be included in the decision making processes; not just in the cash for work construction phase. The communities need to understand how it is in their own interest to safeguard the embankment and therefore they must have a say in where and how it will be built or repaired.

Why couldn’t we warn them?
We now know that the scale of damage can be accredited to the fierce, over thirteen-foot high tidal surge that engorged everything that came in its path. But what is not clear is why the early warning system, which had warned the affected families of the storm, had failed to predict the velocity and ferocity of the tidal surge.

“We had heard a storm was coming the night before. When it began to rain early in the day, it didn’t look like a fierce storm. Then all of a sudden, water came gushing in from all sides and pretty soon, we were in waist-deep water. The current was so strong that I was struggling to just stay afloat, I couldn’t even swim up to the embankment, let alone save my own children”, recalls Nomita Mondol and her husband Shadeb Chandra Mondol.

The Mondol family, like other residents of Uttor Bedkashi union of Koyra sub-district Khulna, is in a unique and very dangerous predicament. Coastal rivers flow on each side of their village and when the tidal surge came, they were inundated by a swift and powerful tidal wave that washed away their home and belongings within minutes.

“We barely managed to stay alive. My wife and children were saved by neighbours. It was indescribable,” Shadeb Chandra remembers. “In my 48 years I had never seen a flood like it. I don’t know what we will do next time.”

Bayazid Akter/Driknews

Even by conservative estimates, the global-mean sea level is expected to rise by at least 55cm by 2050, and the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2100, the global mean will increase by 88cm. For Bangladesh that could mean that the volume of water in the coastal rivers will increase and we can see the coast being hit by tidal surges even more powerful than the one caused by Cyclone Aila.

Therefore, there is an immediate need to hone our early warning systems.

Who will fund this scale up? We need to discuss this immediately. Given how Bangladesh is not even negligibly responsible for global sea level rise, the countries who have contributed to the causal factors of climate change must step up, take responsibility and right the wrong by committing to cut down their carbon emissions. Donor countries must also look outside of just relief efforts for survivors of climate change and focus on helping communities adapt to their changing climate.

Children at the fore front
Disasters are frightening for adults, they are terrifying for children. Children are not just traumatized by the damage to their homes, schools and neighborhoods, but their fear is also heightened by seeing their distressed and anxious parents. Children are the most vulnerable after a disaster because it changes the very realm of their living environment and destroys their comfort zones. They are unable to get regular meals, they stop going to school, and in most cases they end up sleeping under the open sky or in make shift houses which pose a serious threat to their security.

Diarrhea is one of the most common causes of child deaths during and after disasters, even though it is easily preventable. Malnutrition and discontinued breastfeeding are other threats to children’s lives during emergencies, both of which can be easily addressed through interventions such as continued breastfeeding and low-cost, highly nutritious food supplements.

Breastfeeding mothers are also often unable to breastfeed because of stress, lack of privacy and overcrowding. This increases the chance of young, breastfed children becoming ill or suffering from malnutrition, and the younger they are, the more vulnerable they are.

Hence, immediately after an emergency, there is a need to establish at least one safe area in a community where children can come to just be children. They can come to play, study and retain some semblance of normalcy in their upturned lives as they recover from the disaster. Lactating mothers are also able to use such spaces to breastfeed their children with some peace and privacy.

Immediately after Cyclone Aila, Save the Children set up 145 such safe places that provided support to 314 lactating mothers and protected over 7 000 children daily. But there still remains a need to scale up these efforts on a national scale. The safety and security of children during emergencies need to be addressed on a national scale.

The most wonderful thing about children is their inherent ability to learn and adapt. Given the right support, guidance and tools, children can develop the skills and resiliency to adapt to climate change and be better prepared for disasters. Therefore, all efforts to reduce or mitigate the risks from and of disasters must include children, as participants and at the fore front.

Bangladesh needs a child-centered community-based framework where children play leading roles in their communities to minimize the negative impacts of disasters. This will include meaningful and ethical child participation in assessing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating, all predicated on the principles outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Bangladesh is a signatory. This will mean that whilst children will play lead roles with the support of adults in their communities, the responsibility and accountability for preparedness, mitigation and response will still lie with adults.

Tomzid Mollick/Driknews

Additionally, we must build the schools’ capacity to deal with disasters. For example, through Save the Children programs in India, children take part in the design and reconstruction initiatives of houses in their communities and in schools they form committees to identify and mitigate risks and hazards. In Sri Lanka, children take part in formulating their communities’ preparedness plans and schools include risk reduction messages in the curriculum. Children also play an active role in the reconstruction of schools to ensure they are child friendly and draw up hazard and evacuation maps that best address their unique needs. In Bangladesh, Save the Children, following up on their earlier disaster risk reduction work, in partnership with Plan International and support from Unicef have just begun an Education in Emergencies program that aims to reduce risk and damage to the education systems during disasters.

We will never be able to prevent disasters. But we can prevent people from dying. The people of Bangladesh have historically demonstrated their resilience in the face of disastersfrom the cyclone of 1970 to 1991 to Sidr, and now Aila, or the floods of 1974, 1988 or 1998. With every disaster, we have learnt something new. We have learnt to reduce the death toll.

Now is the time to think about the survivors. We must be able to provide the child survivors of disasters with a better life.

Jyoti Rahman and Rumi Ahmed

Published by the Daily Star on 5 October 2009.

ACCORDING to American political philosopher John Rawls, a society should be judged on the welfare of its most vulnerable. In this regard, macroeconomic survival of the global recession or buoyant foreign reserve is not enough to understand the quality of our social life. Since children are among the most vulnerable in any society, a good test using the Rawlsian framework of how the Bangladeshi society is faring would be to look at how our children are doing.

Let’s start at the birth. In 2007, less than a fifth of births in Bangladesh were attended by a skilled health professional. Although this is an improvement over the less than a tenth a decade earlier, child birth in Bangladesh remains a far more hazardous event than in our South and Southeast Asian neighbours (Chart 1).

In 2007, 47 children in every 1,000 died at infancy in Bangladesh (Chart 2). This is a significant improvement from over 151 per 1,000 infants lost in 1975. Bangladesh is also doing better than its major South Asian neighbours. But 47 is still a very high number, especially compared with Southeast Asian countries.

Bangladesh tends to do a lot better when it comes to immunisation of those who live beyond infancy. As Table 1 shows, Bangladeshi children aged 12-23 months are relatively more likely to be vaccinated against diseases such as measles or diphtheria. This certainly proves that despite manifold problems in Bangladesh, it is possible to provide services that make clear improvements to living conditions.

Of the children who survive their infancy and live to the age of five, nearly half are short for their age, while nearly two in every five are underweight. Of our major neighbours, only India has a worse prevalence of malnutrition (Chart 3).

The prevalence of child labour is relatively low among Bangladeshi girls, but it is striking to note how high it is among Bangladeshi boys (Chart 4). Over a quarter of Bangladeshi boys aged between 7 and 14 years are economically active, higher than in similar countries in the region. About 63 per cent of economically active Bangladeshi children do not go to school, compared with only 15 per cent of economically active Indian children. Coupled with the low prevalence of child labour in India, this means that many more Bangladeshi children have to work compared with their peers in our neighbouring country.

Over three-fifths of working Bangladeshi children are employed in agriculture. This may well reflect the still agrarian characteristic of our society. About an eighth of children who work do so in manufacturing. The rest — over a quarter of boys, and slightly less than a fifth of girls, who work — are in the services sector.

Why do parents send their children to work instead of school? Recent studies suggest that child labour falls, and schooling rises, when families escape the subsistence level. This suggests that direct philanthropy can, at the margin, improve children’s welfare by taking them away from work and putting them into school. But philanthropy cannot be realistically expected to make a serious and sustainable dent into poverty.

However, beyond philanthropy, the affluent classes in Bangladesh — that’s us, dear reader — can still make a difference. We need to square up to the fact that the whole culture of live-in child domestic worker is a form of slavery. Perhaps some, maybe most, slave owners are “good,” because they (we) feed child domestic workers three times a day, buy them clothes two times a year and, at the end of the month, hand out a modest sum to their parents. Perhaps, we let them sit on the floor and watch some TV shows, and make them a bed to sleep on the floor.

Maybe, in return, we don’t ask much of these workers — nothing like the factory sweatshops, or working in the mine shaft. They cook three meals for the whole household, make all the beds, sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms, wash all the clothes, go to local grocery for the errands, carry our little ones on their lap, or be the servant to our children who are often older than them. Beyond philanthropy, we, the slave owning class, can own up to the unpleasant reality of our culture.

Cat Stevens wrote three decades ago: I know we’ve come a long way, We’re changing day to day, But tell me, where do the children play? Bangladesh has come a long way from its precarious beginnings. But we are still far from a good society, judging by the way we treat far too many of our vulnerable children. Poverty and underdevelopment are complex issues for an individual to tackle. But one can make a difference to the child domestic worker who is slaving away as this piece is read.

Fariha Sarawat
Published by Himal on 1 October 2009.

I regularly visit the coastal regions of Bangladesh for work. Whenever I meet a family, the first personal question I am asked is, Apnar bari kothai? (Where is your home?) “Dhaka”, is my standard response. This is usually met by a curious look, because very few people are really from Dhaka, a city of migrants, many of whom have lived there for generations but who have never owned it. For most, it is a city to be at, not a place to be from.

So I have to explain, “I live in Dhaka now, but our family is really from Habiganj, Sylhet.”

Inevitably, I get an enthusiastic, “Oh! So do you visit Sylhet? How is your village?”

“I don’t know. We lost everything to the river.”

This earns me instant empathy. They take me in as one of them – a migrant soul detached from her roots, a survivor of our changing homeland. Then they want to tell me more about themselves because they feel a kind of kinship. But I am not sure how similar our migrant experiences really are. Our home in Habiganj was washed away before I was even born. I was born uprooted. Most of the people I meet at the coast have been uprooted in the recent past. Some are being uprooted in the very present.

Apnar bari kothai?

That’s one of the first questions that Bangladeshis tend to ask each other at the first meeting. You could be in the middle of a business meeting in Dhaka, a courtyard meeting at some remote village on the coast, a posh drawing room in Delhi, London or Washington, or just in cyberspace. But you can bet on this being among the first questions. When they ask this, they don’t mean to ask where you live now. Like most overcrowded, growing-at-a-pace-faster-than-we-can-keep-up-with population, Bangladeshis are shifting – transitioning between our imagined homelands and our migrant realities. So when they ask about ‘home’, they mean the root. We want to know where it all began.

I’ve often wondered why. Why do we care where our roots lie, when we are branched so far from it? Why do we care where it all began when we know that we can never go back to it? Salman Rushdie compares migrant people with translated work. When we marvel at the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, do we appreciate the Persian genius, or his translators into English or Bangla? Similarly, Rushdie asks us migrant people to celebrate our transplanted, chutney-fied self.

People often ask me whether I speak the Sylheti dialect. I don’t. This is not commonly spoken in Dhaka, and I speak the chutney-fied dialect of the city. Maybe I should follow what Rushdie suggests. But any celebration can only be done by those for whom the uprooting was a matter of choice. The children born to families losing lives and livelihoods to floods, cyclones, river erosions and all the other ancillaries of climate change – what choices will they have? These children will not remember what home looked like. When I meet children at the coast, children who have been forced to leave their homes, which has its own socio-cultural milieu, I think that someday they’ll end up like me, where khulna faissha fish-pot gaan will only exist for them in the stories their parents will tell about the good old days.

In December, the mighty and powerful, and their hangers-on, will meet in Copenhagen to discuss the future of the planet. There will be a lot of negotiation, based on complicated modelling, on who will pay whom how much for cutting what amount of emissions over how long. Sombre-sounding communiqués will be issued. Pundits will parse every single word of the ultimate document.

Will anyone think about the children who will not know how to answer, Apnar bari kothai?

Mridul Chowdhury

Published by the Daily Star on 19 September 2009.

WE, in Bangladesh, are used to waiting. We have been waiting to find out the perpetrators of the BDR massacre, who were really behind the August 21 grenade attack, or who killed one of the most brilliant sons of our soil, Shah AMS Kibria. Our waiting does not stop at that — even for cases for which we know who the perpetrators were, we wait for them to be brought to justice. Some of the self-declared murderers of Bangabandhu and his family are still at large. So are the “war criminals” who attempted to eradicate the intellectual backbone of the nation in 1971, only to be riding cars bearing our national flag in less than a generation, as no less than ministers. We live in this ’strange’ country where one can emotionally survive this uncertain and excruciating wait only if one knows how to wait, wait and wait only to see the reason for the wait becoming a distant memory at one point.

A similar waiting carries on in the case of Nurul Islam and his only son, Islam Tamohar, who succumbed to a ‘mysterious fire’ in their own apartment on the fateful night of 3 December 2008, weeks before the national election. Although Nurul Islam, on his death-bed, clearly testified that he believed that this was a planned attack on his life, initial investigations seemed that they were disregarding this crucial testimony and conveniently chucked it off as an ‘accidental fire’ caused by electric short circuit.

Soon after, one of government’s own reports concluded that it could not be a short circuit — the fridge from where the explosion originated was unplugged, and on top of that, the gas cylinder at the back of the fridge was completely intact. According to the CID investigators, the explosion originated from the front lid of the fridge, breaking its door into little pieces and leaving the floor tiles beneath the fridge and the part of the ceiling above it shattered. There are traces of a deadly but highly localized ball of ’something like fire’ coming out that melted a TV, a ceiling fan and burnt part of a sofa — that were all in the vicinity of the fridge, but leaving everything else in the apartment, even plastic tablemats a few feet away from the fridge almost completely intact.

All of this evidence leads to more unsolved questions than credible answers. It was clearly not an ordinary fire, but what could have caused so much damage? It was not electric short circuit, but then what could have exploded from the front lid of an old, unplugged fridge while leaving its gas cylinder completely intact? There were no visible traces of burn in Islam Tamohar’s body, but then what exactly killed him?

It is possible that despite the government’s efforts, answers to many of these questions are not solvable with the technological know-how and resources that our investigation departments have. This case possibly requires arson experts who can analyze traces of the thick black soot that engulfed the entire apartment. This possibly requires various chemical tests for which adequate laboratory facilities may not exist in Bangladesh. This may just be a case that is hard to solve within our technological means.

However, the government has not reached out for support of other countries that have the relevant expertise and facilities. We earnestly urge the government to look into these possibilities. Dubbing the case as an ‘accident’ without plausible explanations to these queries is not acceptable. Nurul Islam gave his whole life to the cause of making this country ‘livable’ — it is our collective duty to carry on his mission, starting with finding out the root cause of the incident that claimed his life.

I sometimes wish I could ask someone why our history is riddled with unsolved cases of brutal acts. But I don’t really know whom to ask. Each successive government has largely failed to carry out these investigations properly, and I have always wondered why. Is it because of political expediency, is it the fear of uncovering some unpleasant or “politically incorrect” facts — kecho khurte shap ber hobe — or is it just plain indifference as more immediate needs take precedence?

Political partisanship of governments does not seem to explain it. For instance, many thought that the investigation of Shah AMS Kibria was not conducted fairly under the BNP regime because of obvious partisanship — he was not one of their own, and moreover, Kibria’s family members were implicating that some BNP leaders may have been involved as patrons. However, when the AL took over early this year, Reza Kibria, his son was expecting that the government would be more pro-active — after all, he was a former Finance Minister of a previous AL regime. To quote Reza Kibria from a recent Voice of America radio talk show, he said: “to my utter amazement, there is still no effort from this government to even listen to what the family members have to say”. Is this symptomatic of a larger and hidden political issue that we, the average citizens, will never be able to fathom?

I don’t know if we will ever get reasonable explanations. A cynic would say that we will surely wait, and wait, and wait. But will this government be an exception to the norm, with new and ‘uncorrupt’ blood in key ministries?