Of human rights

This brings us to a frustrating aspect of our government, not just this one but all governments we have had thus far. The US State Department has been bringing out this Report every year in February for a long time. In case of Bangladesh, there has not been one government that was not criticised for human rights violation in these reports since the report's inception. What is interesting is that the issues for criticism have been the same year-to-year, issues such as custodial deaths, beating of political opposition; arrests without warrant, etc. What is more interesting is that the response of the government in office has never been different either.

Without condoning the government's acts of violation of human rights, it is necessary to take a deeper look into this problem. This is not a BNP specific problem but one that is Bangladesh specific where it is customary for the government to use the police as an instrument of imposing the political will of the party in power over its opponents. Sheikh Mujib did this when he was in power; President Ziaur Rahman never lagged behind while Ershad gave refining touches to this unsavoury trend. Begum Zia was guilty of carrying on this trend in her first term of power while Sheikh Hasina, no matter how much she laments for "the people" now, was never shy of allowing her police to beat up political opposition. In the bargain, the police on its own used the repressive trend to settle a few scores of their own, thus assisting in the pile up of human rights violations in Bangladesh.

The present government is inept, to say the least. There is consensus on two major points in Bangladesh; one against the hartal and another against the ability of the present home minister to do his job. The PM's continued support for her home minister is no doubt indicative of her current motivation of not doing much for law and order of the country upon which the case for human rights violations rests squarely. Therefore your editorial will fall into deaf ears as many such editorials that were written on this theme before fell on people at the helm.