A. B. M. Mohiuddin Chowdhury’s son Mohibul Hassan wrote an interesting analysis that in some areas did not even spare his own father in allocating blame. So it feels like a pretty heart-felt piece.

To spare you from going to Facebook to read the actual item, we are posting it below with our commentary.

Before we start, lets congratulate Mr. Mohiduddin Chowdhury for being a graceful loser: he just congratulated Manzur Alam and offered to assist him in any way.

Now, on to Mr. Hassan’s writing. We will link our comments with inserted pointers in his screed.

[a] Wow.. Mr. Hassan is taking it a bit personally. Mr. Chowdhury lost the election where he was a candidate. Who is this “everyone” Mr. Hassan is speaking of?

[b] Mr. Hassan attended LSE. I have no reason to think he does not know what “muscle” means. Mr. Hassan: please be careful using words like this. People will mistake you as a thug who wanted to win at any cost.

[c] “Failed to utilize the administration”? Is Mr. Hassan claiming that there is a way his side could have used the administration to win the election? Perhaps he forgot that elections are supposed to be won at the ballot box, not by government intervention? The Prime Minister and leader of AL, and of course the election commission would take an extremely dim view of these claims that border on electoral misconduct.

Again, not a bad analysis, but I really wish young Mr. Hassain stopped at complaining about the influence of money without prescribing illegal remedies.

————————————————————–
How the ship sank
by
Chowdhoury Mohibul Hassan.
————————————————————–

With the state of our campaign, I warned everyone, we were playing a losing game, and when I said the “ship” will sink, I was told off! No one bothered to listen to me!

My father and his and emotional approach in politics cost him this election at the expense of everyone [a].

1. I saw our camp had no plan to “bring voters out” and cast their votes, they were all relying on age old local leaders, who simply gone into comma as the party is in power. Worst was relying on councilor candidates, who took money from our opponent. and what did we give them? Absolutely nothing. plus 80% of the places I went to, which were mainly illiterate slum dwellers, fishermen etc, people told us they will vote for our Candidate, but they did not know his symbol has changed from “Harican” to “ship”! Why? Because our posters were virtually absent in the whole city! Reason? Partly financial, and partly our candidate felt “Ridoye mohiuddin” therapy will work again for the last time. He was in their hearts, but in ballot paper they could not find his symbol, as many didn’t even know!

2. Our whole campaign team had no sense of real issues, i.e. that our money is in absolute short supply cinoared to opponent; that when you fight “money”, you must deploy “muscle” [b];

3. I was shouting about this huge money spreading by opponent from the very beginning of the campaign. I could sense people’s attitude. In some slum areas, they simply responded, “anarosh gave me this much, how much do you offer”!

4. Four people were arrested with stash of Cash on 15th and 16th June after mid night. No step was taken. Firstly police informed us two of the arrested guys were Ship Breaker company’s clerks. So they were released. Our brainless friends in the police just had to use ONE BASIC COMMON SENSE! OUR OPPONENT IS A SHIP BREAKER. ALL SHIP BREAKERS PROVIDED HIM COVER FOR CASH MOVEMENT!

5. Our candidates over reliance on “love”. Because he believed “money cannot buy Love”, I said to him, for a slum dweller two hundred taka for ten minutes in a queue is a massive earning. There is no doubt our candidate is hugely popular, but when your opponent just runs a campaign “take cash, give vote”, love is intact, election is lost.

6. All we needed was to deploy “muscle” power because our opponent had an unlimited supply of Cash. He is a rich businessman, who knows how to buy and sell. I raised it from the time he got nominated. Everyone laughed me away. From close aides of him we got this rough idea, he gave 50 councilor candidates 5 lakhs each = 2.5 crore. Asked them to actively work for him. As BNP put single candidates in 34 wards out of 42, this was easy for them. One single candidate in each ward worked like hell for him! Awami league had four to five candidates in each ward! Result, out 42 wards, 28 BNP councilors, and 3 Jamaat elected! In my own ward, Jamaat won because four AL candidates fought with each other! Add straight cash buy with this, at 200tk each vote, you can buy 300,000 vote for a meager price of 6 crore taka. 6+2.5 Crore, on straight buying, and random cash spreading extra 10 crore taka. For about 18.5 crore taka you can take everything on the table! Easy and simple. For someone who is a Bank chairman, and a rich businessman who believed in “charity”, and who has about 500 crore debt to banks, spreading 18.5 crore, is absolute nothing! Our own intelligence report is, he spend more than twice of that.

7. All we had to do was ask our guys to “act”. No one gave the order. We were a sitting government party, but failed to utilize administration [c] because of reluctance and party division. We could not interrogate or arrest some of the money handlers and recipients utilizing the government administration. We urged our candidate, but once again, HIS FAITH IN PEOPLE resisted him.

8. Voter turnout was very poor. Overall in our last election 68% people came out and voted. This time 54% people voted! Two reasons for this, our campaign’s failure, we could not bring voters out, secondly, the election day. It was on Thursday, a public holiday due to election, and Friday-Saturday, usual weekend. Many working class people just left the city as if it was Eid. Worst affected areas were the Industrial workers zones! In that area, about 45% votes were cast! So our traditional vote block has been absent either because it was almost Eid holiday, or the poor souls themselves felt over confident that their candidate always wins in the industrial area. As an example, in an industrial area vote centre, Bandartilla, which was famous last time, because BNP candidate only got 25 votes out of 1200, this time was a loser for us! This time, out of 1660 voters, only about 400 voted in that centre. We got 178 and opponent 225! This was the biggest ward of the city with 125000 voters. Traditionally the whole ward was Mohiuddin vote bank due to high working class. But we completely lost it because of low turnout, and local MP Mr MA Latif opposed us with two non awami league councilor candidates who actively worked against us. So when that vote bank has been burst, I was sure it will be disaster.

9. Minority vote bank’s absence. Propaganda by high caste minority leaders over a disputed land with City Corporation over last two years damaged minority’s loyalty to our candidate. Out of 2lakh minority vote I feel we only attracted about 50,000. Rest either did not vote or wasted their votes. But I’m sure most did not vote for our opponent. 35thousand ballots were declared invalid for various reasons including, for not casting vote for Mayoral candidate.

10. Party division, this was the reason why our Ward level awami leaguers were inactive. Sitting MPs in City area were all against us. If we had cash, we could have simply bought them. Unfortunately we didn’t have it. On the day of election AL followers fought between them in three centre! RAB had to be called!

11. There was no wave against the “Ship”. There was a hill of cash it could not climb. Result, the ship has sunk!

Rejoinder:

We received the following from Mr. Mohibul Hassan through a mutual friend:

… pasted my entire note into your website. this was my personal note and was not meant for a website’s cover story. without considering the ethics of putting something on a website without permission, that was unprofessional to the extreme!

and, when i meant utilising adminisitration i meant using them to catch the criminal elements of BNP-Jamaat! and when i meant muscle i meant our volunteer force who should have been pro active in bringing out the voters. if you the administration remains neautral and actually works thats what you call making use of them you dont need to use them like BNP jamaat uses them. but the fact is just the day before the election magistracy power has been seized. so the cash handlers could not even be punished despite being arrested.

Our response:

1. Mr. Hassan’s note was on Facebook, and open for the whole world to see. Calling it “private” now is a bit too late. We also suspected that the note would disappear once we wrote about it, which is why we decided to reproduce it. Unprofessional? Why? We quoted it and gave full attribution to the author.

2. “administration” and “muscle”: We are happy to include Mr. Hassan’s explanation of those phrases. We only hope that as a lawyer and future leader, Mr. Hassan will choose his words more carefully in the future.

Lastly, our personal thanks to Mr. Hassan for his level-headed response.
–

J @ Shada Kalo [http://shadakalo.blogspot.com] writes using a pseudonym and is best known for exposing government, military, corporate foul plays through whistle-blowing investigative reports.

[Read posts by J @ Shada Kalo]

His crime? He allegedly uploaded some caricatures of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and some other political figures to Facebook. So some idiots who can call the shots on such matter decided to block Facebook in Bangladesh.

Not that it helped. I probably may not even have heard about his cartoons for a few days unless the government decided to block it. But now the whole world knows about it–I just heard it on BBC Radio.

Here is the worst part: blocking the Internet does not work unless you have a giant, country-wide firewall like China, and even then it works just part of the time. So our tech geniuses blocked http://facebook.com, but people could still get through by going to httpS://facebook.com. There are also ubiquitous proxies like http://hidemyass.com that can be used to bypass the restriction.

Let me say that I do not know that the cartoons were like, but I am sure someone will send them to me before the day is over. And if they are not pornographic, I will post them here or at least post a link to them.

While personally I draw the line at pornography on this blog, I argue that Rodin’s (nice name, by the way, if he draws) free-speech rights trump whatever hurt feelings the images may have caused in Bangladesh.

So I will end with this message to the people who made this decision:

1. You just gave this kid a ton of publicity. Nice job, geniuses.
2. Blocking one website is useless. Unless you were planning to cut off the Internet, you just threw egg on your own face
3. You really should have known better after blocking YouTube after the Hasina-Army exchange in March 2009
4. Digital Bangladesh? More like same old idiots that once refused free Internet connectivity.

Why are you surrounded by incompetent idiots? We know it is unfair to blame you for everything, but in this case we will hold you personally responsible for this horrendous personnel decision.

We are of course talking about the fact that the chief investigator of the War Crimes Tribunal himself was a member of Islami Chhatra Sangha, the student arm of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1971.

That does not make Mr. Matin a war-criminal, but surely Madam Prime Minister, you do not expect 100% neutrality from a former affiliated member of a party whose leaders will be INVESTIGATED and JUDGED by this war crimes trial?

Daily Star reported:

The chief investigator for war crimes trial, Abdul Matin was nominated for the presidency of a college unit of Islami Chhatra Sangha, student organisation of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1971, prime minister’s adviser on education Dr Alauddin Ahmed told a roundtable yesterday.

Alauddin questioned how a person nominated for the post of president of a college unit of Islami Chhatra Sangha could be made the chief investigator, reports private TV channel ATN Bangla.

He said one of the investigators is yet to join the probe agency because of his reservation about Matin’s appointment as its chief.

Vision 24 organised the roundtable “Trial of War Criminals in the International Context” at the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity.

This bombshell was not dropped by someone from BNP or others who might wish to harm your party; Dr. Alauddin is your party member and a trusted member of your advisory council.

Mr. Matin happens to be a former senior bureaucrat. As a result, the government would know a lot about his history. His pre-employment background investigation report also included his political affiliations as researched and documented by the special branch (SB) and that became part of his Annual Confidential Report (ACR).

He got investigated by DGFI before every promotion (as all senior civil servants are investigated) until his retirement.

So: Dr. Alauddin knew. DGFI probably knew, or knew and tried to suppress it (nothing about the DGFI surprises us any more).

If Dr. Alauddin’s claim is true that another investigator is yet to join the committee because of Mr. Matin’s past, then this is common knowledge.

So: How could you not know?

Madam Prime Minister, we expect that you will suspend Mr. Matin immediately and ask for his resignation. While you are at it, ask for the resignation of the person who picked Mr. Matin for this position as well. Make an example, and make it visible. Show the country that nothing will compromise the neutrality of the trials.

You have seen the killers of your family face justice. Do not allow the trial for the murder and rape of 3 million people be messed up.

Even the harshest enemies of India and its military (that would be Pakistan and China, both have fought wars against India) will not claim that the Indian military acts outside the chain of command.

This is a testament to the democratic principles practiced by the armed services in the world’s largest democracy.

India’s border security force (BSF) is not part of the Indian Military–it is under the purview of Ministry of Home Affairs, and is considered a law enforcement agency.

The Daily Star and other newspapers are reporting:

Bangladesh Rifles and the Indian Border Security Force traded gunfire for around three hours yesterday after BSF crossed the Jaintapur border in Sylhet and shot locals.

At least 15 villagers were injured in the BSF firing, reports our staff correspondent from Sylhet.

The BDR and BSF jawans fired more than a thousand shots, forcing the villagers to flee their homes, said eyewitnesses.

The skirmish took place a day after BSF intruded into Bangladesh, dug bunkers and retreated following a flag meeting.

Only three days back, the Indian frontier force assured their Bangladesh counterpart of no more killing of villagers in the bordering areas. The assurance came when directors general of the two forces met in New Delhi.

Some 40 Indian Khasia people entered the Bangladesh territory through Muktapur-Jaintapur at around 10:30am.

An hour later, they were joined by a hundred more. Backed by the Indian border guards, they soon began erecting bamboo huts at Mandir Tila, about 300 yards off the no-man’s land.

As they refused to leave on repeated requests from the villagers, a brawl ensued. Hurling stones, the two sides chased each other for an hour.
…
Talking to The Daily Star last night, BDR Director General Major Gen Md Mainul Islam termed the incident “very regretful”.

He said the BSF stopped firing after BDR had contacted the Indian side.

He observed the decisions taken at the recent director general-level meet do not seem to have been communicated to the BSF officials at the grassroots level.

Really? A DG-level meeting directive has not filtered down to the sector commanders on the Indian side? So is it possible that the BSF, a much smaller force than the Indian military, has a broken chain of communication and/or is actively defying its political masters and even its own director general?

Given the history and culture of Indian armed forces, it is not just unlikely, it is impossible.

Which leads me to the conclusion that the incursion inside Bangladesh and shooting at unarmed civilians by BSF occurred with an informed consent or even a direct order from India’s government.

In short, India’s prime minister and the home minister has the blood of innocent Bangladeshis on their hands.

I have no idea why India is doing this to a friendly government that poses no threat to India (unlike the BNP government that actively patronised Indian insurgents). I do not have to understand India’s motivation to condemn it.

But what is worse is the pussyfooting on Bangladesh’s part. Where is the report about the foreign ministry asking the Indian envoy to explain his nation’s actions? Where is the protest? Oh–I guess those did not happen.

Friendship with India is a necessity for Bangladesh. But it must be based on mutual trust, respect and understanding, not one-way murder of Bangladeshi people by India.

I have nothing significant to add to this long and well-known history, so I will look forward.

Madam Prime Minister, we know how easy it would have been for the five convicted killers to get caught in a “riot” and be accidentally killed. As cross-fires are happening every day outside the jail, one could have happened inside, too. Thank you for letting the law take its own course instead of staging a Siraj Shikdar escape attempt.

Perhaps the face of your little brother will not haunt your sleep any more. You have aided justice to prevail. Now let the healing begin. Work to make this the shonar bangla your father promised, that the country expected from him. Complete his unfinished work.

PS: I will end with a WTF! to our lawmakers and prison officials. Why are convicted prisoners being used as executioners? Since Bangladesh has a death penalty, why isn’t this a government job? Two convicted murderers were allowed to kill again in the name of the law. They probably even enjoyed it. Naturally, they will also be compensated and rewarded for service–better meals, perhaps some cigarette and money. Someone convicted with a 6–year sentence does not deserve this.

Its time to end this archaic practice. There are no shortage of state-sanctioned murderers in the name of cross-fire in the RAB and Police. Ask for volunteers from them, or appoint someone for the job, or ask for volunteers from the victims family.
-
J @ Shada Kalo [http://shadakalo.blogspot.com] writes using a pseudonym and is best known for exposing government, military, corporate foul plays through whistle-blowing investigative reports.

It was causing us major consternation when the prime minister directed the deputy commissioners to make all-out efforts to improve the law and order.

We got terribly worried when prime minister Sheikh Hasina called corruption ‘the biggest barrier to poverty eradication.’

It looked like this time she was serious, and corruption and law and order were going to be eradicated from Bangladesh. We knew it could not be done in a single day, but surely with the prime minister so solidly against corruption, this was only a matter of time?

So we got worried. What will happen to all our river-grabbers? What will happen to the tender hijacking and bid rigging? Were they all going to starve?

Turns out, we were simply paranoid, and worried for no good reason. Like we said at the beginning, the universe is in balance again.

Action speaks louder than words, and the through the government’s action, we know that the PM’s words were just that: words to be printed in newspapers and soon to be forgotten, while the connected was allowed to steal and get away with it.

We saw this during the BNP rule: a convicted murderer who was absconding in Sweden got pardoned.

Now, we have another pardon in Bangladesh. Son of Awami League presidium member Sajeda Chowdhury was pardoned by the president of Bangladesh.

চারটি দুর্নীতির মামলায় ১৮ বছরের দণ্ডপ্রাপ্ত পলাতক আসামি শাহাদাব আকবরের সাজা
মওকুফ করে দিয়েছেন রাষ্ট্রপতি জিল্লুর রহমান। জাতীয় সংসদের উপনেতা ও আওয়ামী লীগের
সভাপতিমণ্ডলীর সদস্য বেগম সাজেদা চৌধুরীর ছেলে শাহাদাব আকবর ২০০৮ সালে জরুরি অবস্থা চলাকালে পলাতক থাকা অবস্থায় সাজাপ্রাপ্ত হন। তিনি কখনো আত্মসমর্পণও করেননি।

ঢাকা মহানগর দায়রা জজ আদালতের সরকারি কৌঁসুলি (পিপি) মো. আব্দুল্লাহ আবু
বুধবার প্রথম আলোকে বিষয়টি নিশ্চিত করেন।

মন্তব্য চাওয়া হলে দুর্নীতি দমন কমিশনের (দুদক) চেয়ারম্যান গোলাম রহমান গতকাল প্রথম আলোকে টেলিফোনে বলেন, ‘এ তথ্য আপনার কাছ থেকেই প্রথম জানলাম।’ তিনি বিষয়টি আগামী রোববার তাঁর দপ্তরে গিয়ে বিস্তারিত জানবেন বলে উল্লেখ করেন।

অবৈধ সম্পদের বিবরণী মামলায় শাহাদাব আকবর ২০০৪ সালের দুর্নীতি দমন কমিশন আইনের ২৬(২) ধারায় দুই বছর এবং ২৭(১) ধারার আওতায় ১০ বছরের সশ্রম কারাদণ্ড এবং ১০ লাখ টাকা জরিমানা, অনাদায়ে আরও এক বছরের সশ্রম কারাদণ্ডে দণ্ডিত হন। এ ছাড়া ১৯৮৪ সালের আয়কর অধ্যাদেশের ১৬৫ ও ১৬৬ ধারার আওতায় যথাক্রমে এক বছর ও পাঁচ বছরের বিনাশ্রম কারাদণ্ডসহ প্রায় দেড় কোটি টাকা জরিমানা, অনাদায়ে তাঁকে আরও ছয় মাসের বিনাশ্রম কারাদণ্ড দেওয়া হয়। শাহাদাব আকবরের কারাদণ্ড ও আর্থিক জরিমানার পুরোটাই রাষ্ট্রপতি মওকুফ করে দিয়েছেন। তবে দুদক আইনেরআওতায় এর আগে বাজেয়াপ্ত হওয়া তাঁর সম্পদ ও অর্থ আর ফেরত দিতে হবে না বলে জানা গেছে।

If Mr. Akbar was innocent, he could have surrendered to the court, gone on bail, and appealed the process. Other AL homra-chomras have appealed their convictions and had them overturned. As BNP is not in power, and his mother is one of the most influential people in the country, Mr Akbar was at no risk of unfair treatment from the courts.

Then why was the pardon necessary?

The fact that he had to go the pardon-route firmly establishes his guilt. Prothom-Alo is also reporting that the assets previously seized by the government will not go back to him. That fact is another nail in the coffin of his guilt—surely an innocent person would have fought to clear his name and recover any asset unfairly/illegally seized from him.

Does the president have the authority to pardon an absconding criminal? As we are not constitutional lawyers, we will leave that to the pundits, who have opined on both sides of the argument. For this article, let us assume the president has unconditional authority to grant pardons.

So, the question becomes, why was this guilty parson pardoned? Has he rehabilitated himself? No—he has not expressed remorse or paid his debt to society.

Is he going to change his behavior? Are you kidding? The government has seized some of his assets—he has to work overtime to make it up, specially now that mommy dearest is in power.

Attention inhabitants of Bangladesh. It was just a false alarm; there will be no outbreak of law and order. Business, beg your pardon, corruption, will continue as usual.

—–

J @ Shada Kalo [http://shadakalo.blogspot.com] writes using a pseudonym and is best known for exposing government, military, corporate foul plays through whistle-blowing investigative reports.

[Read posts by J @ Shada Kalo]

The reason? Bangladesh was too afraid to anger Beijing, who considers Taiwan a breakaway province and does not want any countries to recognize it as a separate country. Not that it stops the rest of the world–all other countries do business with Taiwan, and at the same time maintain a good relationship with China.

But our mandarins at the foreign ministry, instead of negotiating a sensible arrangement with Beijing, quaked in their boots and deprived Bangladesh of legitimate remittance from thousands of potential jobs in Taiwan and the advantage of a direct business relationship–forcing additional expense on those instead. Thankfully, that has now changed.

But it seems Beijing can still order Bangladesh around. On Nov. 1, 2009, a private organization, Drik Gallery, was going to hold a photo exhibition on Tibet, titled ‘Into Exile: Tibet 1949 – 2009′

Oct 29th, 2009. Qian Kaifu, the Cultural Counselor and Cao Yanhua, the Cultural
Attache, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Bangladesh, asked Shahidul Alam of Drik Bangladesh to cancel the event.

12:40 pm Dhaka time on Nov 1:
The Special Branch is at Drik asking to close down this exhibition. Shahidul Alam of Drik was told that the Police will shut down the exhibition forcibly if necessary. Then the gates were blocked by the police. BDNews24 reports:

Dhaka, Nov 1 (bdnews24.com)—Police prevented Drik Gallery in Dhanmondi from launching an exhibition, titled ‘Into Exile: Tibet 1949 – 2009′, on Sunday.

The exhibition was organised by ‘Students for a Free Tibet’, and includes some very rare photos of the Dalai Lama’s journey into exile.

An hour before the launch, scheduled for 5pm, police shut the gates preventing public from entering the gallery, said Drik authorities.

Drik managing director Shahidul Alam said Bangladesh Police Special Branch spoke with him and asked him to stop the exhibition citing a “government order”.

Alam said, although the police officers could not produce any document of the order, they threatened to shut down the show by force if the organisers did not do so willingly.

According to DrikNEWS, representatives from the Chinese Embassy requested the the weeklong photography exhibition be cancelled.

Drik authorities said they came under pressure for last two days to close down the exhibition.

Alam told bdnews24.com, “The day before yesterday (Friday), two officers from the Chinese Embassy came and asked us to cancel the exhibition.”

“After that I also received a series of phone calls from the ministry of cultural affairs and from a number of MPs.”

“On Saturday, officers from the Special Branch of police came and exerted pressure to stop the exhibition according to a ‘government order’. I wanted a written copy of the government order but they refused to show me.”

Officer-in-charge of Dhanmondi police station Shah Alam told bdnews24.com, “They organised the exhibition without any permission.”

He said “all such exhibitions” had been held with prior permission in the past.

However, officials of Drik—a world- renowned photo library, media and communication organisation—said they have arranged countless minor and major exhibitions over the past 20 years and never needed any permission.

Comrade Hasina and Comrade Sahara (and other Comrade MPs): please show a little spine. BNP accuses you of selling the country to India, but both BNP and AL seems to have sold their soul to China. Yes, we buy a ton of crap from China. But they do not give us a lot of loans and grants, we do not export Manpower to China. In short, there is a huge imbalance in the trade between these two countries in favor of China. Export to Bangladesh is a drop in China’s total, but in a relationship like this the buyer (Bangladesh) should have a voice, not the seller.

Comrades, why are you kow-towing to China and repressing freedom of speech in Dhaka? Yes, I know the old jokes about it raining in Peking and opening umbrellas in Dhaka. But seriously, this was not a government sponsored event. The worst Beijing could have done if you said sorry, we can not intervene, was NOT sell you some more lead-tainted toys.

We know about the arms and weapons China sells to Bangladesh. They key word here is SELL. We buy it from China. We know about the crappy training aircraft bought from China–aircraft that crash regularly and kill young officers of Bangladesh Airforce. These are so bad, these trainee pilots say final good byes to each other before each training mission.

With a friend like this, who need enemies?

So Comrade PM and Comrade Home Minister, we can understand that when the Comrade Ambassador called and complained, you had to jump and shut down a mere photo exhibition. Nice. We can not even imagine how you will react when the Comrade Ambassador demands that you cooperate with Myanmar and relinquish claims to the undersea oil that China needs to keep its industrial engine growing.

We thought you took an oath to protect and follow the constitution of Bangladesh first (which includes protecting the freedom of speech of its citizens), not the geopolitical aspirations of China when this really does not matter to Bangladesh.

Sorry, now we know better.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the 4th estate in Bangladesh, if you look at the severity of the crime, which one is higher? Is a grenade attack, or an unsuccessful attack on the PM more sensational than 22 murders? In terms of law, there is nothing worse than murder either. Then why is this clear-cut case of premeditated murder still being labeled the “Grenade attack case”?

Can you, for once, call a spade a spade, and this a murder case? Do not give us the excuse that the Police calls it a grenade attack case. Of course they do–you just reported that the then state minister for home affairs was involved in the cover up. By calling it the grenade attack case, you are still aiding and abetting the cover up.

The case related to 15th August is the “Mujib murder case”–no one calls it the 15th August shooting case. Can you journalists do the same for August 21 and help the departed get justice for their killing?

Oct 27th’s newspapers carry major news regarding this. Daily Start has, citing anonymous sources and direct review of documents implicated a major BNP figure. But like a shy village bride who dares not call her husband by his name, Daily Star leaves out this BNP big-shot and just calls him “a top Hawa Bhaban bigwig.”

Since Hawa Bhaban was not the center of power for Bangladesh Magna Khawa Shomity, perhaps Daily Star can explain why a top Hawa Bhaban bigwig is also not a BNP bigwig?

The paper rightfully points out that “investigators are not sure as yet if the hair-raising conspiracy was designed with or without the knowledge of the then prime minister Khaleda Zia.” Elsewhere, it mentions various alleged illegal activity by Tareque Rahman. If so, it would logically follow that Tareque is not the so-called bigwig, because obviously DS is not afraid of linking him to criminal activity.

So it was not Khaleda Zia, it was not Tareque. Who was it that the Star can not name him? They also did not name an apparent killer of Sheikh Mujib who is absconding from Justice. Who is this fugitive who can not be named?

Why not?

It is an otherwise damning report:

On August 14: At Hawa Bhaban — the alternative powerhouse of the BNP-led coalition government. At least nine people sat to discuss a recommendation coming from a series of meetings in the past. The Awami League was branded as the archenemy for the country and Islam, and it was recommended that its president Sheikh Hasina must die.

State minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar, deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu, prime minister’s political secretary Harris Chowdhury, a fugitive killer of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a top Jamaat leader, two Huji founders and one leader of Al Markajul Islami found no reason to disagree. In the presence of a top Hawa Bhaban bigwig, they chose to kill.

On August 15: At the same office, the same group sat again. This time they discussed how to accomplish the mission. The fugitive killer suggested Hasina be attacked at her home, on road or at a rally. They settled for a rally, just six days away.

Now it was time they chose weapons. “Grenades are no problem,” said Babar. Earlier on April 2, 10 truckloads of smuggled arms and ammunition were seized in Chittagong and two more trucks reportedly went missing.

They decided to use grenades and rifles in the operation that was to be carried out either at Muktangon or in front of AL’s central office on Bangabandhu Avenue. The government was dithering over the permission for the rally.

The Daily Star obtained a highly privileged document in which a top accused of the grenade carnage gave some descriptions about how the killing mission had been organised. Most of the people whose names surfaced in the narration are either in jail or on the run and could not be contacted for comment.

Amazing. If even half of this can be proven in a court of law, the political landscape is going to see a major change in the next 4 years.

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J @ Shada Kalo [http://shadakalo.blogspot.com] writes using a pseudonym and is best known for exposing government, military, corporate foul plays through whistle-blowing investigative reports.

[Read posts by J @ Shada Kalo]

Shah Abdul Karim. Image from Wikipedia public domain

Baul Shomrat (king) Shah Abdul Karim passed away on the September 11th, 2009. I had the privilege of listening to him singing many years ago and I still remember how it felt he was immersed in the song that was pouring out of his heart.

Instead of making an unqualified attempt at describing the man and his music, I will link to a tribute video to him, and link to an article by Selim Chowdhury, a singer who had the opportunity to know Baul Abdul Karim from up close, and sing many of his songs.

May he find all that he wrote and sang about for almost a century.

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[Read all posts by J @ Shada Kalo]

You are the home minister of a democratically elected government. You have personally faced the business end of a police baton, and know what it feels like.

Then why does the police force that takes orders from you behave like this?

Police club activists of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports, Image by Adnan, DRIK News

By all reports, the police attacked a peaceful procession of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports. No one threw a brick to provoke the police. But now 70 members are injured, and Prof. Anu Muhammad, a professor at Jahangir Nagar University, has fractures in both legs.

The government has issued a very nuanced apology, calling the clash ‘unexpected and sad’ and promised legal action against the cops if they were to be found guilty of having overstepped their limits.

Madam home minister, the apology is a goodwill gesture and makes a nice change from the previous tactic of outright denial, but if you expect us to believe that the police acted without specific order from its chain of command including the home ministry, you have to try better next time because we are not buying it.

Every time something like this happens, regardless of the party in power, the apologists come out and label this as a conspiracy against the government. Sometimes they even see the fingerprint of foreign agents.

Lets not complicate things by looking at conspiracies. I mean, isn’t it as simple as calling the officer in charge and asking him who gave him the order (or clearance) to physically assault the procession? Then find that superior officer, ask him the same question, and repeat until you find the guilty party. Then decide if it was a conspiracy or not.

You may or may not be personally involved, but you can not escape responsibility for police actions like this. For democracy’s sake, please clean it up. Or Resign.

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J @ Shada Kalo [http://shadakalo.blogspot.com] writes using a pseudonym and is best known for exposing government, military, corporate foul plays through whistle-blowing investigative reports.

[Read posts by J @ Shada Kalo]