04-11-2022

fridAy, NovEMBEr 4, 2022
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
friday, November 4, 2022
Jail killing Day
The nation mourned with a heavy heart
on the occasion of the observance of
the Jail Killing Day on Thursday. The
most brutal assassination of Bangabandhu
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and members of his
family on August 1975 will remain forever
etched in the consciousness of all right
thinking Bangladeshis as the blackest and
most shameful period in the history of this
nation.
But the deeply shocking incidents of mid
August 1975 were followed by no less
savageries only three months later in
November of that year when four national
leaders-Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin
Ahmed, Mansur Ali and Kamaruzzaman --
were stealthily and mercilessly slain in
Dhaka Central Jail in the small hours by the
most heartless assailants. They were working
for the coup makers that toppled the
government and decided on this bloody
method of getting rid forever their potential
political opponents.
But the slain leaders were among the
highly respected and worthy sons of the
country. They contributed to the
organisation of the liberation struggle for
Bangladesh in foreign soil by acting in their
capacities as highest ranking leaders of the
Bangladesh government in exile in 1971.
Prior to the independence of the country,
they made the contribution of a life-time to
rouse Bangladeshis for nationhood. From
the 1952 glorious language movement that
created the first impulse towards
independent Bangladesh to struggling
against various autocratic governments for
the realisation of the rightful dues of
Bangladesh, for democracy, for spreading
the spirit of Bengali nationalism and for
finally risking their everything in the final
phase of the struggle for Bangladesh and
leading the Bangladesh government in exile
with great ability and dedication, the
deceased four leaders deserve to be
remembered and respected by Bangladeshis
of all generations as national leaders.
Needless to say, the killing of these four
leaders in utterly helpless conditions when
they should have felt specially protected for
being safely in the custody of the jail house,
constitutes a barbarity of matchless
proportion and the most unacceptable and
worst violation of human rights.
Bangladeshis since then have traveled a long
way towards democracy and in securing
basic rights of countrymen. Let us hope that
they will succeed in firmly consolidating
their democracy and human rights so that
the face of the nation never gets blackened
again from such abominable slaying.
Although the killers were protected by
political developments for years, the train of
events slowly but gradually turned against
them. First, under the incumbent
government, the killers of the Bangabandhu
were successfully convicted and four of them
were hanged for their crimes in 2010. There
were some 15 persons in the squad of killers
who were responsible in varying degrees for
the killing of the four leaders in jail who were
also directly involved in the assassination of
members of the first family. After the
hanging of four of them in 2010, eleven of
them were sentenced in different degrees
ranging from the death penalty to long term
rigorous imprisonment. But they are
absconding and are known to be in foreign
countries.
It becomes an obligation on the part of the
Bangladesh government or whosoever
comes to power next, to complete extradition
treaties with these countries at the soonest
(if these are not in place) and arrange for the
immediate extradition of these convicted
ones to Bangladesh to face justice.
Only finally dispensing justice in relation to
these absconding killers will mean that in
future persons with similar heinous
mentality will be deterred from indulging
afresh in such ghastly crimes. And
democracy, human rights and rule of law will
be strengthened.
Israel's farcical elections and fictional democracy
Israel's powerful military and booming
economy are undeniable facts, but its
much-celebrated democracy is utter
fiction.
Israel claims to be a Jewish and
democratic state. In fact, it is neither. It
boasts of being "the state of the Jewish
people" everywhere, when less than half of
the world's Jews live in the country. Today,
Israel rules over 15 million people between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea, half of whom are not Jews; most can't
vote in Israel.
Israel does not even recognise
"Israeliness" as a nationality and rejects the
liberal democratic concept of a "state of all
its citizens". Instead, the Jewish state
recognises two strata of people: Jews who
are entitled to full rights and Palestinians
who must be content with fewer or no rights.
These Palestinians are grudgingly tolerated
as second-class citizens, occupied and
repressed as colonial subjects, or are kept
away as undesirable refugees, whose
inalienable right to return would destroy the
"Jewish state".
And if that's not enough to raise eyebrows,
consider the fact that there is no consensus
in the "Jewish state" as to "who is a Jew".
Orthodox, Reform and secular Jews have
different - even conflicting - interpretations
of Jewishness. It is a religious question that
is dependent on power politics, as this old
Israeli satirical sketch illustrates quite well.
Nevertheless, the legal and political
rationale in apartheid colonial Israel
privileges the Jews living on all territories
between the River and the Sea in all
important spheres of life, including
citizenship, housing, land rights, language,
culture, mobility, and so on.
In that way, Israel/Palestine is no different
from apartheid South Africa, where
privileged whites also enjoyed a degree of
communitarian democracy. But Western
hypocritical elites, who refer to "the one and
only democracy in the Middle East", never
spoke of "the only democracy in Africa".
Tomato, tomahto. To compensate for the
lack of true democracy, Israel holds
elections - spectacular elections. The more
THE news of the death of a fellow
journalist when it first reached us on
Monday last was our own, private
loss: the loss of those few in a large country
who earn their living from this profession
called journalism or media, for only we are
aware of the challenges and risks we face,
regardless of the side we may or may not
pick. Good or bad journalism, partisan or
objective, nothing can guarantee safety. But
still, compared to threats, beatings, loss of a
job, Arshad Sharif's death was the
unkindest cut of all.
Within hours of this news, it was clear
that this was not going to be a choti si
kahani (short story) concerning only us.
The heavens themselves blazed forth his
death, to paraphrase Shakespeare, and for
an entire week, it seemed as if the already
fraught political situation was made all the
more volatile by the news from Kenya.
Perhaps, someone more knowledgeable
can explain in the coming days the
outpouring of grief which seemed to cross
cities, professions and distances. People
travelled to Islamabad for his funeral,
which according to some accounts was one
of the biggest ever held at Faisal Mosque,
where men and women gathered to say
namaz. And the slogans raised there that
day belonged not to any party, but to an
angry populace, most of whom were
unfamiliar to Arshad's friends and family.
By turning up there, they made it clear that
they, too, had a claim on him. But
elsewhere, politics was reaching a
crescendo.
Imran Khan chose the same week to
announce his long march and on the day of
the funeral itself came an even bigger
surprise - a press conference addressed by
the DG ISI. It was a first by all accounts. For
despite the central and high-profile role of
The warning lights are blinking on the
dashboard of the world economy.
Germany has slashed its economic
outlook for the next two years, predicting
negative growth in 2022. Britain is also
forecasting contractions as it struggles to
stay on top of skyrocketing bond yields.
Inflation in the US is at a four-decade high,
and the Federal Reserve's aggressive
interest-rate increases are exporting
monetary pain far and wide.
As European economies begin a gradual
slide into recession, all eyes are now turning
to Asia. The world's most populous
continent has established itself as an
economic linchpin, sheltered from the worst
elections it holds, the crueller and more
fragmented they become. As I wrote after
the last election, "personal ambition trumps
politics, and politicking outweighs ideology"
in today's Israel.
The fragmentation gives the country an
allure of plurality and diversity, especially in
contrast to the first three decades of the
Israeli state, when Labour predictably won
every election. But in recent years, the Right
has become as dominant as Labour was,
albeit with more screaming, slights and
slurs.
Cruelty has become Israel's national sport.
Indeed, "Israel's politics is crueller than
most", according to Benjamin Netanyahu.
He should know; he's the champ. Cruelty
comes in two strands: political vitriol and
racist violence. Both flare up like fireworks
with each election season, which comes as
often as spring or summer these days.
It is no surprise then, that as the
November 1 election approached, the fifth in
four years, the country's political discourse
turned poisonous. Where Israel's racist
leaders fall short on political disagreement,
they make up for it in personal insults and
character assassination. "Scum of the
human race", "pathological liar", "assassin",
and "fascist" are some of the milder
language animating Israel's electoral
spectacle.
Even accusations of Nazism and anti-
Semitism have been hurled again and again
by fanatics from the religious and secular
camps. It is these types of accusations the
Netanyahu camp whipped up in the mid-
1990s that led to the assassination of then
MArwAN BisHArA
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for daring to
advance the peace process without a clear
Jewish majority in the Knesset.
Crude racism against the Palestinians is as
certain to accompany the election season as
winter cold and summer heat. But there is
an exception to the rule - if or when
Palestinians betray their conscience in
return for table crumbs; these "good Arabs"
are appreciated like the house slave, Stephen
Warren, in Quentin Tarantino's film Django
Unchained.
Cruel violence is likewise predictable
during election season as we have witnessed
in the past. In a ritualistic projection of
machoism and bravado, Israel has
bombarded the besieged Gaza, invaded and
Cruelty has become israel's national sport. indeed,
"israel's politics is crueller than most", according to
Benjamin Netanyahu. He should know; he's the
champ. Cruelty comes in two strands: political vitriol
and racist violence. Both flare up like fireworks with
each election season, which comes as often as spring
or summer these days.
economic ramifications of the crisis created
by Russia's invasion of Ukraine by its
booming labor market, abundant mineral
and energy resources, and technological
innovations.
But confidence in the institutions of
capitalism is being steadily eroded in many
Asian countries, where multinational
behemoths have engorged themselves on
the continent's plentiful assets for years,
leaving environmental damage, poverty,
and lawsuits in their wake.
Such behavior lays a time bomb in global
supply chains, imperiling not only local ways
of life and ecosystems, but indirectly
threatening the whole global economy by
THEo NorMANToN
re-invaded Palestinian towns and refugee
camps in the occupied West Bank, killed and
imprisoned thousands of Palestinian
civilians, destroyed countless homes, and
terrorised an entire people under the pretext
of combatting terrorism.
And so, a year after Netanyahu's minions
took over from him, their coalition
government has proved just as bad, if not
worse. Naftali Bennett and Avigdor
Lieberman, who in the past served as
Netanyahu's chiefs of staff, Gideon Sa'ar,
who was his cabinet secretary, and Yair
Lapid and Benny Gantz, who were ministers
in his cabinet, have repeated Netanyahu's
crimes and follies in the occupied
Palestinian territories.
The apples do not fall far from the tree.
Their government bombarded Gaza,
reinvaded West Bank cities, expanded illegal
settlements and blocked all paths to a
Shock and awe
most of our previous ISI heads, no one can
remember one ever addressing a press
conference. And this from someone, who
has had his images removed from pictures
which had to be released publicly.
The historic press conference continues
to be discussed days after it was held.
The intel chief and the DG ISPR spoke in
detail about Imran Khan, the PTI
government's removal and their denial of
the foreign conspiracy of regime change.
Shock and awe aside, the historic press
conference continues to be discussed days
after it was held.
But it was not just an extraordinary press
conference; one may be allowed to say it
appeared to be a defensive one. For what
else could one call it when two senior
officials face the cameras after three days of
what appeared to be a widespread outburst
at the death of a journalist. And it came just
an hour or so before his funeral.
That it was felt necessary for such a
formal and official response to the
allegations surrounding Arshad Sharif's
death suggests there was some concern
about what was being said - that he had left
because of falling out with the
establishment. After all, in our difficult
past, there have been tragic deaths of
journalists and allegations too.
But this time around, the establishment's
ArifA Noor
reaction was unprecedented. It has been
said that the sombre interaction on
Thursday afternoon was carried out to not
just communicate with Pakistanis but also
their own. And that it needed to be done
publicly. Indeed, for the head of the spy
agency to say he kept his men out of the
inquiry commission to ensure its
independence in itself said much about the
institution's concern over existing
perceptions.
This is further reinforced by the fact that on Thursday itself, the
military's press conference was followed by multiple press conferences
by government officials but not a single one of them was memorable. No
one remembers even the identity of the ministers who spoke on
Thursday but the presser is still being discussed.
This is not to say that the rest of the
conference was any less newsworthy, for it
was a back and forth on the tense political
situation, while those speaking kept
declaring their distance from the mess. This
included the long march, the regime
change theory as well as the issue of the
chief's extension.
But the biggest loser of this afternoon was
undoubtedly the government. That the
security establishment had to come out and
refute Imran Khan's regime change story is
basically an admission that the government
of 13 parties was unable to do this. It will
now be hard to refute the conclusion that
the government did not succeed in
countering Khan's bayania (narrative) and
the men in uniform had to do it themselves
after six months of letting the parties
handle it.
This is further reinforced by the fact that
sowing mistrust and resentment toward
globalization, the countries they represent,
and even capitalism itself.
If the coming economic crisis has an
upside, it will be the opportunity it affords us
to pause and assess the strengths and
failures of the established modus operandi.
With any luck, 2022 will be remembered as
the year that multinationals in Asia began to
compromise on profits in the name of
sustainability.
Multinationals behaving badly in Asia is
nothing new. They established themselves
as the 17th century, when the Dutch East
India Trading Company was formed as the
world's first joint-stock company. It soon
negotiated settlement.
The "moderate" Gantz, who bragged
about flattening whole residential
neighbourhoods in Gaza when he was the
military chief of staff, was at it again in 2021,
overseeing more devastation, this time as
Israeli minister of defence. Most recently, he
nominated an illegal settler as the new
military chief of staff.
No surprise then, that "the prince of
darkness and hate", Benjamin Netanyahu is
expected to win a sixth term as prime
minister, despite his indictment for breach
of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud. If he
does, Netanyahu is sure to form a "national
immunity government" that ensures he
stays out of prison. His alliance with farright
parties, like Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma
Yehudit (Jewish Strength), might also try to
weaken the supreme court and the judiciary
by subjugating them to its parliamentary
majority. Former Prime Minister Ehud
Barak has recently condemned the "unholy
alliance between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir
and the messianic racists" as the "true threat
to the State of Israel", and predicted that its
victory may usher "a period of darkness".
Cruel, perhaps, but merited.
To be sure, Netanyahu has repeatedly
slated Barak and worse. In his recently
published autobiographical monstrosity,
Bibi, the spinner-in-chief trashes many if
not most of his predecessors, successors,
and former partners and interlocutors. The
book's 736 pages are full of lies, half-truths,
and hyperboles, as well as conceit, selfimportance
and delusion, but I will leave
that matter for another day.
Such is the dreadful state of "Israeli
democracy" today. Far right fanatics and
bloody generals dominate the absolute
majority of seats in the Israeli parliament
and compete for the seats of the terribly
shrinking Left. The more elections Israel
holds the less democratic and more despotic
it becomes towards the Palestinians, alas.
Marwan Bishara is an author who writes
extensively on global politics and is widely
regarded as a leading authority on US
foreign policy, the Middle East and
international strategic affairs.
on Thursday itself, the military's press
conference was followed by multiple press
conferences by government officials but not
a single one of them was memorable. No
one remembers even the identity of the
ministers who spoke on Thursday but the
presser is still being discussed.
There is another aspect to this also. The
officers spoke frankly about past politics
and 'mistakes', which is being interpreted
as the institution's decision to support
Khan during the 2018 election. And with
this context, which was also highlighted
during the question-and-answer session,
their recounting of the story about how
Imran Khan was willing to offer an
unlimited extension to the army chief in
exchange for staying in power may do more
than just reflect on the former prime
minister.
For his supporters and others, this will
simply reinforce the messaging of the PTI
that the vote of no-confidence was not
simply an organic, democratic move
planned and carried out by the PDM
parties. And that it was somehow linked to
the institution itself.
This perception has become news due to
the press conference of Thursday. Not just
because of what was said but because of the
government itself which is also constantly
talking about the appointment. When
Imran Khan says he doesn't want the
government to appoint the army chief and
the prime minister responds by saying he
will consult no one on the appointment of
the army chief, they are both creating a link
between the political situation at the
moment and the appointment. And so did
the press conference on Thursday.
The writer is a journalist.
Time for multinationals to change their record on Asia
began vying with other colonial businesses
in Asia, such as the British East India
Company, with both engaging in a moral
race to the bottom and carving out corporate
fiefdoms in the name of their governments.
These companies were actively involved in
the slave trade, shipping millions of Africans
around the world for the purposes of trade
or unpaid labor. India and Indonesia both
became hubs in this egregious market, and
locals were systematically enslaved and put
to work in inhumane conditions in service of
the companies' profits.
Theo Normanton is the Moscow
correspondent for bne IntelliNews.