Human Rights in Bangladesh

Summarizing her experience about her visit to Bangladesh, Amnesty International’s Irene Khan described her meetings with various high-ranking government officials and her recommendations about promoting human rights in our country. In her narrative, the human rights violations of this government are, for a major part, just a continuation of rights violations committed by successive governments in the past. This really did not match, at all, with my personal beliefs, which mark our current government as the worst human rights violator I have ever experienced running our country. With a little thought and research, however, things became slightly clearer. 

When viewed from outside, from the lofty perches of foreign human rights watchdogs, things in Bangladesh probably seemed the same to everyone for the last two decades. Governments came and went, delegations attended conferences, funds were allocated to women’s empowerment, and attention moved on to the next item on the list.

However, inside Bangladesh itself, the slow but palpable changes were visible to everyone. The biggest boost to human rights in Bangladesh’s entire history began in the eighties and accelerated in the nineties, with the burgeoning garments industry, which provided close to ten million women with steady employment, a chance to earn steady income, and with that, the power finally, to shape their own destinies. This diverted manpower from the domestic help sector, which, to my mind, is one of the main causes of human rights violation in Bangladesh. While the supply for domestic help decreased because of better employment in garments and textile factories, the liberalization of the country’s import policy allowed junkets like dishwashers and microwave ovens to become affordable to our middle class, also somewhat decreasing the demand for hired help.

The emphasis placed on universal women’s education, and the idea of providing them with stipends while at school, since the early nineties took a whole generation of women, saved them from becoming child-brides, and gave them a new mindset to think about themselves and their role in the country. Employment was provided for these women in the thousands of schools and colleges that were constructed and funded by our past three government in all parts of our country. In the cities, the entry of cell phone companies, private banks, English-medium schools, private universities, television channels, and other multinational corporations all gave young graduates a real shot at finding steady employment.

In the public sector, the High Court created history when besides giving bail to three senior arrested BNP leaders, it also ordered the government to pay each of these individuals one hundred thousand takas as compensation. Since then, the High Court has continuously worked to curb the excesses of our executive branch, especially the police. Defendents were able to obtain bail, and even, gasp, anticipatory bail when the courts felt that they were being targeted unfairly.

In this slow but sure progression of human rights, this current government has added nothing but endangered many of the gains won in the last twenty years. Continuing unrest in the garments sector, the general unchecked rise of food prices, the shocking absence of foreign investment in our country, will all affect first those who are already least well-equipped to handle these adversities: the poor, the marginal, and the disempowered.

When human rights violations occurred during our democratically-elected governments’ tenure, it happened despite these governments, and there were always some methods of recourse. How then shall we handle the shame of regressing to the point where human rights violations occur because of, not despite, the government. The shame and stigma of having a government whose policy and solution for every problem is to use force, force, and more force, to torture, to seize, to abuse, and now and then, to kill.

Ms. Khan’s birth-date is given as 24th December 1956, and one of her profiles states that she left Bangladesh when she was fourteen. This would mean that Ms. Khan could have not spent more than seven days in free Bangladesh before she left for schooling in Ireland, never returning to our country to live in for an extended period of time, as a glance at her luminous career makes clear. Irene Khan tries to mask this disconnect by waxing homilies about all the “ordinary” people she met while travelling in Bangladesh, capped by the moving scene where an airport guard runs towards her, probably in slow-motion with Ode to Joy playing in the background, and entreats her not to forget us. Sadly, I doubt she has ever knew us.

Maybe that would explain why, in two of her profiles online, (here and here) a civil war is mentioned as an enduring influence on her fight for human rights. You know, the civil war we “ordinary” Bangladeshis call the War of Liberation. 

Tags: Amnesty International, Irene Khan