The Freedom Industry and Student Politics in Bangladesh

By Iftekhar Sayeed, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Nov 15, 2006, 23:23

[CHT Watch's note: The following is a part of an article titled "The Freedom Industry and Student Politics in Bangladesh" by Iftekhar Sayeed published in Axis of Logic (http://www.axisoflogic.com/cgi-bin/exec/view.pl?archive=150&num=23393)]

The Donor-Driven Nature of “Civil Society”

To remove any doubts regarding the foreign donor-driven nature of civil society, consider another point. Until 1990, ‘civil society’ was silent on the issue of the militarization of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In 1980, General Zia had forcibly re-settled Bengali people from the plains in order to render the indigenous people of the hills a minority in their area, and so quash their nationalist aspirations, as they were perceived to be. Both sides committed appalling atrocities. Regarding the role of civil society in the matter, Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma comment[xxxv]: “this important component of the Bangladeshi society remained mostly silent or ignored the events of militarization and military atrocities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. A possible explanation might be its ethnocentric origins (these civil-society organizations are mostly composed of and led by Bengalis and have little or no participation from their indigenous counterparts) and also its preoccupation with the struggle for restoring democracy in the country following the tragic events of 1975, which was considered more important.”

This is disingenuous. As we have seen, civil society played no part in the struggle for democracy: foreign donors brought about democracy in Bangladesh, as in so many other parts of the world. NGOs were perfectly happy to work under General Zia and General Ershad. Indeed, General Zia, who began the militarization of the Hill Tracts, had America’s solid support: he re-introduced capitalism after the socialist interlude ushered in by Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman, the country’s first prime minister. He also re-oriented foreign policy away from New Delhi and Moscow towards Washington and the west in general. The process of de-nationalization of industries nationalized by Sheikh Mujib that General Zia had started was continued by his successor, General Ershad – and so was the process of militarization of the Hill Tracts.

The authors continue: “From the late 1980s and during the 1990s, civil-rights organizations and activists started to become more and more vocal and raised their concerns on the prevailing situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the violation of human rights of its indigenous inhabitants.” That is to say, since the advent of perestroika and glasnost, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union – absolutely keeping in line with donor requirements.

In 1997, a 'peace treaty' was signed between the Awami League government and the insurgents, the Parbata Chottogram Jana Samhati Samity (PCJSS). However, a faction of the latter broke away to form the United People's Democratic Front (UPDF) in rejection of the accord. They are a major presence in the hill tracts, and I spent three hours talking to Ujjal Smriti Chakma, Coordinator, UPDF, Khagrachari District, and Mithun Chakma, General Secretary, Democratic Youth Forum, in September, 2005 at Khagrachari. They deplored the fact that there was now an internecine armed struggle among the hill people themselves. Newspapers regularly report murders of members of one group by those of the other: 2 UPDF men gunned down in Khagrachari[xxxvi] is a typical headline. Things are so bad that the Chakma people I spoke to are terrified of going into new territory in their own hills.

There is, therefore, a low-scale civil war going on at the moment in the hill districts.

One Disinformation Campaign: Peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts

Donors, however, are chuffed. Jenneke Arens and Kirti Nishan Chakma observe: "The accord, by and large, has been accepted by the peoples of the region and by the donor community as well—though one section of the indigenous people has explicitly rejected the accord and has formed the United Peoples' Democratic Front" (italics supplied). They go on to say: " Accordingly, a good number of representatives from donor country/agencies and multilateral development agencies have visited the region, and some of these agencies have started to disburse funds for different development projects. Alongside these initiatives, a number of NGOs—both local and national—are also undertaking development programs. Prospects for peace in the CHT have at least become brighter."

Nothing could be further from the facts on the ground. The hill people are aware that a gigantic hoax has been played on them by the PCJSS, the Awami League and the international community. When I questioned him about the role of NGOs, Mithun commented that they "supply chickens and hens to families" instead of addressing their real issues. Their contempt for NGOs can be easily understood.

Nevertheless, the official, donor line is that there is peace in the hill tracts - and Bangladeshi civil society goes along with that piece of fiction.

Consider two examples:

Banglapedia[xxxvii] - the national encyclopaedia of Bangladesh - was published in 2004 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The most eminent intellectuals of the country contributed. I consulted the CD-ROM for information on the hill tracts. The article on "Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord" did not have a single word to say about the UPDF! Then I tried the article under "Parbatya Chattagram Jana-Samhati Samiti" - again, there was no word on the UPDF. In the index, I typed in "United People's..." and that's as far as I got.

The UPDF, and therefore dissent regarding the peace treaty, does not exist.

The next shock came when I bought a copy of Tanvir Mokammel's documentary on the hill districts and the political situation there, called Kornophulir Kanna (Teardrops of the Karnaphuli, 2004). There were many interviews in the film - but not a single UPDF member appeared before the camera, and the acronym never came up!

When the Daily Star magazine[xxxviii] interviewed Tanvir Mokammel, he was never asked why he had excluded the UPDF in his documentary. Instead, we find exchanges of the following kind:

DS: What are the issues you strove to highlight in the film?

TM: The intention of the film was not to blame anyone in particular but to find a solution to the problem. My assessment is, the greatest hindrance to have [sic] a healthy relationship between indigenous people and Bengalees is non-communication. The two parties hardly know each other. From this gulf of unknowing of each other emerges the serpent's egg.

But surely, the hill people know each other - why then are they killing each other, holding each other for ransom, extorting money from each other....? No question, no reply.

The film, unfortunately, has been banned by the government; however, it would appear that the director was perfectly capable of considerable self-censorship himself.

Since the UPDF does not exist per donor policy, civil society has denied their existence.


Media Complicity with The Donors

And the Daily Star has actively connived at this distortion and spread of disinformation. "Over 250,000 people in the Chittagong hill tracts speak Chakma", observed the Daily Star in its coverage of minority languages[xxxix]. Yet the newspaper knows very well that the Chakma people speak a dialect of Bengali, the language of the majority. "The Chakma have discarded their original Burmese language and today speak a variant Bengali dialect" observes the Encyclopaedia Britannica[xl]. Mithun Chakma admitted the same when I asked him about his language. This piece of disinformation is necessary to prop up the “Peace Treaty”; if the donors admit that the Chakmas speak Bengali, then [the premise of] their original grievance not only evaporates, but actually proves embarrassing. The Daily Star is involved in the process because of the close ties between the newspaper and donors - for instance, the editor's wife, Shaheen Anam, has been selected by donors to be the team leader for the mega-NGO, Manusher Jonno! Civil society in Bangladesh is a close-knit, family concern (just like Bangladeshi culture).[xli]


The Powerful NGO Alliance Against the UPDF

If one visits the Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB) web site (www.ti-bangladesh.org), one comes across an article on the democratization of the Chittagong Hill Tracts[xlii]: as one would expect from an organization funded by DFID (The UK Department for International Development), NORAD (the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), DANIDA (the Danish International Development Agency) Sida (the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), USAID, Royal Netherlands Embassy, ActionAid Bangladesh and Transparency International, Berlin, Germany, the UPDF has been completely airbrushed out of the picture. This curious omission appears to be totally at odds with the Code of Ethics of the organisation, which states in section 1.3 that "TIB is committed to values of democracy, justice, rule of law, transparency, accountability, integrity and impartiality (italics original)." Perhaps the trustees felt that the UPDF did not merit impartial treatment. (Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of the Daily Star, is also a trustee of TIB.)

During my last trip to Khagrachari in July, 2006, I spoke with members of the UPDF in their pukka, new premises (the first had been burnt down in 2003 by their archrival, the PCJSS, and the last office where I’d met with them in 2005 had been a mere bamboo shack). Mithun Chakma and others were peeved that the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a self-styled “civil society think tank”, had held a conference in nearby Rangamati on the situation in the hill tracts without inviting the UPDF to participate. They said they learnt about the shindig from newspapers and TV only after it was over (as expected, ‘regional dialogues’ of the CPD are publicized by Channel-i, The Daily Star and its sister vernacular paper Prothom Alo. At the 26th meeting of the Board of Trustees of the CPD, the two newspapers agreed to provide matching funds for the CPD’s activities, including the regional ‘dialogues’.[xliii]) This is tantamount to asking the ruling party of a nation to a dialogue on the politics of the country while keeping out the opposition!

Iftekhar Sayeed
Dhaka, BANGLADESH
e-mail: ifti@bangla.net
alternative e-mail: if6065@yahoo.com

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