Why are our writers and journalists still in prison?

 

 

The Daily Star (Dhaka)
23 December 2002
Commentary

 

 Mahfuz Anam

We are glad that Pricilla Raj is out, but only on bail. However, it
must be regretfully mentioned here that it took five days for the
High Court order to be implemented. This we think was a gross and
deliberate miscarriage of justice as a result of which Pricilla was
kept in prison for five additional days. Will our government kindly
explain how it could take five days for the jail authorities to
receive the High Court order when both are located within less than
five kilometres of each other? We recall how the ETV verdict was
implemented within hours of its delivery.

Here it took five days and that also because of proactive moves by
lawyers and family members of the defendant. Given the process of
"law taking its own course" - a phrase our law minister loves to
quote - God only knows when the High Court order would have reached
the Dhaka Central Jail and when Pricilla would have breathed the
blessed air of freedom.

  If "justice delayed is justice denied", then justice has been
denied to Pricilla for at least FIVE DAYS (we are not even talking of
her detention since November 25 and claim of electric shocks to
extract `confessional` statement, see report on her release) by the
present government which is established on law, elected through free
and fair elections and professes to uphold democracy. Do we really
need others to malign our image when we ourselves seem to be working
overtime to do the job?

While Pricilla enjoys freedom on bail, historian, author and
columnist Professor Muntasir Mamun, writer and social activist
Shahriar Kabir and freelance journalist and writer on development
issues Saleem Samad suffer in prison for nearly three weeks under
vague charges of "sedition` and section 54 of the CrPC. (Samad`s bail
petition hearing started in the High Court yesterday and an order is
expected today). We waited patiently all this while for the
government to tell us why these eminent writers and social activists
of our country are in prison.

What are their crimes for which they are being so brutally treated?
They have no criminal record. They have never been known to have
violated any established law of the land. Their professions are among
the most respected in society and in the world. And YET they are
denied bail as if they are such notorious elements and such a menace
to society that their continued freedom must be prevented at any
cost, even by bending or violating the law if necessary.

Is there any action in their past which cannot entitle them to a
treatment of dignity, respect and civility? Are they such dangerous a
group that they cannot be out on bail while the government conducts
the necessary investigation? Why have they been treated like common
criminals? Why did they need to be interrogated by so many different
intelligence agencies of the state? Why were they denied the due
process of law, deprived of timely access to lawyers and not given
``division`` in jail which their profession, past record, public
esteem in which they are held, and general eminence entitle them to.

Above all, no plausible charges could yet be brought against them
after nearly four weeks in prison and yet they continue to rot in
jail and their bail petition continue to be almost automatically
rejected without assigning any serious reason. In the latest act of
harassment Professor Muntasir Mamun has been shifted to the Dinajpur
district jail and Shahriar Kabir first to the Kashimpur Central Jail
in Gazipur and then only yesterday to the Chittagong jail. This has
been done, we think, to make contacts with lawyers and family members
difficult, infrequent and logistically burdensome and expensive.

Let us refresh our memory a bit about their cases. In doing so, we
have been deliberately a bit elaborate to prove the point how law was
bent or violated and the arrested persons were deprived of the true
process of law. Professor Muntasir Mamun and Shahriar Kabir were both
picked up on December 8, the day after the terrorist bomb blasts in the four cinema halls of Mymensingh. Having no specific charges against them, they were arrested under section of 54 of the CrPC. Predictably bail was refused and they were sent on a three-day remand for questioning.

 

Along with the same order the CMM`s Court also asked
that none but the investigating officer was to question them.
Violating this court order both were taken to the Joint Interrogation
Cell (JIC), a body composed of the CID (Criminal Investigation
Department), SB (Special Branch), both belonging to the police, and
the NSI (National Security Intelligence) under the home ministry. The
DGFI (Directorate General of Forces Intelligence) belonging to the
armed forces sometimes sits among them but never officially.

On December 10 the High Court cancelled the remand order of both
Mamun and Kabir and ordered that both be sent to jail. The police
ignored this order. On December 11 Kabir was implicated in the same
sedition case brought against two Channel Four foreign journalists
though Shahriar`s name did not appear in the FIR (First Information
Report), the initial report that is submitted by the police following
initiation of any investigation.

On the following day, December 12, both Mamun and Kabir were given
one-month detention under the Special Powers Act (SPA). Till date no
report have been submitted to the court as to what has been found, if
anything, during interrogation while on remand. On December 14 the
High Court issued a rule nisi on the government asking them to show
cause why their detention order should not be declared illegal and
why they should not be given compensation. On December 18 the High
Court Division Bench approved anticipatory bail for them for the
future. The present position is that both Mamun and Kabir have been
given bail for the cases under section 54 and ``sedition``. But as
they have been given detention under the SPA they are not being
released. The hearing for the SPA detention will be held on January 5
when the High Court will open after vacation.

In one of their court appearances Kabir said that following his
arrest for long 25 continuous hours he was given nothing to eat or
drink. He was blindfolded for days and repeatedly interrogated by the
JIC. He was not allowed to sleep for five nights. He was not given
clean water to drink and had to drink bathroom water.

In his statement to the court Mamun said that he was kept blindfolded
for two days and repeatedly interrogated. He was made to sleep on
wet, cold floor in spite of his frail health and made to sleep in the
same room with a notorious criminal.

Saleem Samad`s story is even more horrific. He has been arrested on
November 29 and taken on a five-day remand following which he was
produced before a court on December 4 but was transported to prison
without giving him a chance to move a bail petition.

While being spirited out he shouted from the prison van to waiting
journalists on the court premises, "I have been subjected to inhuman
torture". The bail was heard in his absence and predictably rejected.
On December 14 bail was once again moved in absentia and was again
rejected. So from December 4 till date, he has been rotting in
prison. Till today Samad has had no chance to properly appear before
the court, make any statement before the court or has not been
allowed proper and regular access to lawyers.

It may be recalled when the two Channel Four journalists came to do a
documentary on Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh and the
possibility of existence of the al-Qaeda network here he acted as
their contact persons. When it was discovered that they came on a
wrong visa -tourist, instead of journalist - and that they had
wrongly mentioned their professions - one a teacher and another an
architect - they were arrested for entry under false pretence and
charged with ``sedition`` and put in jail. Samad and Pricilla were
arrested at the same time (with a few days difference) and also
charged with ``sedition``.

What were the crimes of Samad? The visiting journalists used Saleem
as a local contact. It is a most common practice. Journalists being a
global fraternity, national contacts are expected to help visiting
journalists do their story. Often visiting journalists come to
newspaper offices requesting use of their files, emails, Internet,
computer and sometimes even a desk to work from. On occasions we even
assign one of our reporters to take them around and help out with the
language. We extend this courtesy because we expect them to do the
same when we are in their country. Can anybody imagine working in
France, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, South Korea, etc without a
translator or a local contact? We have deliberately chosen examples
from developed countries to prove that local contact is not a
developing-country phenomenon as the information minister derisively
referred to our journalists doing all this for a "few dollars".

The constitution, which guarantees our rights and limits the power
and authority of the government, the laws that regulate our lives,
and practices that forms our legal tradition all hold personal
freedom to be sacred. All laws of our land guarantee our individual
freedoms, which can be curbed only under specific conditions and
after a very elaborately laid out legal process have been fulfilled.

It is this core value of our legal system that our government appears
to be flouting at will. The attitude seems be to "arrest first, and
look for proof later" or better still "use what has happened to
punish those who write against us". Otherwise how can one explain the
arrest of Prof. Muntasir Mamun within hours of a bomb blast in
Mymensing. Prof. Mamun has never been known to have participated in
any activism remotely linked to anything violent in nature. Dhaka
University has known many violent clashes both among students and
teachers. Prof. Mamun`s worst enemies have never linked him to any
violent act. So how could he be among the prime suspects in the most
horrendous of terrorist act in the recent past?

The same holds true for writer-activist Shahriar Kabir. We recall
here his arrest more than a year ago charged with "sedition" and set
free by higher court when the government failed to produce any
evidence of his "seditious" actions. His documentary films, which
were supposed to have denigrated our country, were never shown to the
public or to the media, which Kabir challenged the government to do.

We conclude with the clear demand that prove their guilt or set our
writers and journalists free. The detention under the SPA, a black
law, which the BNP is pledge-bound to scrap, only makes the
government look oppressive.