Why are Dhaka politicians falling ill?

By Rater Zonaki
Column: Humanity or Humor?

Published: July 02, 2008

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Hong Kong, China — Critics have debated for more than a decade as to whether Bangladesh is politically "sick" or already "dead." But the nation has been experiencing a spate of illness among high-profile detainees awaiting trial on corruption charges in the last couple of weeks, under the military-controlled government’s state of emergency.

Since the state of emergency was imposed on Jan. 11, 2007, the government’s crackdown has resulted in nationwide midnight arrests and the detention of thousands of innocent people along with a few dozen political leaders and businessmen for alleged corruption. This crackdown has been called the “war against corruption.”

The so-called war turned into sheer political propaganda when the government arrested a few allegedly corrupt political bigwigs while allowing others who faced similar allegations to go free without charges pressed against them.

The absence of commitment as well as inefficiency in handling corruption cases has been exposed by the treatment of the general secretary of the Bangladesh Awami League, Abdul Jalil, who was imprisoned on May 28, 2007, without any specific charge brought against him. The government merely issued a detention order under the Special Powers Act of 1974.

The elderly politician was released on parole on March 3, 2008, for medical treatment in Singapore following an illness in prison. All the country’s public and private hospitals were found incompetent to provide adequate medical treatment. This was only the second incident in the country’s history in which a detained person was sent abroad – the first one was also under a military-controlled government 32 years ago, in 1976.

The same excuse – the necessity of better treatment for an illness – and the same method have been applied in an attempt to release former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, although she is being held on at least four charges of corruption before the Special Tribunal in Dhaka and was denied bail by the court.

The other detained former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, has been bargaining with the rulers to release her two sons, Tareque Rahman and Arafat Rahman, who are in prison facing trial on corruption charges and have suddenly been discovered to be seriously ill. According to reports submitted by government medical boards, the two brothers require better treatment abroad – just like Abdul Jalil and Sheikh Hasina.

Mohammad Nasim, the former minister for home and telecommunications during the Awami League regime in 1996-2001, has reportedly experienced a stroke while in detention on corruption charges. Following political pressure the government has already announced that Nasim, who was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment in October 2007 and faces additional charges, will also be allowed to go abroad for “better treatment.”

Some politicians have already been released on parole under executive orders and have been exempted from appearing in court. Others who are still in the queue are falling ill and requesting release on “humanitarian grounds.” Ironically, the military-controlled government, which has already broken all records of human rights abuses in Bangladesh, seems suddenly to have become “humanitarian.”

Two features are common among the recent cases of parole in Bangladesh. Firstly, medical doctors, including the most famous specialists, have been found useful in prescribing treatment abroad for their patients rather than domestic hospital care. Even the official medical boards have been making creative decisions: one ophthalmologist reportedly opined that Sheikh Hasina should go to the United States to receive treatment for her impaired ears!

This shows the sickness not only of the politicians but also of the clinicians, whom the country’s top politicians and policymakers would never trust for treatment, but find useful in implementing their political agenda. Needless to say, the process of medical examinations itself is also sick.

Secondly, the courts have been playing their role as rubber stamps in response to directions from the rulers. For example, everything that was seized by police from Hasina’s house as evidence after her arrest, including her SUV, was returned to her by order of the court as soon as the government decided to release her. The country’s legal experts have questioned under what law the seized property has been returned while Hasina’s trial is not yet finished.

The military-controlled government of Bangladesh has been playing a political game with these “sick” politicians, applying its palsied policies. The sick systems of the country’s health administration and its judiciary have been part of the ongoing game. All this has added to the ailments of the nation at the hands of an extra-constitutional government, where calls for democracy are bandied about as the nations sinks deeper into hypocrisy.

(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong, working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and was engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)