The Independent
16 March, 2013
M. Serajul Islam
In
the initial phase, the Shahabag youth movement or the Gonojagoron Mancha (GM)
had caught the imagination of perhaps the largest number of the people in any
movement since 1971. The first few days of the movement also established the
fact that the crimes committed in 1971 by the local collaborators of the
Pakistani army had not been forgotten. People across the political divide
wanted capital punishment for those who had been brought before the ICT. The
movement promised to bring the nation together in the same spirit as it was
united in 1971 under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; a unity that was the
major reason that helped Bangladesh to become independent in 1971. There were
great expectations that the GM would show the way to the nation out of its
tryst with evil in the country.
Unfortunately,
the GM belied its initial promises. It is now petering out into another
manifestation of the partisan politics of the country. In fact, if it stopped
at that, the country would no better no worse. Shahabag has very sadly divided the nation in
a manner that the partisan nature of politics was not able to do. The BNP
vacillated initially about the GM, then gave it qualified support but later
withdrew it completely. The Jatiya Party called for a Jihad against the
Shahabag movement for its alleged anti-Islamic stance. The AL’s patronage of
the GM and the actions it took to appease the youth injected into the partisan
politics an element of conflict that has, in the words of HM Ershad, pushed the
country to the brink of a civil war. Thus for all practical purpose the
Shahabag movement that had promised to unite the nation has left it dangerously
divided.
The
media became the voice of the GM. It concluded that those not with Shahabag
movement were anti-liberation forces and called it the second liberation war! The media did not inquire why the Shahabag
movement did not express any anger on the government; on the ICT or the
prosecution team that failed to send Qader Mollah to the gallows. The ICTs have
been established by the Government. It claimed that these Tribunals are of
world standard. The prosecution team has also been selected by the government
that ministers and party leaders repeatedly defended as qualified to deal with
the cases before the Tribunals. Therefore,
the GM should have attacked the government for the failure to hang Qader
Mollah. Instead, it attacked first the Jamat and subsequently the BNP and the
Jatiya Party as if they were responsible why Qader Mollah was not hanged. The
media made no effort to reveal the reasons for the pro-government and
anti-opposition nature of the Shahabag movement that an objective media would
have.
The
media also ignored the presence of well known AL activists from its cultural
front in the midst of the Shahabag youth leaders. It also ignored the regular
visits of AL leaders and government Ministers to Shahabag. It made no attempts to explain why the
government had installed the temporary toilets in Shahabag and extended to the
Shahabag youth all the other facilitates they needed to carry on with their
movement unhindered. When the GM moved
to other sites in Dhaka, the government ensured all facilities so that the
youth could carry on their movement without any hindrance. Even when it had
become palpably evident that the government had hijacked the Shahabag movement
and was using it for furthering its political agenda, the media insisted that
the youth were acting independent of any political influence. When the BNP and
the Jatiya Party took clear stands against the Shahabag movement, it reacted
just as the ruling party would. The media also set aside this palpably hand in glove
relationship between the GM and the government.
When
it was revealed in Amar Desh, one of the very few newspapers trying to explain the
GM differently; that some of the Shahabag bloggers had been posting in their
blogs against Islam and Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), the media quickly defended the
bloggers and accused the Jamat for such sacrilegious postings. The media did
not bother to check facts that would have revealed that Rajiv Haider and some
of his fellow Shahabag bloggers were reprimanded in a Dhaka court for anti-Islamic
posting on their blogs much before the Shahabag movement started. The media
figured that people would believe that Jamat had indeed posted those horrendous
and dangerous anti-Islamic postings and no questions would be asked and Jamat
would be condemned and hated even more. In fact, whenever Shahabag faulted, the
media covered their failure as if it was their own like. They thus overlooked the presence of one who has been accused for the murder of
Biswajit among the organizers of Shahabag.
Unfortunately
the Shahabag movement did not evolve the way the media expected. The anti-Islamic
postings on blogs deeply affected the sentiments of a much wider section of the
people and even among many who initially supported Shahabag whole heartedly.
The media overlooked the change in people’s spontaneous support of Shahabag
after the anti-Islamic blogs became public knowledge. It also overlooked the fact that after the
initial spontaneity, the Shahabag crowd was largely a sponsored one where the
ruling party brought the crowd, particularly the students from Dhaka’s schools
and colleges. While it was common knowledge that the ruling party had entrusted
their leaders in Dhaka’s 40 odd wards to bring people to Shahabag, there was
not a word about this in the media. A few
TV stations with links to the ruling party covered the Shahabag movement round
the clock to give the impression that the movement was exploding where in
reality it was going in the opposite direction.
The
exposure of the anti-Islamic postings was no doubt a watershed in the decline
of the Shahabag movement. People also started to ask a few pertinent questions
of their own as they began to see an eerie similarity in the agenda of the
Shahabag youth and that of the ruling party like for instance the demand for
banning the Jamat and the pointing of fingers at the BNP, instances that the
partisan media just pushed under the carpet. In fact, as soon as the BNP withdrew its
support for Shahabag, claiming it was a ruling party sponsored movement to deflect public attention from its failures
with issues of governance, Shahabag literally became a front for the ruling
party against its political opponents the BNP and the Jamat.
As
the influence of the government over Shahabag became evident, people felt sorry
for the Shahabag youth because they could have done their movement and the country
immense good if they had cared to speak on the larger malaise in the society
instead of in the end pursuing the political agenda of the ruling party. In
pursuing their partisan political agenda, the youth did so with a spirit of
vengeance where 5/6 years olds were seen chanting death to Razakars that many
thought did not give the GM the sort of positive vibe that there was in the
initial days of the movement. As people saw these changes in Shahabag, they
also realized that they had forced the government to change the laws so that
the Tribunals would have no power except to hand the accused death sentences! They
felt the government had undermined the rule of law by changing the laws to
appease the Shahabag youth.
The
dust over Shahabag is not going to settle soon.
The danger of the movement leading to the sort of catastrophe that HM
Ershad predicted cannot be ruled out. The country never saw so many deaths in
the hands of the law enforcing agencies as in the aftermath of the death
sentence imposed by the ICT on Delwar Hossain Saydee. The media blamed the
Jamat for the deaths! It did not see anything wrong in the police action that
caused the deaths. The media’s partisan
coverage of the deaths and the Shahabag movement contributed to push the country
to the edge of the precipice. The way
out of where Shahabag has pushed the nation is dialogue and negotiations among
the political parties. It is time for the media to tell the Shahabag youth that
they had their moments of glory but they have failed to capture the people’s
imagination because they too fell into the grips of the country’s partisan
politics and have played with religious sentiments dangerously. The ruling
party said it is ready to meet the BNP in any place for talks. It is the only
silver lining in the dark sky of Bangladesh.
The media should now shun the partisanship it has shown in covering
Shahabag and give the possibility of a negotiated settlement to end the crisis
facing the country, its fullest support by stopping playing politics with the country’s youth and
its future.
The
writer is a retired career Ambassador
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