Human rights shrivel amid lawlessness

Not to act commensurably amid such a diabolic plunge in anti-social activities will obviously be reflective of the regime's incompetence. And, acting even within the ambit of existing laws and regulations too at times makes disgraceful impressions of the government's human rights record. It seems an oxymoron in the context of the situation prevailing in the country.

Lawlessness had forced all past regimes to act ruthlessly in combating anti-social activities, raising at times the specter of human rights violations. In recent times-- and notwithstanding the prevalence of century-old draconian laws-- sweeping operations like 'clean heart' and the likes added indignity to the government's image at home and abroad. Yet, like or not, extra-judicial measures have become an integral part of our socio-political reality.

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While life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are taken as sacrosanct worldwide under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), such rights are stampeded by our governments--and the criminals-- as both act recklessly to push people between devil and the deep sea. People are indeed frustrated to the hilt.

July: the month of infamy

Reports indicate that the law and order situation made an eye-brow-raising spiral in July. The Bureau of Human Rights Bangladesh (BHRB) reported of 379 incidents of assassination across the country from July 1 to July 31. The Institute of Democratic Rights (IDR) claimed 337 people as killed. The Democracy Watch puts the number of killed at 344 and Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights (BSEHR) reports of 322 incidents of killing during the month. At least 12 persons got killed per day in July 2003, according to these reports.

The month also witnessed about 1,000 people facing accidental deaths, of which 600 were killed in the tragic launch capsize incident. IDR claims of about 103 women and children being victims of rape in July, of them 49 gang-raped. Odikhar catalogs of 123 rape incidents during the month while Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association recorded more than 50 child rape and 70 gang-rape instances in the same period.

A stratification (or rank-ordering) of the reports reveals that about 200 persons were killed in terrorist activities in July, which was 101 in January, 105 in February, 133 in March, 89 in April, 241 in May and 230 in June. Incidences of abduction have also increased 50 per cent in July, which, according to IDR, were 121 during the month, of which the abductors killed 21. During the last two weeks of July, miscreants killed 14 people in the Khulna region despite the operational presence of the joint task forces in the vicinity.

One also recalls how the instances of lawlessness reduced substantially following the army's arrest of 12,000 criminals during operation clean heart that began on October 16, 2002. Of the arrested, 3000 were later charged in 400 cases. The army's action being a suspect in the eyes of law due to unusual number of deaths in custody, the government had to grant indemnity to the military's actions. The post-operation indemnity proved more controversial than the operation itself.

As well, a predominant segment of the captured hooligans came out of prison through bail following army's withdrawal. Did our police force check if the same miscreants are causing more trouble now in anger and revenge-spree? Police does have a list of all branded criminals, but prefers to blame political leaders of the locality for patronising criminals upon assuming power. Time is ripe for both police and politicians to straighten their acts before it is too late to stem the tide.

Draconian laws responsible for deaths in custody

Historically, whenever things went as bad as they did in July, the government's standard response comes in a number of ways. First, sections 54 (arrest under suspicion) and 167 (interrogation under remand) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) of 1898 empower police to nab any person under suspicion and interrogate prisoners on remand. The Joint Task Force is just doing quite that now in cold blood. As well, the SPA of 1974, Anti-Terrorism Act of 1992 and the Public Safety (Special provision) Act of 2000 are all used as handy tools to nab suspected criminals without court's order.

While there are no dearth of laws and regulations to strangulate peoples' liberty at will, a Parliamentary sub committee probing discovered (and reported on September 7, 2000) that of the 69,010 persons arrested since 1974 under the SPA, 68,195 were released upon orders from the High Court Division. The SPA's bona fide and validity thus became truncated, if not redundant.

Yet, citizens of all hue are being detained and tortured by police and other forces using the same laws that contradict the constitution and the many international human rights covenants of which the government is a signatory. Besides the UN-sponsored UDHR (1948) and a number of other covenants, Bangladesh also signed and ratified the latest International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2000.

The ferocity of criminality seems so overwhelming at times that existing laws and covenants-- meant to preserve human rights-- often get brushed aside amidst sweeping arbitrariness of the uniformed forces as they're commandeered to rein in anti-social activities. And, while people undergo incarceration without charge, trial and due process, the government fondly invokes the Official Secret Act of 1923 to deny lawful rights to prisoners nabbed under suspicion.

Another ominous aspect of this 'choose and pick syndrome' is deaths in custody. The Amnesty International's 1997 report documented of 13 deaths in custody and 14 extra-judicial executions in that year alone. Years on, the number of deaths in custody remains unchanged; another 13 people having died in custody in 2001. Besides these yearly deaths in custody, operation clean heart caused dozens of such deaths in 2002. And, during the first 197 days of the AL's rule in 1996-2001, 7 prisoners died in custody while another 4 faced same consequences under the last caretaker regime. The trend rolls on unabated.

Deaths in custody occur mainly due to torture although section 162 of the CrPC explicitly prohibits confession under torture and makes such confessions inadmissible in the court of law. Section 163 too prohibits inducement, promise or threats by authority to prisoners while extracting confession. And, Sections 324-331, 334-335,339,352,355 and 358 of the Penal Code deal with protection of citizen from torture and other degrading treatment.

Constitutionality, covenants and contradictions

The contradictions in laws are so apparent and naked that the government's law commission decided to send its opinion and recommendation to amend sections 54 and 167 of the CrPC upon BNP's coming to power in 2001. And, following the filing of a writ by Bangladesh Legal Aid Services, the High court also issued on April 7, 2003 a 15-point directive to the government to affect necessary amendments to sections 54 and 167 within six months.

Ever since, the law ministry wrestled with the issue and sought the opinion of the home ministry to ascertain how the High Court's desire might be complied with. The High Court's recommendations are in tandem with the inherent contradictions between sections 54 and 167 of the CrPC on one hand, and Articles 111 and 112 of the constitution, on other. Hence, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court directed the government on August 2 to implement within six months the High Court's directives and to cease to detain people on suspicion.

The court's stand seems unmistakable, for the constitution's predominance over the other statute left sections 54 and 167 virtually indefensible for too long. Article 33 of the constitution denotes that upon a person's arrest, he/she must be informed of the grounds for detention; provided access to a legal practitioner of his/her choice; produced before a magistrate within 24 hours; and released unless the court orders further detention. Arbitrary arrests are unconstitutional from such a vantage.

Children of destiny!

Lawlessness is also linked with social conditions. 63 million people of Bangladesh are 'children of destiny' due to the abject poverty they must endure from cradle to grave. Although the instances of poverty had reportedly shrank from 1991-92 to 2000 by a creditable 9%, 80% of the country's poor still live in rural areas where employment is mostly seasonal and hard to come by.

This has led, over the century, to a thirty-fold increase in the growth of urban population (about 35 million). In contrast, population of rural areas increased only four folds (from 28.2 million to 103.1 million). The internal mass migration is a phenomenon among adult bread-earners from low- income rural families, 53% of them making the urban slums their abode of choice upon arrival in the cities in search of destiny. But, lawlessness was not a part of our lives until recent past, poverty was. Something thus seems amiss in this equation.

Despite the data on employment being often spurious and unreliable, some credible studies show that one-third of the total working age population of Bangladesh is either unemployed or underemployed. Consequently, internal and external migration has kept the unemployment rate virtually unchanged since the 1980s as the labour force grew twice that of population.

As well, the exacerbation in the instances of criminality- spree among low-income slum dwelling youths seems to be correlated with their frustration about life and the society in which they find themselves. A longitudinal study of migration in Dhaka city (Hossain et al 1999) discovered the magnitude of income disparity between slum and non-slum residents as, "The Slum dwellers earned about one third of the income of non-slum households in 1991, declining further to one fifth in 1998."

Many analysts also believe the government-run development programmes' lack of focus on the sufferings of slum dwellers is principally attributable to their resorting to wanton criminality to subsist and survive as employment of any kind eludes them constantly. With right intention and dedication, government can simultaneously act to tighten laws on one hand and rehabilitate the downtrodden on the other. That noble intent is in short supply as yet.

As well, instead of using the military to crack hard on criminals, social programmes can be devised under the military's supervision to train and prepare derailed youths for avocations they deserve. At the same time, a composite strategy needs to be adopted to combat lawlessness by investing substantially in building a modern police force to suit the need of the time.

Unless the huge army of unemployed is socially rehabilitated and the police force modernised, the relationship between human rights and criminality will remain an ever- complicated one.

Author and columnist M. Shahidul Islam is a senior assistant editor of this paper.