An encounter with violence

Suddenly I found the motor cyclist coming up to the rickshaw-puller and started abusing him in very filthy language. I was surprised because I had not noticed any collision between the rickshaw and the motor cycle. The rickshaw was being pulled at a leisurely pace. Immediately I sensed some thing was wrong. As abuses were being hurled at the silent rickshaw-puller who to my knowledge had done nothing to merit such abuses I politely requested the abuser to let him go. He then put a hand on my knee and asked: Uncle, what do you do? I replied that after my retirement a few years back I was not doing any thing worthwhile. He then told me that he had a gun and unless I paid him five hundred taka he would shoot me and no one would come to my rescue. I silently agreed with his assessment of the situation and brought out my purse to give him five hundred taka (I had few hundred takas in my purse). But he suddenly snatched the purse from me and started to walk back to his motor cycle. When I requested him to give the purse back as it contained some important papers he abused me in filthy language and drove away. Before he left he shouted at me and told me that he was known as "Munna of Dhanmondi" (as if I should have known of him or perhaps I should have). As I had no money left I told the rickshaw-puller to take me home so that I could pay him his fare.

Murder, mugging, dacoity, snatching of purse is every day affair in Dhaka. Yet I was surprised that it had occurred not at the dead of night but in broad day light; not in a dark alley but in the open in posh (!) Dhanmondi area; not at a lonely spot but in the presence of other people. I had thought of reporting the matter to the police but decided against it as they must be busy solving graver crimes than the one I was the victim of. Besides, a few months back several cars in our apartment complex had been burglarised which was immediately reported to the police who came to the crime scene for investigation. Till today I am not aware of any result from the investigation. All affected car owners have forgotten the incident by now. I still do not know whether I was an accidental victim or an intended victim of the mugging incident. Compared to the reports carried by our newspapers every day on law and order situation my ill-fated meeting with the mugger and consequent loss of money and papers would only add to the burgeoning statistics on crime already available with our law enforcing agencies. Yet it does leave one with a nagging thought as to what one should do to feel secure, unmolested, and unthreatened.

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An interesting tabulation has been compiled containing comparison of human security definitions given by eminent persons where the referent object is the individual. Kofi Annan has put the following key values constituting human security where "economic development, social justice, environmental protection, democratisation, disarmament, and respect for human rights and human values" are present. In his view agents of insecurity can be both the state and individual and the nature of threats can be in the form of repression, gross abuse of human rights, international terrorism, etc. Sadako Ogata (formerly of the UNHCR) is of the opinion that an individual may feel threatened politically, economically, militarily, socially, and environmentally by states, individuals and rebels as agents of insecurity. Insurance of individual security, according to Ogata, will depend on the capacity of states and citizens to prevent and resolve conflicts through peaceful and non-violent means, and the ability of the individual to enjoy without discrimination his rights and obligations that belonging to a state implies. She puts emphasis on social inclusion of the people or the people having equal access to the political, economic and social policy making process as well as to draw equal benefits from them.

UNDP puts key values on an individual's freedom from fear and want. Apart from preventing the individual from falling into the trap of poverty and hunger the state must shelter the individual from physical violence, crime, oppression, torture, discriminations, and human rights violations. Among G-8 countries Canada and Japan may be cited as examples of countries who value human security very highly. Canada puts key value on individual freedom from "pervasive threats to peoples' rights, their safety and their lives". Canada believes that individual security may be threatened by state failure, transnational crimes, religious and ethnic discord and conflict, state repression, violent crimes, terrorism etc. Japan, like UNDP, puts key value on freedom from fear and want and also emphasises the need for maintaining human dignity.

The question often debated is what to do with a government which fails to provide security in all its aspects to its citizens. Political scientists have devised over time constitutional means of redress. In parliamentary system one can take the recourse of no-confidence motion against the government. But then provision preventing floor crossing by members of parliament to vote their conscience, if needed, makes recourse to no-confidence motions academic. In the entire history of the United States, the epitome of Presidential system and division of power among three organs of the government, not a single President has so far been impeached out of power. If Nixon had not resigned following Watergate history could have been different. The recent California recall vote ousting Davis from the post of Governor and electing Arnold Schwarzenegger in his place is an exception because in the entire history of the US. Davis is only the second Governor to be fired by the people for incompetence.

How should then the citizens ensure individual security? British philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that since human life in the "state of nature" is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"; people should seek security by entering into a contract in which individual power is yielded to a sovereign who regulates conduct. But if the sovereign fails to provide security, Hobbes argues, the sovereign may be overthrown by the people who will then enter into a new contract. But the process of change may differ. French Revolution was bloody followed by the Reign of Terror. In recent times Presidents Marcos and Estrada were thrown out of power by "people's power". These days Georgians are clamouring for the resignation of Edward Shrevardnadze from the Presidency. Alberto Fuji Moro had to flee Peru to escape people's wrath.

US President Ulysses Grant accepted the right of revolution as an inherent one. "When people are oppressed by their government" Grant wrote in his Personal Memoirs, "it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, whether by withdrawing from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting it by a more acceptable one". American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT in 1849 in which he asserted that publicly disobeying the laws of an unjust government would encourage and bring other people to oppose that government's actions. Thoreau feared that the government itself, which was the only mode the people had chosen to execute their will, was liable to be abused and perverted before the people could take corrective measures. Thoreau wrote that the majority chosen by the people was permitted to rule "not because they are most likely to be in the right, not because this seems to be fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest". He questioned the rationale of the citizens to "resign his conscience to the legislator since every man has a conscience…

I think that we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right".

Though Thoreau's beliefs might have had influenced the non-cooperation movement of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, in a civilised world respect for the laws is essential if the people are to live in peace and achieve progress. Besides, Mahatma Gandhi's non-cooperation was against the British colonial rule and that of Martin Luther King was against racism in America. One must also be cautioned that Thoreau was not nihilistic which repudiates all positive values and believes in nothing. Nor Thoreau is to be confused as an iconoclast. His total disagreement with the US government of the day was over the Mexican War (1846-48) which he saw as an attempt to extend slavery to the western United States. Yet Thoreau's philosophy could find relevance in some places of the present day world where the people are oppressed to the point because of government's inability to deliver that they may find themselves forced to take measures which otherwise they would never contemplate to take. Jon Roland (Principles of Tyranny) finds the only security from tyranny is to maintain a framework of unbroken accountability of the government to the people providing for elections and guarding against concentration of power in the hands of the few. Lord Acton's proverbial observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is a transcendental truth applicable in all ages.

In the sub-continent both the Indian and Pakistani Supreme Courts (albeit in different cases) judged that the enumeration of fundamental rights in the Constitution was aimed at putting these rights beyond the violative actions of both the executive and the legislature. The possibility of tyranny of the majority, originally conceptualised by Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America1835) revolved round the premise that once rapacious and arbitrary powers are arrogated by despots/oligarchs they may not have reasons to concern themselves with the welfare of the many. Since democracy per se does not eliminate the problem of tyranny, it may become necessary to call for account from the government with religious regularity establishing the practice into an unshakeable normative tradition along with the creation of pro-active "counter-majoritarian" institutions.

Since political authority is transient by nature in a true democracy the majority could be well advised to listen to differing opinions from within its ranks without branding them as "traitors/conspirators" and also to the criticism by the opposition. Since we no longer live in discreet national communities but in "overlapping community of fate" and since the neo-cons are ever ready to pounce upon "non-conformist" states which they consider as posing even remote threat to Western security, smaller countries should abandon intra-majority-minority confrontational politics regressing the pace of socio-economic development of the people, and where necessary make room for another group, more capable and acceptable to the people to govern.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is former Secretary and Ambassador