Law that does protect, not hurt, citizens
PROTECTION of the citizens is a basic function of the government. The main task of the law enforcers is, therefore, to maintain law and order so that the citizens of the state may live in peace. So, it is hardly surprising that the lawmen are forever after the criminals and various other types of anti-social elements and not the peaceful citizens. Or at least, that should ideally be the role of the law-enforcing agencies in a modern state.
But how do the lawmen distinguish between the lawbreakers and the peace-loving citizens? It often so happens that the outlaws after committing their offence melt away among the masses. And that provides the law enforcers the excuse to hold even innocent citizens in custody and interrogate them, though, to all appearances, the objective of the exercise is to arrest and punish criminals.
What has been termed an excuse to challenge or even arrest any member of the public by the police in the name of catching the law-breakers has been in the course of time made into law. And this legal provision is nothing but an arbitrary power at the lawmen's disposal. So, what happens when this power is used without much discretion?
As is so often the case, power has the tendency to be misused. And if there is no proper check and balance, the propensity becomes a common pattern.
The misuse of power by the law-enforcers is a common scene in countries that have a colonial past. That is so because the administration that a post-colonial country inherits is often pockmarked with the leftovers of old legacy. For the chief objective of the colonial masters was to use police more for harassing their subjects than for protecting them. Unsurprisingly, as the proverbial old habits die hard, so does the influence of the colonial legacy.
But does this historical analogy fit into our own context for the particular reason that we have also meanwhile gone through a bloody war of liberation long after the colonial masters had1 left us? Unfortunately, despite the war of liberation and the long span of time that passed in between, we are yet to bring about any meaningful change in the behaviour of the administration towards the citizens. Many laws of the colonial times are still in vogue, especially under the home department.
And arbitrary use of power by the police is just to mention one of the many such ghosts of the past. What is worse, even after we had wrested our freedom from the usurpers of the state through long-drawn struggles for democracy and the rights that go with it, we even added new provisions to the old laws only to increase arbitrary power of the state or its organs that look after law and order.
Meanwhile, the country and its population, in particular, has not remained static. With the growth of population, the society has become more complex and the affairs of administering it more complicated. The establishment of democracy has caused the citizens' expectation from the government to rise. But the state, or the governments that run it from time to time, finds it hard to meet people's expectations with the resources at is disposal.
Add to it the vested quarters in politics and bureaucracy that have always remained embedded in the administration to turn it to their unfair advantage. The situation only complicates matters further and the fallout manifests itself often through more public grievances leading to protests and frequent face-offs between the enforcers of law and the public.
The upshot of such developments is that the government gives more discretionary power to the lawmen to deal with social unrest and violence whatever their nature -- lawful or unlawful. Small wonder that more often than not that leads to misuse and even abuse of the power the enforcers of law are vested with.
One comes across no end of such instances of abuse of law in the shape of harassment and torture of the unsuspecting and innocent citizens, both in the public and behind bars. In recent times, the number and frequency of custodial tortures and deaths are on the rise. That amounts to nothing less than gratuitous torture and murder of citizens by the state. That is so because until it has been proved that a person has committed any wrong, the law must treat her/ him fairly. Sometimes the arrested persons are often branded as criminals before they are even tried under law to prove their offence, if any.
We cannot allow this injustice to continue in the name of rule of law for long. Some law must be in place to look into such abuse of law by those in charge of maintaining law itself.
It is against this backdrop that a lawmaker of the ruling Awami League, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, has moved a private member's bill in the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) to stop this practice. The proposed bill, which has been drafted in the spirit of the "UN convention against torture, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The convention was adopted on December 10, 1984, and Bangladesh is a signatory to it.
The bill so placed in parliament, which is now being scrutinised by the parliamentary standing committee on private members bills and resolutions, seeks not only to stop torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of the members of the public by the enforcement agencies or government officials, but also to arrange harsh punishment including life term and even suspension from service if found defaulting in this respect.
If the bill is enacted into law in its letter and spirit, the members of the law-enforcing agency or any government official found guilty of having abused their power in this manner will not be able to get away with their offence even on the pretext of exceptional circumstances or order from superior authority.
The public in general are good and law abiding. It is the few who break the law and the entire population has to pay the price. But, however desperate the situation may be, the law should not be allowed to go haywire under any circumstances. The present move by the lawmaker in question is certainly a well-conceived one to provide our criminal legal system with a better human face.
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