Free Saleem Samad
The government has suffered enormously in terms of prestige by locking Saleem and others up. Activists can't be bullied beyond a point anymore in today's globalised world. His media colleagues may be caught in political cross-worlds but internationally, his case has gained a lot of attention and all this is going be uncomfortable news for any government. If not today but in the future. Is it worth it?
Saleem Samad is in jail and there is less and less interest every day in the fate of this journalist. As if he is being slowly erased from the blackboard of concerns of our mind. Amongst the lot arrested, he was the lesser known barring Pricilla Raj who has mercifully been released. Saleem doesn't qualify for headlines but only for jails it seems.
Having gone through a remand where he was reportedly physically abused, the authorities will surely know all there is to know regarding what he may have done. And I would like to ask what crime he has committed worth even the time he has already spent inside. The conspiracy charges made against him are vague and in fact in his role he had no scope to do anything. Yes, he was against the Islamic fundamentalist forces but that is not a crime no matter how far the legal boundaries are stretched. Are people taking advantage of a man who stands fairly alone in his own land?
With the release of the Channel 4 team, the moral foundations of keeping Saleem Samad inside has evaporated. Bail was in fact granted to Saleem Samad but before he was released, a detention order was given and he remains within the walls. Apparently this is preventive detention. But in 30 years of professional life, what has he done that can threaten the State?
Saleem has broken stories on the CHT insurgency for the New Nation and even after visiting Shanti Bahini camps and describing their everyday life he was not touched. Had he been dangerous he would have been taken in.
That Saleem was harmless is known to all. He may be irritating to some, insufferable to a few but harmful to none. Let anyone in the profession come forward and say otherwise and with proof.
I am not part of media trade unionism but know that they are split along political lines and the present pro-BNP strand has remained silent on his release. The pro-AL group has made some efforts but nothing sustained. The reasons are obvious, he is not their man. The irony of it all is that Saleem Samad has never been pro-Awami League. If anything his friends are with the radical sections of JSD of whom many are with the government today. His friends of many years are also with the authorities but they have chosen to remain silent. The only ones active on his behalf are friends who have no clout and can only plead without applying pressure.
The journalists who are close to the decision-makers and know Saleem well should speak for him if only because many of them claim to have once supported Moulana Bhashani. Surely the great Moulana would have not asked his followers to accept the jail of an innocent just to be safe and comfortable. I say that this applies to all those who are now Editors and big guns in media and the establishment.
I have been told that Saleem's computer has shown that he had advised the Channel 4 team to seek visa as tourists. It could well be true but he should be charged and tried rather than kept inside for some unknown crime he may have committed. And he could hardly do much now that the Channel 4 team has gone home as a beneficiary of official munificence.
That leaves the role of Saleem Samad as a representative of Reporters Sans Frontiers in which capacity he had kept watch on the fate of beleaguered and journalists in stress or danger as a cause for internment. But by keeping him inside the government is exposing itself to the very charges it wishes to deny.
The reason we have a right to speak on this subject is because this is in the end our country as well, no matter how more privileged other sectors or institutions are. In the last thirty years we have learnt that our society has become a strangely caste driven land with iron cast social, political and economic entitlements, a caste system drawn not by religious or mythical dogma but that of power and control. We don't seek as much leeway as the powerful, the weaponed or the rich or the privileged or any such higher castes can command as a matter of entitlement. We seek much less freedom from internment without cause- in the land for which Saleem Samad and others fought to free.
All we want is some space, outside the jail, to contemplate our possible innocence or potential crime before we are termed guilty by some unknown configuration.
Saleem has not been found guilty. But Saleem may not be supported by political parties or powerful sections of society who matter in this cause. Yet without being proven guilty he is made to suffer and we suffer with him in that. In the world without Moulana Bhashani, we are having to be more scared than before. Some have already lost the power to demand and only appeal in weak voices.
But Bangladesh's unique history is full of strange turnarounds, of sudden emergence of situations as befitting an unconstructed political world. In this ad-hoc world of legal mercies, we too wish that Saleem Samad be allowed to leave because he can commit no crime given the world he lives in, given the constraints within which we operate, given the liberties others enjoy.
The government has suffered enormously in terms of prestige by locking Saleem and others up. Activists can't be bullied beyond a point anymore in today's globalised world. His media colleagues may be caught in political cross-worlds but internationally, his case has gained a lot of attention and all this is going be uncomfortable news for any government. If not today but in the future. Is it worth it?
I have tried to be as humble as possible because this is the humble season and in the spirit of things make a humble appeal for Saleem's freedom.
Moulana Bhashni may have mystified his supporters every now and then with his actions but looking back, he seemed to have read history better than all. And he never advised locking up people in jails especially from the media. There are many supporters of that man inside this government. Perhaps they will ponder and link that position of Bhashani with the need to free Saleem Samad.
<>i>Afsan Chowdhury is the Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily Star
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments