Editorial
This Bill is Dangerous
In tell-tale haste, the government has tabled the infamous Public Safety (Special Provision) Bill on the floor of Jatiya Sangsad. Only last Monday, the Cabinet had decided to refer the draft bill to the Law Ministry for further scrutiny willy-nilly creating an impression that this would not after all be placed before the parliament's current session. But so compelling has been the intent on the top of the party structure to get it over with that the parliament session has been lengthened beyond last Thursday whence it was supposed to have been adjourned. Never mind the opposition's absence from the JS proceedings and the avalanche of public criticism formed by the Treasury Bench's two previous attempts at bulldozing the measure through the JS, the government has decided to ruthlessly short-circuit the process to show a fang to the Opposition. This points to dubious political motivation, only to put it politely.
The timing of the presentation of the bill is suspect because it coincides with the Opposition's decision to intensify its political movement against the government. The list of offences attracting the mischief of the law in question, among other things, includes car-bashing, raising road, rail or riverine blockades, bomb-blasting and spreading terror or panic. The jail term prescribed for such activities range from 2 to 12/14 years. These offences have acquired a political connotation in the context of the opposition's agitational programmes involving rallies, processions and strikes that are also sought to be resisted by ruling party activists exacerbating, as it were, the overall level of violence and disorder. Of course, there is a mention of other crimes like mugging, extortion and tender-hijacking, but even there also who can guarantee an immunity from abuse of power when such a law has been conceived knowing full well that the existing legal instruments would have sufficed to deal with the whole lot of crimes anyhow.
These will be basically non-bailable offences triable in special tribunals within 90 days from the date that the case will have been prepared which means that the period of effective detention could be longer than three months. This 90-day period is extendable by a maximum of one month, which together with the carry-over of time taken to prepare the case itself must lengthen the overall time of detention that much more.
This is giving sweeping powers to the police. Can the Prime Minister, the Home Minister or other leaders of the government or the party guarantee that somewhere down the party hierarchy, there won't lurk a vicious plot to abuse the law for the satisfaction of someone's personal or political vendetta? Will the higher officials in the police force be able to always stand guard over misuse of the law by their subordinates? So, basically, the AL is laying a trap for itself not only in terms of the present times but also for the future because they are not putting any limit the law's duration. If and when BNP comes to power AL could well be at the receiving end of it. Even without this law the government has already set a record of detentions numbering over 5000 between July, 1996 and June, 1998. With the SPA and Section 54 giving sweeping powers to the police, much to the tainting of our human rights records, why must we go for another retrograde measure to blacken our image further?
Evidently, the AL has refused to learn from the discredited Terrorism Act of 1992 which the then ruling BNP had authored only to abandon it after two years in the face of a severe public censure. The AL government would do the country and itself a world of good if it does not press on with the law anymore.
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