Law letter
Calling Hartal: Double standards and lawlessness
THE right to call a general strike (hartal) and to advocate on its behalf is a fundamental one that cannot and should not be abridged in a free society of laws. Forcing, threatening, intimidating others to join in the said general strike is, however, a different matter altogether. For the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to call the hartal is fine and dandy; for it to 'enforce' it is criminal. Sadly, the government of the day has little credibility on the issue as the ruling Awami League's (AL) record of 'enforcing' violent hartals is no different from that of the current Opposition. In a rare moment of candor, one of the AL's own presidium members admitted that it was wrong of his party to act in the way it did in forcing hartals upon people during its stint in the opposition. I suspect the gentleman's tune will change very quickly once his party is in the opposition again.
Yes, when it comes to hartals, the body politic in Bangladesh is steeped neck deep in sheer hypocrisy. Both major parties oppose hartal when in power and support when in opposition. Major businessmen oppose it in principle but pour millions of takas in the coffers of parties whose vandal 'activists' routinely use hartals to assault innocent people and burn property. Intellectuals bemoan the violence of hartals but are too cowardly to confront their party patrons to reign in their activists. Newspaper editors write lengthy editorials about loss of life and property but dare not make a firm statement that tells the blunt truth: forcing someone to follow a hartal call is as undemocratic, criminal and illiberal as it can get.
Enforcing hartals is about cowardice. If the hartal callers truly believed that the people were for them, they would have no need to send out thugs to force people. And those pickets are exactly that, thugs, no matter what kind of euphemisms like activists, workers, student leaders, and youths we use for them. It does not take a sophisticated pollster to realize that a vast majority of ordinary Bangladeshis are sick and tired of hartals and its twin, 'student politics'. Such politics of agitation cost lives and keep us back from progress in education, business, and industry. It seems the aging intellectual class of the country remains ossified in its 20th century mindset of street politics and hence unable to come to terms with the idea that individual rights matter, even when those rights are being violated by someone other than the government of the day.
This is the twenty first century where dormitory brawls and violent picketing have no place in a modern democratic republic. It would appear that the intellectuals and major political party leaders of Bangladesh simply do not belong to this century. The sooner they go into professional retirement the better it would be. A hartal culture is not going to get us to being an Asian tiger or whatever the new watchword is for rapid progress.
Esam Sohail, MA, MBA
Educational research analyst
Kansas, USA
