Walk the talk …

We have an uncanny genius to state the obvious and the commonplace. The latest example of this trait is typified by a facile labeling of the latest incidence of hackings to death. We are phrasing them as being 'targeted', 'premeditated', executed by 'expert' killers and aimed to embarrass the government and create instability in the country. When it is clear to even a layman that the murders had been premeditated, charted along the movement pattern of the targeted and carried out in broad daylight for maximum shock effect, why stress the obvious over and over again if not to divert attention away from the slow motion handling of the cases?

What the citizens are interested in is not any stock, bland description of the incidents or speculative theorisations but whether any headway has been made in resolving the cases or any culprit apprehended.

Now is the time for action – on two levels: One, zeroing in on the real culprits and their masterminds and putting them through speedy trials leading to exemplary convictions. Wishful thinking it may be, given the track record of unsolved murder cases when, at the time of occurrence, they would have appeared imminently solvable. But enough is enough, we have to fix our back on the deteriorating trend or else we are looking to a transition, from individuals being terror targets to public places coming under attack. Something of an echo from 2005 when countrywide bomb blasts were orchestrated by the since-outlawed JMB.

The investigators should neither be unduly distracted by political noises nor play to any copybook style setting the sail to the wind that is blowing. Casting the net far and wide in a manhunt will betray a lack of focus apart from causing unnecessary suffering to the innocents.

The second critical element in the fight against individualised terror attacks has been pointed out by former Inspector General of Police and The Daily Star columnist Nurul Huda in terms of intelligence surveillance deficits. Although he does not take the view of a wholesale deterioration in law and order, he is quite sharply of the opinion that had there been advance information secured through timely human intelligence, the latest killings could have been averted. Few would disagree with him. Deficiencies in intelligence networking are nearly in a primitive state when other nations are retooling their capacities by putting money where their mouth is.

Our law enforcers have busted terror networks, executed extremists, outlawed many an outfit, and unearthed caches of weapons and still they keep reincarnating and hacking people to death on religious and cultural grounds.

That said, we need to address the root cause of the killing phenomenon, based on hatred of ideas or beliefs, otherwise we will be beating about the bush as the predators prowl nearby. The paramount question is: Why must ideas be put to sword and not debated with superior arguments to win over each other and in the process gain intellectual ground with the people? While those who exercise the rights to freedom of expression are not killing their dissenters to death, the latter is exactly doing the opposite, finishing them off zealously. Now the fanatical killers have somehow come to believe that they have a tacit approval of their vile designs from some quarters. This provides them with an oxygen of support and consequent free rein to be melting into the dense population after their dastardly crimes. The equivocation about one-sided fanaticism is clearly dangerous and unmerited when one set of indoctrinated or money-fed people are killing those of the other set which is nonviolent.

Let's read into what the UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Robert D. Watkins has said lately, 'Intolerance-related violence is increasing in Bangladesh and targeting a growing range of people whose views may not conform with those of the majority.' That tolerance of other's views or ways of thinking is diminishing and the number of individuals coming under attack is increasing is a phenomenon not confined to Bangladesh alone but surely it is an anathema to age-old socio-religious harmony in Bangladesh. More to the point, it is not the majority which is reacting to contrary views of others, rather it is the signature of the fanatical fringe on a self-professed killing mission.

'Twisted minds – of evil men who used the mask of religion as an excuse for some of the most horrifying crimes in history,' reminded Joseph Conard in 1911.

The writer is Associate Editor, The Daily Star.