Spare us the hypocrisy
Those who are familiar with my writing know that I am not a big fan of bureaucracy, either civil or military. Although I recognise the advantages of comprehensive systemic checks and balances for prudent decision-making, I believe the system primarily depends on institutional memory. Any incoming officer with idealist vision and indomitable passion to change the system soon learns that conformity and compliance are the rules of the game. They become a cog in the wheel, repeating what they are supposed to do.
In one series of Asterix, there is a satirical depiction of a young Roman officer who gets surprised that his colleagues are better off documenting everything in triplicate on stone tablets rather than going to fight. As a young soldier, he is dying to meet and kill his enemies. However, once battered, he simply picks up his chisel and begins writing reports in stone. The Roman centurion in Asterix in Spain experiences a harsh reality. The Romans taught the British. The British taught the use of carbon papers in typewriters to do the triplicates. Today, a digital CC is enough. And bureaucracy has not changed much.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Interestingly, I am writing this piece while sitting in what was once considered to be the Western tip of the world: A Coruna in Spain. The Galician flag represents the westernmost trading port with a setting sun. The Romans called the tip of the Iberian peninsula Cape Finisterre, to denote "finis terrae" (End of the Earth). Hence, Julius Caesar thought it important to build a lighthouse, named after Hercules, on the shore of the North Atlantic, thinking this was the place where the world ends. The belief was so strong that one of Jesus Christ's apostles, St James, wanted to be buried here, which led to the construction of Santiago de Compostela. His disciples brought his remains from Jerusalem, and later, in the ninth century, they built a cathedral in his honour. But it is also from Spain; Christopher Columbus dared to cross the Atlantic Ocean to open new frontiers for the West.
So here I am sitting in Spain, at the juncture of the end of the old world and the beginning of the new world. Here, I am surfing the internet to get news from home. This investigative report by DW on our military personnel who serve in the UN Peace Corps is available. The gist of the report is pretty straightforward: some of the military soldiers participating in these missions in various conflict-ridden territories around the world were allegedly involved in extrajudicial killings while they were serving in the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab). DW sought a comment from the UN to verify the allegations, but the international bureaucratic organisation responded by stating that it was not feasible for them to conduct a background check on every member of their troops involved. The DW report was fuming at the idea that Bangladesh earned $4.5 billion from its military personnel who might have been guilty of human rights violations.
At the height of political arson and anarchy that engulfed the country, Rab came into existence. Crossfire became a buzzword, and every day our national news parroted the same old narrative of killing in self-defence. I asked one of my army friends why they used the same narrative every time there is a crossfire. He replied candidly that their legal team had suggested it. Their plights bear a striking resemblance to those of the Roman soldier in Asterix: documentation precedes action. But facts remain: Rab's intervention helped us get out of a dark phase of a national crisis. Indeed, there are allegations of institutional and individual abuses of power, such as the contract killings by individual officers in Narayanganj. There are reports of the forced disappearance of political activists. Another DW report stemmed from the flow of such missing individuals.
However, DW's attempt to act as the moral police from a Western perspective leaves me wondering: are you overlooking the broader picture? I understand the burden of guilt with which Germany treads the Holocaust memory carefully. But how can you discuss human rights violations when you have nothing to say about 40,000 dead in Gaza? How do you respond to soldiers killing 45 refugees in a refugee shelter in Rafah, a father clutching his daughter's decapitated body against an inferno, or when 600 inmates perish by 2,000-pound bombs? At a time when the world is witnessing genocide, which will eventually need a UN intervention, you criticise a country that supplies soldiers for the most difficult areas where your own soldiers do not want to go? You criticise a government that earns its salaries through hard work in hazardous conditions. They are not your e-genies, trading in cryptocurrencies to make billions. Haven't you heard about what the British soldiers or the Americans have done in Kenya or Iraq? You must pick Bangladesh to prove your moral superiority. Seriously?
Human rights violations are a universal phenomenon. I find it problematic when individuals selectively promote certain ideas with the intention of harming a country's reputation and economy. A single accident at a garment factory can trigger—and rightly—a flurry of compliance issues. But as our entrepreneurs will tell you, our Western buyers will not give them any extra cent for the investments the factories are making in improving their working conditions. They will shove tons and tons of bureaucratic certificates at you to force you to comply. In the end, they will see their own benefits.
I am not a big fan of bureaucracy. I chose academia because I could distance myself from it. At a time when the International Court of Justice faces daily defamation and neglect by the West—the same West which has reached its nadir, revealing its hypocrisies daily—we require visionary global leaders who can defy the established hierarchy and devise a solution to protect human rights across the board. Change must come from the centre. If you fail to do so, there will be new centres to form new circles.
As I sit here at the intersection of the West, I begin to envision a future free from hypocrisy.
Dr Shamsad Mortuza is professor of English at Dhaka University.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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