Attacks on journalists and activists – but why?

"At one stage, some policemen started shouting, saying the journalist is taking footage of us, catch him. Within a moment, around 15 to 20 policemen swooped on me and started beating me up," says Abdul Alim, a journalist who was covering the strike by anti-Rampal protestors yesterday. By now, everyone who has a conscience and believes in basic human rights, would know of and be disgusted by the brutality that the police showed towards unarmed protestors on Friday. Besides the tear gas, water cannons and baton charges, the physical brutality of the disproportionate response by the police was seen in the pictures that circulated on social media.

Alim was beaten up because he tried to document how the police were beating up an activist inside the police station. His colleague, Ishan Bin Didar was beaten up because he tried to intervene. Another journalist from Dhaka Tribune was also assaulted in the anti-Rampal protests in Mirpur in the same day.

The police's brutal assault on the activists and journalists begs the question, what called for this extreme use of force? From when does it take a group of fully armoured policemen to restrain (assuming there was a need to restrain) one unarmed civilian? Even if one play's the devil's advocate, the most that can be argued is that the police could take precautionary measures to enforce safety and prevent violence. Except, what we saw yesterday, and countless times before (remember the garment workers?) is a police force that does not care for basic human rights, to put it mildly.

There are two issues that are extremely worrying: one, that the police force feels no hesitancy to crack down ruthlessly on unarmed citizens, begging questions of impunity and accountability. And secondly, the attack on journalists, which is by any consideration an attempt to choke the freedom of the press.

Protestors who are against the construction of Rampal are doing so due to their concern for the Sundarban. They were not violent, or armed, or in any way a threat to public safety. Their only fault has been to stand by their convictions and demand from the government through a public gathering - a right which is at the core of a democracy. The journalists were there to document what was happening; their fault was to stand by their duty to report the truth of the matter. It is deplorable that the police, with virtual impunity, can get away with using disproportionate force on these people. Does it not run counter the very ideas that we hold dear: freedom of speech, freedom of the press and of course, basic human rights.

In the light of the police's demand for scrapping the law against custodial torture on January 24, we must ask, what are the police actually there for? For enforcing the law and upholding rights, or to be a force to be used against the people they are supposed to protect?

The writer is a member of the editorial team, The Daily Star