Twelve people have so far been arrested in the wake of three days of riots in Dhaka which left two people dead and hundreds injured and also resulted in a ten-storey factory building being set on fire. The rioters were primarily workers in the garment industry protesting over low pay and poor working conditions. Garment workers in Bangladesh currently earn as little as 950 Bangladeshi taka a month. This is equivalent to under $14.
The situation has been brewing for months, and has not been helped by a recent decision by the government of Bangladesh to omit the garments industry in its recent stimulus package. Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said that this was a particularly dangerous oversight, as spinning is one of those industries hardest hit by the current recession.
The riots occurred in Ashulia, in the industrial Savar district in Dhaka. On Thursday, Chairperson of the Garment Workers Unity Forum Moshrefa Mishu told a press conference that the riots began as a peaceful protest regarding wages. The protests turned violent when members of the district's Ansar paramilitary police used repressive measures to end the protest, firing into the crowd. These tactics resulted in the death of one protester and sparked the ensuing riots.
It was on Monday, after the death of a second protester, that the rioters set fire to a factory building owned by the Hameem group, as well as the Hameem group's main offices. The ground and first floors of the factory were completely gutted by the blaze.
Superintendent of Police for Dhaka Md Iqbal Bahar has described the arson attack as a subversive act. Speaking on Thursday, Savar police chief Monowar Hossain said that the arrest drive will go on. Other security sources have hinted that terrorist groups are behind the unrest. The truth is far simpler. As one expatriate NGO worker advocating for more robust labour laws commented privately, "The Chairman of the BGMEA will tell you, over a couple of scotches, how much he loves his country. He loves his country because last year he made $50 million. But they won't guarantee to pay their workers a minimum $20 a month."
Bangladesh pledges to implement CHT Treaty
On Thursday, Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, Deputy Leader of the Bangladesh Parliament, said that the Awami League would honour its election manifesto commitment to implement the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord. She was speaking at a preparatory meeting of the national committee on implementation of the CHT Peace Agreement, which she heads.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts are a strategically critical sliver of territory in Bangladesh's southeast, bordering Burma and the Indian states of Tripura and Mizoram. They are inhabited by eleven of Bangladesh's 45 recognised indigenous or adivasi communities. In response to repression by firstly West Pakistani and then Bangladeshi governments, the Hill Tract adivasi, also referred to as the Jumma peoples, waged a guerilla war led by the CHT's dominant political party, the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS) and its military wing, the Shanti Bahini.
The 1997 CHT Peace Accord, signed between then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the JSS President Shantu Larma, brought to an end decades of guerrilla war. At the same time, due to the failure of the Awai League to implement the treaty, it produced an uneasy peace. Under the subsequent regimes of the BNP and the military-backed caretaker government, human rights abuses of the indigenous people were common place. Today, extra-judicial killing, custodial torture, and arbitrary arrest continue.
On Wednesday, the PCJSS reported that an innocent adivasi youth had been murdered by the army in Rangamati, the central Hill District. Reasons for the extra-judicial killing are reported to vary, with three separate stories having been circulated by army sources. PCJSS sources report that the recovered body bore several wounds and bruises consistent with the use of torture.
National Human Rights Commission Law to be passed
Suranjit Sengupta, the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on law, justice and parliamentary affairs ministry, said on Friday that the Bangladesh Parliament will pass an ordinance before 9 July that will empower the nascent Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission with judicial powers to confront human rights abuses. Speaking at a seminar held at the Hotel Sheraton, the chairman said that the NHRC will also be assigned district divisions to report and investigate human rights abuses.
This statement will allay severe concerns on the part of both civil society actors and international donor agencies that the NHRC would be a "paper tiger", deprived of any real powers. For months, its three members have been without a staff, and without any means to pursue their stated remit. The ordinance had been due to be passed during the last Parliamentary session, but was postponed for reasons that were never made clear.
JMB splinter group leaders captured
Between 28 June and 30 June, members of Bangladesh's Special Branch (SB) arrested both members of the extremist Islamist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and leaders of a recently formed JMB splinter group "Islam and Muslim". The arrests spanned a geographical area from Gazipur in central Bangladesh to Rajshahi in the country's northwest. Those captured include the Baghmara district JMB commander Jalaluddin and Islam and Muslim's chief, Abdur Rahim.