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Protecting rights

Arafat Hosen Khan
IT has been almost 19 years that our country has been under a democracy. and I would like to point out a few rights which must be protected under this system. It is essential for every democratic country to maintain its democracy and to protect fundamental rights such as freedom of association and freedom of expression, which includes freedom of thought and speech for every individual.
Freedom of association is the individual s right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. The right to freedom of association has been included in a number of national constitutions and human rights instruments, including the US Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as in our Constitution by Article 38. Article 38 secures the freedom of association of citizens, upon which the very existence of democracy is dependent. The right to form associations or unions is guaranteed. subject to any reasonable restric- tions imposed by law in the interests of morality or public order.
Many social scientists argue that respect for the freedom of association by all public authorities and the exercising of this freedom by all sections of society are essential both to establish a ‘genuine democracy" and to ensure that, once achieved, it remains healthy and flourishing." In this regard, they see the formation of political parties as a significant manifestation of the freedom of association. I add in this respect, not only just formation of political parties but also having the choice of supporting the political parties without any fear.
Another very important fundamental right is freedom of expression, which includes freedom of thought and speech. Freedom of thought is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact or a viewpoint. To deny a person s freedom of thought is to deny what can be considered one's most basic freedom; to think for one's self. Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and is commonly subject to limitations, such as on "hate speech."
The right to freedom of speech is recognised as a human right under Article
19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Furthermore, freedom of speech is recognised in European, inter-American and African regional human rights laws. These rights are protected in our Constitution as well.
Freedom of expression is secured in Article 39, which provides guarantee for freedom of thought, conscience, speech and press. Restrictions on the exercise of freedom of speech and expression can be imposed by law on a number of grounds: security of the state, relations with foreign states, public order, decency, morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation, or intention to commit an offence.
How are these rights protected in our country in practice? Does this concept of rights exist at all in our everyday life?
Before giving the answer of these questions let me tell you an incident which I witnessed recently. Prior to relating the incident, it would a good idea to introduce myself in order to clear any confusion. I am a young Barrister. I finished bar in England and came back to Bangladesh with lots of energy and dreams. 1 was brought up in a very proLiberation War family as my father is a freedom fighter. I hate the war criminals and am in favour of banning the political parties that were directly involved in war crimes during the Liberation War.
On October 7. I went to Dhaka University to meet my old friends. I was having a great time with them in front of Central Library, the most happening place at Dhaka University. All of a sudden I heard a sound. I turned around and saw
that six students were beating up one student. There was blood all over the place. Everyone was shocked by the incident. There was not a single person to stop them. Later on I found out that the reason for beating up the boy was that he was a supporter of fundamentalist party. And just because he was a supporter of such a party, no one went to help him. Most of the people, except a few girls, felt it was right to beat him up.
Was that right? As we are living in a democratic country where everyone has the protected rights of freedom of association and freedom of expression through Articles 38 and 39 of our Constitution.
I am not a fan of any fundamentalist party. At the same time. I don't support the violation of someone’s fundamental human rights. In the same way, I disagree with the concept of extra-judicial killing without a fair trial, no matter how dangerous the person is.
Other than putting someone's rights or life under threat, can we just not ban or put tight restrictions on the political party when there is significant amount of public in favour of that. Banning or putting restrictions on an ideology’ that is seen as a threat to civil norms is totally acceptable.
We don’t want to see any human rights violation in our country. Instead of that we want to see a ban or restrictions on a certain so called "political party" that is having a negative effect on our society and democracy.
Arafat Hosen Khan ts a Barrister at Law