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The disappeared ones, when will they reappear?

Reaz Ahmad
THERE has been a growing concern over people disappearing in Bangladesh in recent months. Such incidents of mysterious disappearances, gradually in higher frequencies, have cast a chill over the general citizenry.
Of course, these are the occasions when parties on both sides of Bangladesh's political divide are perennially known to have never missed out any opportunities to score over each other. The tirades of the blame games are very much on as general members of the public continue to wonder what happened to all those missing souls.
Statistics are staggering. Local rights group Ain-0-Salish Kendra (ASK) reckons that at least 22 people have disappeared this year while another rights body, Odhikar, says more than 50 people have disappeared since 2010. Odhikar and ASK in their reports largely blame police, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and intelligence agencies for the disappearances.
There may be debates over the "disappearance" and "missing" figures. Politicians have all the solace and justifications that they get by showing comparative statistics --a typical tendency of proving one regime more tyrannical over the other and vice versa. But for us, the ordinary members of this republic, this has never been and nor is today a mere number game. Every life is precious and not to be wasted.
It does not really make much difference if the figure is 30 instead of 20 or 40 rather than 50. It's just a question of intensity. But the phenomenon of people disappearing remains as dreadful as ever for every family that lost someone from its midst.
In recent weeks, the concern over people disappeaing also grabbed world attentions with different global rights bodies also raising the alarm bells for holding proper probes in each of these mysterious cases of disappearances.
The New York-based Human RightsWatch (HRW) and London-based Amnesty International (AI) expressed concerns both over the incidents of disappearances as well as the subsequent casualties caused during opposition-sponsored nationwide shutdowns to protest disappearance of a BNP leader and his driver recendy.
Security agencies including the elite anti-crime force Rab have been blamed for many disappearances, but the agencies deny the allegations. Even weeks before the BNP Sylhet unit chief and ex-student leader Ilias Ali went missing, at least two other activists of the BNP-supported student body -- JCD — from Sylhet region apparendy disappeared from Dhaka as they came to the capital to seek bail in a case. Though the families concerned pointed fingers at law enforcers, the later categorically put out disclaimers.
HRW noted the rise in disappearances, particularly of opposition members and activists, required a credible and independent investigation and added that the government had taken no serious steps to ensure such an investigation of these disappearances, or to prevent them in the first place. It said it has long documented abductions and killings by Bangladeshi security forces, especially by the Rab, which has earned praise because of its fight against some radical Islamic groups in recent years.
Amnesty was particularly critical of the government's stance of ordering probe on one hand and passing remarks on the other that potentially jeopardise the prospect of a fair probe.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called on police to investigate the disappearance of Ilias Ali and his driver. Paradoxically, she also stated that the two men chose to go into hiding to "create an issue." "Why did the prime minister order an inquiry, but then claim she knows what has happened? Any inquiry will be credible only if it is independent and free from police and political involvement — otherwise it risks simply toeing the police line," an Amnesty official noted.
What appears to be more mind-boggling is our law enforcers' poor success rate in tracking down the disappeared ones — dead or alive. Had they been able to solve the "missing" riddles and get back at least a few of those who were missing, it would work as a confidence-booster. People would have at least understood that there was hope.
Except a couple of cases where the ones who had disappeared have got back to their people, the overwhelming majority (of disappeared persons) still remained untraced in recent weeks. This phenomenon has largely contributed in eroding public confidence on the ability, sincerity, and political will of the authorities concerned, on whom people generally tend to keep faith.
Newspaper reports have it all -- how every other day a mutilated body is being recovered from places like dustbins in Chittagong to the shores of Buriganga. In many of the cases such bodies of poor souls with missing limbs and in decomposed state are being buried without anyone knowing their identities.
This is really a very unfortunate situation, with families losing their dear ones on one hand, and bodies of unidentified people being recovered and buried traceless on the other. Here, what is missing is the capacity to act fast after every case of disappearance and tracking them down before they perish.
We don't want our state apparatus to fail in solving the current spate of "disappearance" and "enforced disappearance" riddles. If the state fails, we'll also fail collectively in preserving our rights to existence, not to speak of other basic human rights. Then we'll have only the almighty god to seek succor from for reappearance of the disappeared ones.
The writer is a news editor of The Daily Star. E-mail: reazahmad@yahoo.com