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STRATEGICALLY SPEAKING

Keeping safe distance
” ” know how we should take the statement of the state minister for home who has suggested that the journalists
keep a safe distance from the police while going about their professional duty. Is it an advice or a threat? If it is an advice our fear that, "advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't" comes true.
But either way it is an acknowledgement of the reality on ground that unlike what the police is thought to be in other civilised countries — as friends of the people — they have come to be regarded as one to be dreaded. And when the main law and order agency that is supposed to keep peace, comes to be feared instead of being trusted, there cannot be a more sorry portrayal of our police.
But one must thank the minister for being frank because, in the last seven days in particular, there have been at least two instances in Dhaka of highhandedness of the police against the journalists. And these journalists were only performing their professional duty. As it is, as per various reports both from home and abroad, journalists in Bangladesh have been generally subjected to direct or indirect intimidation, threat and exploitation of the legal system to subvert the freedom of the press.
The picture carried in all the news-
papers last Sunday depicting a macabre image of policemen assaulting a journalist of a leading Bangla daily in one instance says it all. And only last Tuesday several journalists suffered the same fate, assaulted by the police when they were gathering news of police assault on a teenage girl and her parents.
Given the instances of police violence perpetrated on people regardless of gender, in public and in the confines of not only police stations but also the police club, resulting in
severe injuries to these unfortunate lesser human beings, one would not be remiss to think that these keepers of the law belonged to another world. Are we living in a civilised society or what? And yet the government would dismiss the reports of Amnesty International as not reflecting the reality on ground.
One wonders why the journalists have incurred the wrath of the law enforcing agencies all of a sudden. Is it a mere coincidence or the police have become more testy of late, or that their threshold of tolerance has suddenly come down; whether this on the orders of the superiors or because of the lune
heat, one does not know.
Why is that in Bangladesh we have to encounter such situations? In a country whose people had stood up against suppression of freedom of expression to see journalists brutalised while performing their professional duty, makes one wonder whether we, as a nation, are going backwards after more than 40 years of our independence.
The media in Bangladesh have been consistently carrying commentaries and reports on the issue,
but very little has changed. As per the statistics of CPI since 1992,12 journalists have been killed whose motives have been confirmed while motive for another six murders could not be. But the guilty have not been punished as yet.
Regrettably, this phenomenon is not regime centric but straddles the rule of the two major parties in the last 20 years since 1991, a datum year, so to say, of which we pride ourselves as being the year when we saw the end of autocrats and military rule. We might have seen the end of illegal regimes, have we seen the end to repression perpetrated by the state on what is called the fourth
state... and called so not for nothing? In fact the matter has assumed very dangerous proportions.
Bob Dietz, the Asia coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, speaking recently to VOA's Bangla Service, said his group believes the policy of Bangladesh's government and the larger political culture of the country are "very antimedia." He said: "Journalists are very often threatened and there is a high degree of impunity when they are attacked."
That is certainly a very true reflection of what is obtaining in the country today as far as not only the journalists but also the general public is concerned. Unfortunately, it seems that the police and other law enforcing agencies feel above the law, a feeling brought about by a regime of impunity. Very serious breaches of the system have been glossed over by the political masters. In fact, one finds a direct relationship between one's advancement in ranks and one's ability for repressive behaviour. Unfortunately too, apart form the fact that the force has been highly politicised, the country is also paying for the sins of bad political leadership of the police.
No wonder we are asked to stay away from the police. But why is it that those who are paid by the people to protect them should ask the people to keep safe distance from them?
The writer Is Editor, Oped and Defence & Strategic Affairs, The Dally Star.