A FRUSTRATED Nabarun Bhattacharya in one of his poems denied that the country he was born in that he referred to as the valley of death was his after witnessing rampant killing and bloodshed all around. Because, it no more resembled the land he had known before.
Has there been any change today to disregard the poet’s description in view of the bygone days? If not, then we cannot help being dogged by the rationality of sacrificing thousands of innocent lives, children, adolescents, workers and rickshaw-pullers, young and old, fighting against an autocracy. Could we afford to let the intent of the millions be wasted? If not, what to do now not to let the demons in guise of humans make Bangladesh gorier any more?
People have witnessed the most barbaric and unprecedented brutality perpetrated on a trader in Old Town of Dhaka a few days ago that left the victim’s body lying naked on the street and the skull smashed. The viral video footage showed that takers of life in a group of 20 or so used boulder-like stones to smash the skull even after confirming death by an uncountable number of boxing, kicking and dragging while passers-by and local people were mere onlookers.
Some members of the gang danced on the corpse in celebration of the absolute victory that gratified their infinite greed as it was reported that the discord originated from the victim’s denial to pay a fixed amount regularly as the extortionists demanded.
It is not only in Old Town, a newly-emerged pack of wolves prowls the whole country and what is an addition to the big picture is that ordinary people seemed cowed and not alarmed to the extent of raising a voice. As Arundhati Roy said: ‘There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.’ It is difficult to establish the reason for the indifference, especially in connection with a nation that succeeded in freeing the land from an overpowering autocracy only a year ago.
The issue that deters people from staging a strong protest against any crimes and come forward to help the victims, therefore, needs to be sorted out. Is it because the predators bear tags of being so and so of such and such organisation? The print and electronic media have brought out details of the human-turned-monsters, identifying their status during their accomplishment of the ‘heroic jobs.’ Simultaneously, the victims are also identified: the imam of a mosque not linked to such and such individuals, the rickshaw-puller, father of a Class VIII female student refusing marriage proposal from a district committee head of such and such organisation and the tally goes on. A good portfolio, indeed!
A section of people blame the law enforcement agencies for their inaction or not enough action in this regard while others point fingers at the top guns in the hierarchy of the administration. And, here it goes as a good game of shifting responsibilities in which every group or section manages its narratives utterly denying the distantly attached responsibility it might be linked with. This pattern of behaviour continues until one is personally victimised.
Novelist Mir Mosharraf Hossain wrote that money is the root of all misdeeds in his epic Bishad Sindhu. Today, based on the knowledge gained from media reports on various types of murders, it would not be exaggerated to note that the more the amount of money is transacted between parties in a clandestine business in the shortest possible time involved in a deal, the more heinous are the ways and means applied to settle down old grudges with one’s competitor in the possible event of losing the chance. And the extent of people’s deterrence from entering into an incident of a person under attack depends on the level of ferocity demonstrated.
Considering the masterpieces of recent murders, especially the varied nature and queer means applied like pumping air into a child’s rectum to death, chopping the victim’s limbs into dozens of neatly-cut pieces, slitting the throat and tendons and let the victims die from mere bleeding, the slaughterers standing aloft, giggling and videoing the gory death while keeping on guard that nobody comes within the spot to eventually detect and take the victim to a medical centre or somewhere for possible treatment, one might wonder if we have reached the zenith of mastering brutality.
Md Mukhlesur Rahman Akand is a joint secretary to the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry.
