[Over the last week,
Bangladesh’s two main political leaders have
edged back from the confrontation that paralyzed the country starting in
January, when the opposition leader Khaleda Zia began a campaign of political
strikes and transport blockades, hoping to force her rival, Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, to call new national elections. Since then, more than 100 people
have been killed in firebombings, and dozens of B.N.P. officials and activists
arrested.]
By Ellen Barry
 |
|
Khaleda Zia, the Bangladeshi opposition
leader, before her court appearance
on Sunday in Dhaka.
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — A jittery silence has fallen over the street where Salahuddin
Ahmed, a top official of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is
believed to have been abducted a month ago.
The caretaker who
opened the compound gate to a group of men, and told several journalists they identified
themselves as police detectives, can no longer be found, friends on the street
say. Neither can the maid who opened the door to the apartment. The owner of
the apartment, the deputy managing director of a bank, is also unreachable.
“Of course,
something happened, but each and every one prefers to be silent,” said
Mozammel, a guard at the building next door. A man who emerged from the
building urged reporters to stop asking about Mr. Ahmed, which he said put the
neighbors in danger. “Everyone is fear,” he said in broken English, refusing to
give his name. “You, also, are being observed at this moment.”
Over the last week,
Bangladesh’s two main political leaders have
edged back from the confrontation that paralyzed the country starting in
January, when the opposition leader Khaleda Zia began a campaign of political
strikes and transport blockades, hoping to force her rival, Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, to call new national elections. Since then, more than 100 people
have been killed in firebombings, and dozens of B.N.P. officials and activists
arrested.
The tension seemed
to abate on Sunday, when Mrs. Zia, head of the B.N.P., surrendered to a court
in two graft cases, something that she had previously refused to do. The court
then granted Mrs. Zia bail rather than ordering her arrest. Mrs. Zia has instructed
candidates from her party to compete in city elections in late April, evidently
acknowledging that the protest campaign has run its course.
But it will not be
easy or straightforward to exit the crisis. One reason is Mr. Ahmed’s March 10
disappearance, which his family members, and party leaders, say they are
certain was carried out by security forces.
For years, domestic
and international rights organizations have documented abductions and
extrajudicial killings and torture by Bangladeshi security forces, including
the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite counterterrorism squad that receives
training in internal disciplinary protocol from the United States government.
The disappearance
of Mr. Ahmed, who had a high-profile role as party spokesman, has been
unsettling for many, said Mahfuz Anam, editor of The Daily Star, a newspaper
based in Dhaka.
“The state of the
matter is that he has disappeared, and nobody is taking responsibility,” he
said. “To me, this is a very fearful situation. Anybody can be picked up in the
dead of night and then the government can say, ‘We have no idea.’”
Several witnesses
told journalists that law enforcement officers were present on the street where
Mr. Ahmed was staying on March 10, but the most important witnesses — including
the caretaker, Akhter Ali — subsequently fell out of contact or gave
contradictory evidence.
Two people present
on the street that night, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that
they had seen three or four vehicles, including one from the Rapid Action
Battalion, parked in front of the house. Rebeka Sultana, whose husband was Mr.
Ahmed’s driver, said her husband had been detained in the pre-dawn hours by
armed men in civilian clothes two days before Mr. Ahmed disappeared, then
jailed in a nearby police station. The driver remains in custody.
At a court hearing
that ended Thursday, a government lawyer testified that Mr. Ahmed had not been
detained by any state security forces and that efforts to find him have failed.
The police have suggested he may have voluntarily gone into hiding to avoid
arrest in 20 pending criminal cases, or possibly to mobilize support for the
party.
“We are not sure he
was taken by anybody,” said Monirul Islam, joint commissioner in Dhaka’s
detective and criminal intelligence division. “Nobody heard any noise when he
was taken, or left that place. Nobody knows that Salahuddin was there.”
When police officers
have approached witnesses for information about Mr. Ahmed, he said, “they just
decline.”
“Maybe they are
afraid of petrol bombs,” he added, suggesting that opposition forces had
intimidated witnesses.
Mr. Ahmed’s wife,
Hasina Ahmed, a former member of Parliament, said she questioned the witnesses
herself and was left with no doubt that he had been detained by security
forces.
“We want to say he
is alive, he is very much alive,” said Moudud Ahmed, another lawyer for the
family, at the hearing on Thursday.
Mr. Ahmed’s
disappearance took place amid mounting political violence, as dozens of
ordinary Bangladeshis were being killed in firebombings, presumably ordered by
opposition leaders. Most of the B.N.P.’s senior and midlevel leaders face
criminal charges for violations like throwing bombs or vandalizing vehicles.
Many — two joint secretary generals, an acting secretary general, a vice
chairman and a member of the party’s standing committee, among others — are in
jail, according to The Daily Star.
Mr. Ahmed, who had
served as deputy communications minister when his party was in power, was a
party joint general secretary and took on a sensitive role in January, as
spokesman responsible for announcing strikes and blockades. His two immediate
predecessors had been arrested, and he went into hiding, moving from house to
house and arranging occasional meetings with family, his wife said. His
17-year-old-daughter, Fariba, said she had not seen him for “a few months.”
In April 2013,
Elias Ali, a regional secretary of the B.N.P., was reported missing. Hasina
Ahmed called for an inquiry, but also suggested that he might have been hiding
on party orders. He has never been located.
Last year, Human
Rights Watch documented 11 cases that took place around the
2014 election in which opposition leaders or activists were killed under
suspicious circumstances after being detained by law enforcement, in many cases
by the Rapid Action Battalion. This week, state prosecutors charged three
former battalion officials and more than two dozen other former battalion
personnel in connection with the April 2014 killings of seven men in an
apparent contract killing.
Julfikar Ali Manik contributed
reporting.
