It is heartening that we can now call a spade a spade. We have finally found the appropriate synonym ‘cocoon of terror’ for Dhaka Cantonment and Bangladesh Army could never be defined better than a ‘killing machine’. It is further encouraging; Bangalees have started drawing strategy about how to put this demonic genie back into the bottle and for good. Ultimately truth triumphs fear.
To clip the wing of this vulture we can take lesson from Venezuela. In 2002, millions of unarmed slum dwellers, supporters of civilian President Hugo Chavez, thwarted a well orchestrated army coup by laying barricade around the cantonment of Caracas, not allowing a single army individual or their transport rolling in to or out of the cantonment. This is the recent glorious example of victory of unarmed people against the military and their perpetual mighty mentor USA. It was only possible as the civil government was steadfast in developing awareness and mobilising public support against agents of external and internal enemies of democracy.
In Bangladesh, future political government must come out of their past jittery, ambiguity and falsehood and confront head on with this power-hungry beast and sole enemy of democracy. If you notice, while referring to the heinous crime of August 75 committed by the Bangladesh Army, even AL and pro-democracy intellectuals as well always elude the fact by chorusing that it was the work of few derailed elements in the army. It is true, army sometimes participates in helping calamity stricken people, but it is superficial and mostly photogenic for propaganda, often exaggerated out of proportion even by our politicians and intelligentsia. This chronic symptom of timidity and hypocrisy help these narcissist morons gain strength to incessantly conspire and sabotage democracy under any artificially enlarged or false pretext.
Enough is enough. Time has come; we must turn around and fearlessly announce the facts about this army to the public, their ceaseless effort to undermine our democracy, political institutions, spirit of 71. We must expose to public the highly secret statistics of financial corruption of army. We must not fail to explain public that Tareq, Babar, Falu of BNP were merely the pawns and left-over scavengers of this army’s ill-gotten booties and bounties and as such gratefully unrolled red carpet for the pirates to cake-walk to power.
We must unequivocally stipulate in our constitution the provision of trying army individuals in the civil court and of highest punishment for sedition against democracy and illegal meddling in politics. Our progressive politicians and intellectuals (not YAK-Yunus, Amu, Kamal type) must start thinking of reshaping our army commensurate to our actual need and replacing our army’s infatuation for Paki spirit and ambitions with unflinching loyalty to our heritage and history. We must make a civil-counter-intelligence system in place with legal and logistic capability of penetrating deep into military intelligence to pre-empt any furtive move against civil rule. Every extrajudicial target-practicing by the army on human beings must be brought to justice. Instead of keeping this huge force as unproductive and perilously national burden, we must continuously engage them to build our national infrastructure and other vital national constructions. This action will bring them close to the people and to the soil. An equivalency of perks and benefits must be established between army and civil ranks.
We must develop solidarity with fledging democracies of Latin America and Africa and launch an international drive to adopt a UN resolution to declare military grabbing of civil power as a war crime tantamount to declaring war against own civilians and can be tried in international war tribunal . You might as well guess in advance, who will oppose this UN move for protecting nascent democracy of nations – ironically none other than the self-appointed chieftain of global democracy, USA. But that should not stop the march of people and democracy.
To clip the wing of this vulture we can take lesson from Venezuela. In 2002, millions of unarmed slum dwellers, supporters of civilian President Hugo Chavez, thwarted a well orchestrated army coup by laying barricade around the cantonment of Caracas, not allowing a single army individual or their transport rolling in to or out of the cantonment. This is the recent glorious example of victory of unarmed people against the military and their perpetual mighty mentor USA. It was only possible as the civil government was steadfast in developing awareness and mobilising public support against agents of external and internal enemies of democracy.
In Bangladesh, future political government must come out of their past jittery, ambiguity and falsehood and confront head on with this power-hungry beast and sole enemy of democracy. If you notice, while referring to the heinous crime of August 75 committed by the Bangladesh Army, even AL and pro-democracy intellectuals as well always elude the fact by chorusing that it was the work of few derailed elements in the army. It is true, army sometimes participates in helping calamity stricken people, but it is superficial and mostly photogenic for propaganda, often exaggerated out of proportion even by our politicians and intelligentsia. This chronic symptom of timidity and hypocrisy help these narcissist morons gain strength to incessantly conspire and sabotage democracy under any artificially enlarged or false pretext.
Enough is enough. Time has come; we must turn around and fearlessly announce the facts about this army to the public, their ceaseless effort to undermine our democracy, political institutions, spirit of 71. We must expose to public the highly secret statistics of financial corruption of army. We must not fail to explain public that Tareq, Babar, Falu of BNP were merely the pawns and left-over scavengers of this army’s ill-gotten booties and bounties and as such gratefully unrolled red carpet for the pirates to cake-walk to power.
We must unequivocally stipulate in our constitution the provision of trying army individuals in the civil court and of highest punishment for sedition against democracy and illegal meddling in politics. Our progressive politicians and intellectuals (not YAK-Yunus, Amu, Kamal type) must start thinking of reshaping our army commensurate to our actual need and replacing our army’s infatuation for Paki spirit and ambitions with unflinching loyalty to our heritage and history. We must make a civil-counter-intelligence system in place with legal and logistic capability of penetrating deep into military intelligence to pre-empt any furtive move against civil rule. Every extrajudicial target-practicing by the army on human beings must be brought to justice. Instead of keeping this huge force as unproductive and perilously national burden, we must continuously engage them to build our national infrastructure and other vital national constructions. This action will bring them close to the people and to the soil. An equivalency of perks and benefits must be established between army and civil ranks.
We must develop solidarity with fledging democracies of Latin America and Africa and launch an international drive to adopt a UN resolution to declare military grabbing of civil power as a war crime tantamount to declaring war against own civilians and can be tried in international war tribunal . You might as well guess in advance, who will oppose this UN move for protecting nascent democracy of nations – ironically none other than the self-appointed chieftain of global democracy, USA. But that should not stop the march of people and democracy.
