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Rab and Law Dr Shahrar Ali UK Parliamentary Candidate, Green Party, London I should like to commend The Daily Star for reviewing the methods adopted by the Rapid Action Battalion (Long list of violence as crossfire crosses line, Jan 1) and for giving space in your letters both to the critics of Rab and their advocates. The letter of Mr. S Akhtar of Jan 2 is sadly typical of the presentation of arguments in defence of Rab. Firstly, it is no more a qualification or a disqualification to write from abroad than it is to write from within the country of which one speaks (whether or not that is one's home). The need to overcome selective attention to telling facts or the encumbrances of self-deceiving ulterior interests in working towards ever more objective political opinion is a daily challenge for any honest politician or citizen. What is the central contention of the advocates of Rab? It is that an underworld of crime cannot be contained by a corruptible judicial system and that extra-judicial killing of the assumed guilty, whether or not directly intended, can be justified both as a moral resolution and as an appendage to the judicial process. Yet the impact of such a strategy on the said system can be readily anticipated. How does one propose to strengthen, as opposed to undermine, a judiciary by acting beyond the law on matters which fall properly within its jurisdiction? Moreover, what risks are attendant upon a state-sponsored lethal battalion that is surely not immune to the supposed corruptible seductions of power? S Akhtar's appeal to the US and UK as examples to be followed at this time beggars belief. Detainees have suffered in Guantanamo and Belmarsh for up to three years without charge, without trial and without access to loved ones. One does not have to live on a Cuban island to understand the evil being perpetrated upon it. Nor does one have to have one's child shot in crossfire to realise that violence begets violence with yet more innocent victims. So, forgive me, but I do find it deeply concerning to have to explain why, in the twenty-first century, state-sponsored agents in FBI-copycat fatigues should not be given licence to undertake extra-judicial execution of those presumed guilty without trial or charge. We risk turning the People's Republic of Bangladesh into a lawless regime of the Wild West under the fraudulent pretext of a "War on Terror". Any right-thinking humanitarian with a
modicum of historical conscience will understand all this. |
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Letter published in the Daily Star 14 January 2005. |