An arrest in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam

Sanjana Hattotuwa-August 11, 2018,  

The arrest of renowned Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam last week made the news around the world. His torture when in police custody and the extreme physical duress he was forced to undergo was evident in the photos and videos released at the time of his appearance in court. Amnesty International has called him a prisoner of conscience. The charges are ludicrous, and are anchored to sentiments expressed in an interview with Al Jazeera on the violence that has gripped Dhaka recently. The response to the protests by students has showcased a government not unlike what we had in Sri Lanka before 2015, where dissent was tolerated only to the extent batons, water cannons, rubber and real bullets, white vans, terror squads, intimidation, bullying and violence of government allowed. Alam’s fate and what he is accused of is remarkably similar to the awful case of Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, arrested in 2008 under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act on trumped up charges that he incited communal hatred.

A year later he was convicted by the Colombo High Court on the charges and sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment. Tissainayagam’s case was dog-whistling for others who dared stand up to and write openly against the Rajapaksa regime – a show trial, where one person was made an example of as a warning to others. Alam fares better, one hopes, though at the time of writing, prospects don’t look too good with a government in Bangladesh as thin-skinned, insecure, violently repressive and authoritarian as the Rajapaksa regime was a few years ago.

In studying the evolution of the South Asian as well as global outcry in support of Alam’s release over social media, I paused to think around just how much has changed from the time Tissainayagam was incarcerated, and also tortured when in police custody. At the time, Tissainayagam, as much as Alam is perhaps today in his own country, guilty before any verdict. Those who speak truth, instead of power, find they are outcast by many who may silently, privately or partially believe what they say but have no intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to support reform or change. Those like Alam and Tissainayagam are shunned by their own society, and often by those for whom they speak out for. This can be far crueller and far more devastating than the obviously outlandish charges brought by governments keen to silence them.

In a twisted way, the power of Tissainayagam ten years ago, or Alam today, is that those in power know that killing them doesn’t help the cause of authoritarianism since it risks strengthening, post-mortem, their voices to a degree that they cannot really control. You can only kill once. But incarcerated, through the theatre of a judicial process created just to humiliate and subjugate, the lesson can be communicated more clearly and repeatedly. You can then have, as was the case with Tissainayagam in 2010, a public pardoning by the very political authority responsible for his incarceration and torture. The intent here is simple. It is the projection of absolute power – that largesse, including convenient forgiveness, flows from a central authority, to which everything and everyone else must genuflect. It is a reminder of how things should be, and why the dominant narrative spun by this central authority and a constellation of sycophants can and must never be challenged.

Bangladesh is heading into elections later this year. The international community has a delicate balancing act, given the Rohingya crisis and how central Bangladesh is in it. The current government is a vital actor in dealing with the human cost of the violence in the Rakhine state in bordering Myanmar, and it is likely this is a factor in what is clearly a tempered response to Alam’s outrageous imprisonment and torture by the international community. This is a flawed calculation. As in Sri Lanka, a government that resorts to violent means to suppress dissent and targets journalists sets itself up for failure by its own actions. A siege mentality leads to policies that end up reinforcing the fiction of complete control. The Rajapaksa regime never saw Sirisena as a threat in 2014. No one, at any time, in any public fora, or future scenario, placed him as President. No one, in 2014, saw the end of the Rajapaksa regime in the manner it occurred.

Alam’s imprisonment is already a litmus test for the Bangladeshi government – his treatment, a blemish, his incarceration, an embarrassment, the charges against him, ludicrous and fuelling growing outrage, the silencing of his voice leading to thousands, globally, raising theirs in defence of what he said, stood for and decried on air. The miscalculation by Bangladeshi authorities was in grossly underestimating Alam’s singular life, which has him rooted in countries, communities and contexts far beyond his home country, who see him as one of their own. Family. The challenge now is what to do with him.

To release him would be to suffer loss of face, which in an election year, is anathema for a government and the hardliners within in. To incarcerate him would be to incur the wrath of the international community, the enduring resistance of those in Bangladesh resisting authoritarian diktats and the unceasing call for his release by those around the world. Tissainayagam, after his incarceration, was flagged by President Obama as an ‘emblematic example’ of the violent targeting and harassment of journalists. These statements find expression in foreign policy. Alam’s public profile is such that he becomes even more than today, if imprisoned for longer, a talking point at every major international event and process the Bangladeshi government is part of, hosts or is invited to. He will become a conditionality, a talking point, a bone of contention they cannot wish away.

Alam’s power as a photographer, bearing witness to so much around him, is a belief that we – Asians, people of colour, brown folk, those from the Global South or in Hans Rosling’s framing, those from Tier 2 or 3 countries – are the best placed and able to tell our own stories. Alam started to say this, and work on ways to promote stories from the Global South, by those in the Global South, long before it was fashionable to promote this way of framing and working. He largely defined, by his own life and work, the importance of bearing witness to vital narratives as only those embedded in the context could best frame, empathically grasp and were there to live through. The parachuting journalist, and the white person’s burden to frame or recount was eschewed in favour of photos, frames and stories told by those with a deeper commitment to the stories they covered. This deeply political critique, for Alam, extended to what he saw as wrong and unjust within his own country. For this, he is today held in custody, tortured and charged with crimes by the state that are as absurd in their submission as they are positively disturbing in their intent.

Few spoke out when Tissainayagam suffered under the Rajapaksa regime’s violent outlook. If a country’s wealth is measured by how much it values democratic dissent and a healthy, strong contest of competing ideas, Tissainayagam’s on-going exile along with so many others makes Sri Lanka incredibly poor, post-war. Bangladesh doesn’t need to go down the same path. Alam must be released, unharmed, without delay. Every day he suffers the ignominy of imprisonment is a blemish Bangladesh will not easily walk away from.