by M. Serajul Islam 3 November 2023
DIPLOMATS can weaponise ordinary human traits against their adversaries as effectively and sometimes more so than the military can achieve with guns and cannons. Silence is one such human trait that diplomats use against their adversaries, often to great effect.
The heads of diplomatic missions in Dhaka used silence to send a powerful message to the Awami League regime that they could not have communicated more effectively or appropriately by other means. They were invited by the foreign minister to a briefing on the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s October 28 grand rally. The minister, with the lam Minister and the state minister for foreign affairs, informed the diplomats that the BNP had resorted to violence and was, therefore, responsible for all the violence that occurred that day.
The diplomats resorted to a stoic silence when the foreign minister invited them for comments, questions and clarifications. The ministers interpreted the silence to mean that the diplomats understood the regime’s explanation and it was not the regime’s responsibility to explain whether they accepted their interpretation. The law minister told journalists to ask the diplomats whether they had accepted their version of October 28 or not.
The ministers were able to give such a strange explanation of the silence of the diplomats because none of the journalists dared to contradict what happened on October 28. Unfortunately for the ministers, the diplomats saw and heard everything or most of what happened on October 28 because of the Awami League’s success in digitising Bangladesh. They were, therefore, aware with first-hand experience of a narrative of October 28 that was different from what they were briefed at the foreign affairs ministry.
These diplomats together with all stakeholders are following politics in Bangladesh as closely as if it was occurring in front of their eyes because of the dramatic development in recent times in information gathering and dissemination through WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, social media, et cetera. The diplomats were, thus, aware as was everyone else who wanted to be aware that the BNP overcame fear and took its movement for political rights of people, in general, and their right to vote freely and fairly, in particular, through the 10 divisional rallies that they held in October–December 2022. The BNP centred its movement on the demand for a caretaker government, convinced that there was no power on earth that would be able to defeat the Awami League in an election it wanted to hold it like the 2014 and 2018 elections.
The Awami League-led regime tried everything to stop the rallies that the nation saw by means of benefits of technology. It killed several BNP activists. The BNP did not waver or resort to violence. It continued with its movement peacefully, energising its supporters. Meanwhile, the masses who were unable to remain quiet against the toxic mix of political, human, electoral and economic depravation under the Awami League regime joined the BNP’s peaceful and democratic movement in huge numbers.
The BNP’s grand rally of October 28 was, thus, organised against the backdrop of one of the most democratic political movements in South Asian history. Its supporters in a humongous number arrived at the rally, many ahead of the day of the event, without any intention of violence despite grave provocation, including mass arrests, threats and statements of the law enforcement agencies that openly acted as political activists of the ruling party.
The BNP, nevertheless, feared violence as did the nation because the Awami League regime called its rally on the same day as the BNP’s grad rally and ironically named it a ‘peace rally’ to stop the BNP’s alleged violence. The only threats about October 28 came from the Awami League. A senior Awami League leader threatened that the BNP activists to the grand rally would meet the same fate that Hefazat-e-Islam had met in the Shapla Square which was a damning acknowledgement of the massacre of Hefazat in that venue in 2013 which is now a major and serious issue of contention between the Awami League regime and the European Union.
The Awami League expectedly succeeded in derailing the BNP’s October 28 grand rally by means that it would, no doubt, regret because the action it took has been recorded for history by the stakeholders and by all and sundry. It arrested the BNP’s secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir along with thousands of others. A police officer and a BNP youth leader were killed. A bus was burnt, as was a hospital. The gate of the chief justice’s residence was attacked. There were other acts of vandalism, conflicts, etcetera. The regime and the pro-regime television talk-show participants blamed the BNP supporters who were unarmed. They called them ‘miscreants’, reminding many of 1971 between March 25 and December 16.
The heads of the missions saw everything that occurred on October 28. They were, thus, aware that the foreign affairs ministry would blame the Bangladesh Nationalist Party for the October 28 events in its briefing for them. They, therefore, used silence as their diplomatic tool when the foreign minister invited them to speak after the briefing because he had briefed them to the contrary on everything that happened on October 28 that they had seen with their own eyes and heard with their ears.
A pro-regime newspaper editor, nevertheless, used the delay of the western diplomats, in particular US ambassador Peter Haas, to condemn the regime for October 28, to taunt the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He spoke too early. The US embassy with six other embassies had issued a joint statement before the diplomats went to the foreign affairs ministry in which they called upon all parties to work to create conditions for a free, fair, participatory, and peaceful general election.
The statement was significant. It absolved the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of any major responsibility for the October 28 conflict and violence. The ambassadors and high commissioners of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Norway, therefore, dismissed the foreign affairs ministry’s blaming the BNP for everything. The statement did not blame the regime either, perhaps because the embassies, the United States in particular, were aware that they would need it to reach a negotiated settlement that the United States wanted to avoid Bangladesh going over the edge.
The US state department called for a detailed investigation of October 28, after the foreign ministry briefing, that flagged, and unequivocally, that the United States did not accept the foreign ministry’s briefing blaming the Bangladesh Nationalist Party for the October 28 violence. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement the same day as the US state department. The statement blamed Awami League supporters for the October 28 violence.
These statements underlined that the truth about October 28 was clear as daylight. The stakeholders at home and abroad except the Awami League and its supporters, hold the Awami League regime responsible for foiling the BNP’s peaceful and democratic dissent with violence. Ironically, they provided the evidence for their acts. The diplomats flagged the self-evident truth about October 28 through their stoic silence at the foreign ministry briefing. Their silence also exposed that the Awami League regime was dealing with the truth with an ostrich mindset.
October 28 has been a watershed moment in Bangladesh’s current turbulent politics. It further polarised the country’s already highly polarised politics to a new level. It also polarised the external stakeholders. The United States, the west and the United Nations now want the inclusion of the BNP as indispensable for holding a free, fair, and peaceful general election. The BNP has, meanwhile, emphatically established its claim as a democratic political party despite the ruling party’s provocations to force it to tread the path of violence and conflict.
The Awami League has been in power since January 2009 through three general elections. The voters were unable to vote in two of the elections. Therefore, for the Awami League that led the war of liberation in 1971 to establish a sovereign nation based on democratic, human and political rights, it is morally, ethically and legally incumbent on it to ensure these rights to people, not take them away from them. The Awami League’s only alternative is to remain in power by force. History should remind it that such an attempt has failed everywhere except in totalitarian systems where people have no power except those that the system gives.
Postscript: The Election Commission has, meanwhile, written to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party with its office locked and its secretary general in jail for discussion for holding the next general election. This is surreal politics in its worst manifestation.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.
The article appeared in the New Age