Hasina’s Houses of Horror to Yunus’ Devil Hunt – is Bangladesh truly changing for better?

DEEP HALDER

If politics is a game of thrones, the discovery of Sheikh Hasina’s Houses of Horror –detention-cum-torture chambers ironically named Aynaghars or Houses of Mirror –was supposed to undermine all her efforts to regain public trust. It was also meant to reaffirm the need for Muhammad Yunus’ leadership, especially to carry out electoral and judicial reforms that would mend Bangladesh’s broken criminal justice system.

But things took a different turn when Yunus visited three Aynaghars in Dhaka’s Agargaon, Kachukhet and Uttara areas on 12 February. Jokes and memes flooded social media, mocking the Bangladesh chief adviser for “staging” his so-called discovery. Beneath this laughter, a troubling question emerged, too: Are things really changing in Bangladesh after Hasina’s fall?

As Yunus’ press wing released photos and videos from the visit, media outlets wrote about the chambers’ iron-barred doors, electric motor-run spinning chairs to torture captives, names and messages etched on the walls, and the little ventilation and sanitation.

“Some of the people who fell victim to the torture at Aynaghar are with us here, and we’ve heard from them what they faced. Such events (detention and torture) are inexplicable,” Yunus said. Innocent people were picked up from the streets without cause, the chief adviser added, and explosives were planted in their vehicles to label them as terrorists or extremists.

“Some say there are 700 cells, others say 800. The number of such cells has yet to be determined, as there are some known, while others are yet to be discovered,” he said.

This is not the first time, though, that Aynaghars have been discussed in the public domain. In 2021, the Human Rights Watch published a report titled ‘Where No Sun Can Enter’. Although security forces in Bangladesh have committed grave human rights abuses irrespective of the party in power, enforced disappearances, read the report, had become “a hallmark of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s current decade-long rule”.

“When Prime Minister Hasina took office in 2009, there were three reported cases of enforced disappearances. By the next election in January 2014, there had been over 130. In the year ahead of the December 2018 election, there were 98 cases reported,” it stressed.

What Yunus’ visit to the Aynaghars did was show Bangladesh what it already knew about the Hasina government’s history of violence. And as it was meant to, the discovery stirred a national debate.

Dark humour, deeper concerns

In his Facebook post, researcher and social activist Hazrat M Hasan expressed doubt at the use of iron chairs for giving electric shocks to inmates. “I knew such chairs to be wooden, with electric components attached.” Mocking the Yunus government’s cultural affairs adviser, the Bangladeshi film director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, he said: “The semi-literate Farooki tried to implement what he saw in the movies. He should have instead consulted with the Pakistani spy agency ISI.”

Writer Jesmin Jesi also wrote in her Facebook post that she never knew electric chairs to be made of stainless steel, accusing the Yunus government of propaganda. “I am amazed it took Yunus saheb six long months to stage this play, but with such a bad script. If the electric chair is metallic, then everyone present inside the torture room would get electric shocks. This is why electric chairs across the world are made of wood. Did no one from the Yunus team figure this out? Also, why weren’t there any electric sockets inside the room?”

Facebook user Ismotara Bonna had similar concerns as she shared a picture of what a real electric chair should look like, along with the electric chair allegedly found in one of the Aynaghars.

Yunus’s visit to the Aynaghars has not only pointed to a dark past but raised some worrying questions about the country’s future.

While the Sheikh Hasina administration was indeed guilty of misusing the criminal justice system and suspending citizens’ rights, has the Yunus administration been able to change things for the better?

Last week, Bangladeshi actress Meher Afroz Shaon was arrested on charges of conspiring against the state because she criticised the Yunus administration. Shaon’s arrest is not an isolated example. The Muhammad Yunus-led interim government has launched a special drive named ‘Operation Devil Hunt’ with “an aim to curb unrest and ensure public safety across the country.” This came right after the completion of six months of the interim government.

“Who are the devils they are hunting for? They are political dissidents of the current regime,” Bangladeshi journalist Sahidul Hasan Khokon told ThePrint. “How are they doing anything different from what was before?”

Home affairs adviser Lieutenant General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury (Retd) has said that ‘Operation Devil Hunt’ will focus on detaining individuals who threaten the nation’s stability and will continue “until all the devils are brought to justice”.

A total of 1,308 suspected criminals have been arrested across the country as part of the operation, according to Additional Inspector General of Police (Media) Inamul Haque Sagar.

Since Sheikh Hasina’s fall on 5 August last year, the beleaguered Awami League has regularly accused the Yunus administration of arresting and harassing the party’s leaders, workers and supporters. An elected Awami League MP, who is now in exile, told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the police have been harassing his family ever since he went into hiding. “It is not just me. Even being an Awami League voter is enough to get you a midnight knock on your front door by the law enforcement agencies.”

The Awami League has alleged that criminal teen gangs have been given immunity to abduct and torture the family members of party activists. “To add further woes on families, demands of ransom were made and no help has been provided by law enforcement, a glaring marker of rights abuses under the illegal reign of Yunus,” the party’s official handle wrote on X.

Attacks on minorities and on the house of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, as well as mass arrests and silencing of political opponents, show that Yunus is erecting his own Aynaghars.

SOURCE : theprint