March 03, 2008

Another PR disaster for all accomplishes

There is a saying that "If your only tool is hammer, all your problems look like nails." Probably thats what is happening in the case of Bangladesh. When Human Rights Watch published the reports of accounts of torture of Tasneem Khalil, you could see that this was a too bigger blunder to bury with intimidation.

Today IHT published an Oped by Tasneem Khalil which also strikes a blow to the forces behind:
I am tempted to remind foreign governments that the abuses happening in Bangladesh in the name of "reform" and "anti-corruption" are possible thanks to their complicity and complacence. The support of donors like the United States and Britain, eager to address political paralysis and corruption but naïve about our history with military governments, has been crucial in providing legitimacy to an illegal, unconstitutional arrangement. Supporting a monster to kill a demon might work for computer gamers, but in politics and diplomacy it is usually disastrous.

It is time for Bangladesh's friends in the United States, Britain, and European Union to support our struggle for democracy and pressure the military to end its "state of emergency" and declare an early date for free and fair elections. Military torture centers should be shut down and extra-judicial executions ended. And every perpetrator of human rights violations should be prosecuted and punished. No one else should experience what I went through.

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