FAMILY members of eight abducted persons who have been missing since December 4 held a human chain on Thursday in front of Jatiya Press Club demanding the return of their dearest ones. They said the victims were picked up by persons who presented themselves as members of law enforcing agencies and they remained untraced so long while the law enforcers disclaimed of having any part in those abduction cases. The missing persons, who are mostly youths, belong to the opposition camp and it raised the questions based on similar abduction cases that either the law enforcers directly or people using their name and uniform are at work to eliminate opposition activists to free the ruling party of formidable challengers. News reports said participants at the human chain and later at a press conference at Jatiya Press Club in which noted rights activists and lawyers also attended, said such cases of forced disappearance which are taking place almost regularly, can’t be acceptable in a civilized and democratic society. They also criticized the government for being least concerned about citizens’ safety while families are taking to the streets and passing an agonizing time to know about the fate of their missing children. We emphasize as the participants at the press conference also emphasized, it is the responsibility of the government to find out the missing persons and the law enforcing agencies must also justify their presence by finding them and returning them immediately to their families. But as we see, it is something highly mysterious that abductors are regularly using the name of law enforcing agencies but they are hardly doing anything to clear their names, least of all to act quickly to rescue the victims. It appears that a kind of state terrorism is now at work where every citizen feels his or her life is vulnerable — either for refusing to pay extortion money, or to settle land disputes or for being just an opposition activist.More significantly, former Chief Justice of India Mr Altamas Kabir now on a visit to Bangladesh has raised the issue of extra-judicial killings at a seminar at BRAC University on Thursday calling for a stop to it. Talking on “Access to Justice for All’ he made a strong case for freedom of the judiciary to protect the citizens and preserve the democratic foundation of the state. We however don’t find much difference between the extra-judicial killings about which he was talking and the forced disappearances of victims in mysterious circumstances. The only difference is that in extra-judicial killings law enforcers claim they have eliminated a ‘terrorist in crossfire’ while the killing of persons who have disappeared takes place in the dark or remains altogether untraced. We share the view of the former Indian CJ that the rule of law and state protection to citizens will remain illusive if the judiciary does not enjoy freedom and people get killed without the due process of law. The whole nation is concerned and this is such a human crisis that no government worth its name can remain unmindful. Normally such open and forced disappearances cannot take place without government’s connivance. In any view of the matter such extra-judicial killings and disappearances are proof of gross incompetences of the government. If not anything, then the government has to prove its competence and innocence.
