Time is out of joint and we are witnessing a maddening scenario of brutality emerged out of politics. Since last October, after their dispossession and expulsion from their home and territories, most Bangalees have become refugees in their own country, coming to terms not with their past which is lost but with their present. This is politics of dispossession: dispossession from their rights, properties and human dignity.

Since the terror began in late October 2001 well over 30 thousand Hindus fled from Bangladesh to India; over 1 thousand women were raped1; over 185 political opponents were killed; over 5260 were injured2 ; over 4,000 houses have been burnt; punitive taxes are levied against the population without allowing that population any form of recourse; acres after acres of paddy harvest have been expropriated, whole villages like Aguandi and Hapania rendered destitute, armed thugs of the ruling parties are allowed to kill and beat minorities and political opponents with total impumity3. These are human rights abuses and these abuses are done by the government against their own people. This catalogue of suffering does not deter the government from discriminating systematically against the Bangalee people, much as the glory of the thumping victory in the election does not deter the government from decimating the population of Bangladesh in 100 days of rule. This is terror, state sponsored terror.

It means human freedom is at stake. Human freedom, in the end, is freedom of persons of particular ethnic or religious or political identity whose life is subsumed within a national territory ruled by a sovereign power. In our context, withholders of freedom, its abuses, also belong to this nation, also a state that practices politics of dispossession. The minorities who live in Bangladesh are the victims of Talebani mode of oppression, the political opponents who live in Bangladesh, it seems, are conquered by the BNP and Jamat and from the point of view of the conquerors the survivors life depend on their good wishes.

A grotesque war is raging here, in Bangladesh, where it is attack on lives, livelihoods, homes, villages and religious buildings, and also on fundamental human values. A year ago, we have not heard of `ethnic cleansing'. Now it is a reality, we are witnessing a new phenomenon different from, but scarcely less horrific than, Nazism. Ethnic cleansing, here, means the elimination of ethnic groups, minorities, by dominant ethnic group, curbing their influence and controlling their participation in the state system. Ethnic cleansing is all pervasive: the methods range from plunder and rape, various forms of social and economic pressure and discrimination to the horrific crimes to leave Bangladesh. The other side of ethnic cleansing is installation of ethnic nationalism: muslim nationalism. Ethnic nationalism: muslim nationalism is a kind of nihilism, in which no political debate or movement is allowed and in which there is no possibility for alternative political ideas. Emergence of Bangladesh is a movement from ethnic culture to nation to state, in a progressive series of self-realizations of a people. Bangladesh state suggests a unity of culture and politics. By instituting ethnic cleansing the government led by BNP and Jamat is determined to delink culture from politics and to make political more representational to suit the BNP - Jamat fundamentalist needs of a particulars ethnic group and thus to establish that a set of people, a particular group of religious identity, has the right to rule over another set of people. Along with ethnic cleansing, political cleansing is raging to tone-up the administration for the establishment of a one-party state. Over 1000 government officers were dismissed from their jobs4 and a black list is prepared to purge the administration from politically not correct minds. This is witch hunting and the quest for PC is fanatically precise dictated by `Hawha Bhavan', extra governmental and extra constitutional agency, presided over by the Prime ministers' son. `Janater mancho' is haunting the present government and they are taking punitive measures against bureaucrats to contain defiance and taking positions. The objective is to create an eternal political minority. This minority will never be tomorrow's potential majority. Election in the end will be a big show swing, mere empty formalities, manipulated procedural game.

Resistance is an attempt on the part of the oppressed people who suffered material and spiritual dispossession, to reclaim their identity. The role of the government of the day, an amalgam of fundamentalism and opportunism, is to consolidate authority and our role, those who want to resist, is to understand, interpret and question it: this is another strategy of speaking the truth to power. Thugs and gunmen, are the triumphalist agents in our society and their agenda is fear. To blot out fear as a public memory in society, is the first task and some kind of defiance we need to cultivate proper attitude to confront unethical authority.

Before I conclude let me quote from Edmund Burke: `The one condition necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'. Do we want to be onlookers, inertia haunted good men? Time is running out.

Therefore I urge you all: for God's sake get angry and resist this evil regime.

Sources

• Conversation with S. Kabir
• Democracy watch: print media unit
• National news papers