when the dust clears

With economic, political, social, and you-name-it turmoil swirling around the globe, it’s inspiring to see concrete solutions to massive global problems.

The fixes on display at the United Nations’ exhibition Design with the Other 90%: CITIES are modest, but their implications are huge: a bicycle-powered cell phone charger; barge-like floating schools for flood-plagued Bangladesh; sturdy, locally sourced materials that slum dwellers use to build shelters, etc. These are relatively inexpensive things that palpably change the lives of the 90 percent of the world’s population for whom commodities aren’t designed.

This is the second in an ongoing series of exhibitions. The first one was called Design for the Other 90%. The with in this one is real: The products on display are the result of collaborations between local folks in poor urban communities and international designers. These are people who are taking care of business.

Twenty-plus years ago, my friend Apichart dragged me away from the comforts of Shanti Lodge, his Bangkok guesthouse, for a cruise deep into the klongs (canals) and oil-slick tributaries of the Chao Phraya River. Our longtail boat didn’t tear ass like James Bond’s in The Man With the Golden Gun; it chugged slowly enough for me to see the ramshackle stilt houses and trash bobbing up and down at the shoreline. Which was Apichart’s point: Bangkok is more—and less—than backpacker haven Khao San Road, salacious Patpong, and cheap paad Thai. It is also pollution and poverty. But also progress: Design highlights the Bang Bua Canal Community Upgrade, a project initiated by residents that has rehabbed homes and untrashed the water along an eight-mile stretch of the canal, which is home to 12 informal communities with 3,400 residents.

Bike-powered cell phone charger

Model of Medellín's Metrocable and Northeast Integral Urban Project

Useful ideas and potential inspiration, perhaps, for Occupiers around the country speaking and demonstrating on behalf of the 99% here in the US.

Design with the Other 90%: CITIES is at the United Nations Visitors Center through January 9, 2012. Head over if you’re hankering for a shot of hope.

Visitor photographs Fredrik Reuterswärd's sculpture Non-Violence

Photographer/journalist/activist/educator (and friend) Shahidul Alam was in NYC last night—from Dhaka by way of Bamako, Addis Ababa, and Dubai—to launch the US publication of “My Journey as A Witness,” a collection of his photos and writing. Essays by Sebastião Salgado, Raghu Rai, and Rosa Maria Falvo, who is also the editor.

Shahidul writes: “I don’t want to be your icon of poverty or a sponge for your guilt. My identity is for me to build, in my own image. You’re welcome to walk beside me, but don’t stand in front to give me a helping hand. You’re blocking the sun.”

Pix from the event:

I spent part of January and most of February in Dhaka developing a powerful addiction to the ubiquitous cha, strong tea with a dollop of condensed milk. The rest of the time I was plodding from appointment to appointment with Bangladeshi analysts and a handful of Americans to discuss U.S.-Bangladesh relations, perpetually astounded (and usually enraged) by the glacial and messy flow of vehicles and people.

21 January 2010-Dhaka, Bangladesh-Public bus takes on passengers at night.

I had previously visited Bangladesh in 2002 and 2008, and had made friends in Dhaka’s community of photographers and journalists. One of them suggested I look into the increasingly heavy foot traffic of U.S. officials, principally military folk, from Washington to Dhaka. A consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly our habit of military intervention in far-flung places, she suspected that Washington was grooming the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed to be a full-fledged, albeit junior, partner in the global war on terror – or whatever President Barack Obama calls his extension of Bush-Cheney hard-power initiatives.

After trolling the Internet and ringing up U.S.-based South Asia analysts and officers at the State Department and U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), I had the distinct impression that Bangladesh was indeed getting more attention from the U.S. military than the usual port calls and disaster relief consultations.

Bangladesh and the U.S. have had reasonably strong ties for years, but the relationship had been a low priority for us – until September 11th, after which Washington asked for, and Dhaka granted, use of its airspace, ports, and refueling facilities for military operations in Afghanistan. In the years following 9/11, the Bush administration voiced concern that Bangladesh might become a base for wandering militants, even al Qaeda, because of its proximity to Pakistan as well as its porous borders with India, abysmal governance, and corrupt – and scandalously underfunded – law enforcement agencies. The government of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia denied that the threat was as serious as Washington made it out to be, an understandable response from a leader who courted – and later allied with – extremist parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami (Bangladesh). That said, many in both capitals worried that the robust trade in illegal weapons around the southeastern port of Cox’s Bazar, still a problem, might fuel homegrown militancy.

The Bush administration expanded ties with two previous regimes – the first one elected, the other installed by the military – and the Obama administration has recently given strong backing to the current elected and secular government of Sheikh Hasina. Admiral Timothy J. Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command dropped by in November 2007 to discuss disaster relief assistance after Cyclone Sidr devastated the country’s southern coast. In October 2008, the Oregon National Guard formed a partnership with the Bangladeshi military to boost airport and maritime port security as part of a global U.S. State Department–National Guard Bureau initiative. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense James Clad visited the following month “to discuss a range of bilateral and multilateral security issues as well as future opportunities for cooperation between U.S. and Bangladesh armed forces,” according to an embassy press release. Several other U.S. officials passed through that year, but the visits really started picking up in 2009. In February, a three-star general from U.S. Special Operations Command and a one-star from PACOM visited Dhaka. Nine months later, the commanding general of U.S. Army–Pacific, the commander of the Seventh Fleet, PACOM’s director of strategic planning, and the commanding general of U.S. Special Operations Command–Pacific stopped by, presumably to do more than just say hi.

Just this past March, the Navy’s Fleet Survey Team charted the Karnaphuli River in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s major port. China is nudging its way in Chittagong as well – in 2008 it helped Dhaka set up a missile launch pad near the port city.

More tip-of-the-spear-type activities have been added to the existing U.S.-Bangladesh training agenda of peacekeeping, civic actions, and humanitarian relief. The first “Tiger Shark,” part of the classified Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, was conducted last November. U.S. Navy special operators trained with sailors from the Bangladeshi Navy Special Warfare and Diving Salvage, which according to U.S. Ambassador James F. Moriarty, “is well on its way to becoming Bangladesh’s premier maritime counterterrorism unit.” Tiger Shark 2 kicked off in April 2010. Two more Tiger Sharks are scheduled for later in the year.

[Also of note: The U.S. Coast Guard transferred 16 Defender-class patrol boats to the Bangladesh Navy in April 2010, "the largest delivery of vessels ever completed by the Coast Guard to any nation." Five more such boats will be donated in the future.]

And if you follow the money, a pattern emerges. In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. provided a meager $590,000 to Bangladesh in military financing. State asked for $2.5 million for 2010. In 2009, the U.S. gave Dhaka $3 million in Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, and Demining funding. The 2010 estimate is $4.2 million. Total U.S. funding provided to Bangladesh in 2009, which includes the above plus money for everything else – child survival, good governance, economic support, etc. – was just shy of $117 million. The 2010 estimate is $168.5 million. These amounts are small, but they add up in a country with a per capita income of $621.

There was a near-consensus across the political spectrum among Bangladeshi analysts I spoke with about the country’s pressing, and in many cases dire, strategic concerns: poor and corrupt governance and a sclerotic political system; deep, widespread poverty; poor market access for its main export, garments; rising sea levels caused by global warming; access to water from rivers that flow through India, and which Delhi has plans to dam; and India, India, India, the regional colossus. Most believe that the U.S. can and should play a role in helping Bangladesh address these problems – provided they do so in democratic and transparent ways that take into account local needs and sensibilities.

There was, however, tremendous disagreement over the threat of Islamic militancy and terrorism. “Bangladesh is unfortunately the battleground in a proxy war between India and Pakistan,” says Ali Riaz, a South Asia analyst at Illinois State University. In August 2005, 500 simultaneous small bombs were detonated in 63 of the country’s 64 districts. Three people – and some estimates say as many as 30 – were killed and many more injured. Members of the Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, an Islamist extremist organization banned by the government in 2006, were convicted of the bombing and hanged.

Prior to 2005, there had been no suicide bombings in Bangladesh. In November and December of that year, there were multiple suicide bombings in Gazipur, Chittagong, and Netrokona, executed by Islamist militants. More than four years later, violent extremist groups – both far right and far left – are still active.

“Islamic militancy is not the number one problem. Maybe fifth or sixth,” a journalist who covers the terrorism beat for a major Bangladeshi newspaper told me. “It is a problem created by the United States,” I was told by prominent left intellectual and NGO head Farhad Mazhar. He recalls the Bush administration’s friendship with the coalition government of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, which fought with the West Pakistanis in the genocidal 1971 war of independence that grew out of the electoral victory of a popular politician in what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League, the current ruling party, won all but two seats in Pakistan’s National Assembly, tilting the national balance of power away from the formerly dominant West. Military dictator General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, whose power base was West Pakistan, predominantly Punjabi, prevented the assembly from meeting and arrested Sheikh Mujib, as he was – and is – known. East Pakistanis, largely Bengali, hit the streets in protest. So Yahya sent in the Pakistani Army to slaughter them. They killed between one and three million people. Millions of refugees from East Pakistan streamed across the border into India. (Remember the Concert for Bangladesh?)

Publicly, Washington condemned Yahya’s moves. Secretly, the Nixon administration backed the general and provided fighter jets via Jordan, 18,000 rounds of ammunition, and other lethal hardware. India also provided safe haven for the East Pakistani resistance movement and backed it with troops and materiel, beginning a paternalistic relationship in which Bangladesh now chafes.

Most of the analysts I spoke to see Pakistan’s influence over Bangladesh as nominal, though all are concerned about Pakistan’s instability.

Mazhar and others believe the U.S. has subcontracted out its entire South Asia policy to India. “Essentially, what Bangladeshis are afraid of is that India is using the USA to turn Bangladesh into its backfield” in its fight against leftist militants on India’s northeastern border.

For their part, U.S. officials say American policy is balanced between military and counterterrorism initiatives and governance, aid, and trade programs. The U.S. is “overwhelmingly focused on a positive agenda,” a senior Western diplomat told me, “not looking for a terrorist behind every tree,” citing robust trade, cooperation on disaster response, aquaculture, and capacity building, among others.

Many Bangladeshi analysts, and not just lefties, disagree. The American strategic posture, says retired Brig. Gen. Shahedul Anam Khan of the Bangladeshi Army, “is predicated mainly on fighting terrorism, and terrorism has become the be-all of American foreign policy. So whatever issue one talks about, the issue of terrorism creeps in automatically.” That said, Anam, now defense and strategic affairs editor for the country’s largest English-language newspaper, The Daily Star, advocates Bangladeshi-U.S. cooperation in counterterrorism efforts. Most on the left, however, feel that Washington’s preoccupation with counterterrorism will militarize the bilateral agenda and strengthen the Bangladeshi military at the expense of civil institutions.

Whether left or right, all of the Bangladeshi analysts I spoke with say there is a role for the U.S. to play in some areas. Those closer to the right see cooperation, along with a healthy and equitable relationship with India, as Bangladesh’s best hope for prosperity and security.

“I’ve been a strong advocate for the need for Bangladesh to work closely with India, to work closely with the United States, with a whole range of partners, in terms of capacity building, in terms of training, in terms of generally gearing ourselves up to dealing with this [terrorism] threat,” says Farooq Sobhan, head of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute and a ex-diplomat with a muscular résumé – former Foreign Secretary, High Commissioner of Bangladesh to India, and Ambassador to China.

Those on left, however, are dubious about the U.S.’s ability to cooperate rather than dominate as they believe it has by supporting a series of corrupt governments and a fat and happy elite. “By nature, Bangladeshi people are soft, very amenable, reasonable too,” Nurul Kabir, editor of New Age, a left-of-center English-language newspaper, told me. “But when it comes to national dignity, some people of the upper class will compromise. The rest of the people, not.”

Copyright © 2010 by Brian Palmer

Bangladesh’s high court ordered the government to remove police officers blocking the public’s access to the CROSSFIRE exhibition at Drik Gallery in Dhaka.

Here is Drik’s Managing Director (and creator of the images) Shahidul Alam’s statement:

Government lawyers confirmed to the Vacation Bench of the High Court today that the police deployed in front of the DRIK Gallery had been withdrawn and that there would be no obstruction to the exhibition from now on.

This is a victory on many fronts. The right of Bangladeshi people to be informed, the rights of artists and media professionals to speak out, and the citizens’ right to protest against injustice, are all important factors, but the fact that the judiciary can stand up to the government gives renewed hope to a people fighting to establish the rule of law. It happened because the nation was united in protest, and that protest
against all forms of injustice must continue.

Thank you all for your magnificent support.

Shahidul

See also Media Helping Media, which has been on top of the story.

ENDS

Three days ago, a man delivered a death threat to Dr. Shahidul Alam after walking into the Drik Gallery in Dhaka.

“An unidentified young man stormed into the Drik Gallery on March 27 (Saturday) morning and rudely asked the security guard about Shahidul Alam,” the newspaper New Age reported. “But when the security guard inquired about the identity of the man, the young man refused to give his identity and told the guard that Alam would meet his death in the street.”

Here’s the full story from New Age, Bangladesh’s independent English-language newspaper. (Scroll down for item.)

See also the transcript of the conversation, captured on video:

Dr. Alam’s photography show, CROSSFIRE, featuring photos evocative of the sites where the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion killed citizens under suspicious circumstances, was closed eight days ago by the government. RAB has been implicated in numerous extrajudicial killings.

Recent threats have also been made against Nurul Kabir, Editor of New Age. Both Kabir and Alam have been consistent critics of the abuses of power by and corruption in government and among elites in Bangladesh.

This recent death threat is to be taken seriously: In 1996, unknown assailants stabbed Alam on the street. At the time, the military was rounding up activists in advance of a parliamentary election, Alam told me in 2008. Many human rights groups were afraid to take a stand publicly, “so the seat of resistance became this gallery here. Two days later, I was stopped in the street. Eight knives were put into me.”

History must not repeat. Please spread the word to the human rights and freedom-of-the-press groups of your choice. Make sure to Tweet, too.

Here’s a New York Times preview of the exhibition by David Gonzalez plus follow-up on the exhibition’s shutdown.

And a link to Drik itself.

ENDS

Dhaka—21 February 2010

Several hundred people, many of them from the Pahari indigenous ethnic minority, gathered in Muktangan in Dhaka to protest the murder yesterday of five Paharis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region to the south, allegedly by the Bangladesh Army.

Today was also “Amar Ekushey,” a national holiday that commemorates the killing in 1952 of several Bengali patriots who fought the Pakistani government to make Bengali a national language.

The protesters in Muktangan effectively boycotted the holiday, highlighting a cruel irony: As Bangladesh, part of Pakistan until 1971, celebrates its first giant step toward self-determination, it represses and kills an indigenous group within its borders struggling toward the very same goal. And no, these are not the Rohingya ethnic group from Burma persecuted by the government.

The violence against Paharis, abetted by Bengali settlers, reportedly continues.

Dhaka—3 February 2010

A few months ago I received a call from Dr. Shahidul Alam, a mentor and colleague who has become a friend. Alam, an accomplished and peripatetic photographer, journalist, and activist, invited me to Dhaka to join a team charged with setting up a media academy for Bangladeshi journalists. Such an academy had been part of his plan for years, but he’d been consumed by other projects—building a career as well as a world-class photo agency, a degree-granting school of photography, and an international photo festival.

Years ago, he identified the mission: Create a training institute for aspiring and working journalists that would raise the generally low professional and ethical standards in Bangladesh. The core mission, however, would be a civic one: To inculcate in students a sense of responsibility to the public and a firm commitment to building a more democratic society.

A tall order, to be sure, but a familiar one. In collaboration with colleagues, advisers, and workers, the Drik photo agency, Pathshala South Asian Institute of Photography, and Chobi Mela photo festival have become prime movers in Bangladesh. They have also become internationally recognized entities. Pathshala graduates fill staff photographer positions at the leading newspapers; along with their Drik peers, they field assignments from abroad and shoot for outfits like European Press Agency, The Guardian, New York Times, and others.

Alam had signed on other “media experts”—David Brewer and DJ Clark, two media trainers with years of international experience, and Arnob Chakrabarty, a Bangladesh-born Dutch journalist, who had committed to three years in Dhaka and was shipping his family over. Was I in, he asked me as we Skyped from our respective homes in Brooklyn and Dhaka? I couldn’t give him a quick answer.

_______________________

I love Dhaka and I fear Dhaka. I have made good friends on previous trips, in 2002 and 2008. I’ve had life-changing experiences here—seen amazing photography, heard brilliant and inspiring lectures. I have learned to dart through honking and careering vehicles—cars, rickshaws, mini taxis, buses, trucks, motorcycles, three-wheeled cycles—without hyperventilating. Or (so far) getting killed. But I must admit that many of the everyday sights still shock my bourgeois American sensibility.

I’m often transfixed by the visible signs of privation, the pollution, and the glaring disparities in the distribution of wealth. The air is thick with dust and fumes; trash litters sidewalks in most parts of the city; rail-thin rickshaw pullers weave through shiny Toyota sedans, their well-scrubbed upper-middle-class occupants peering out the windows; beat-up secondhand buses crammed with riders ply the streets.

Bangladeshi friends tell me that visiting Europeans and Americans like me fixate on these things, which are undeniably real and dire, but that we completely miss the country’s hopeful and positive aspects—its tremendous human and natural resources, its potential. Moreover, they insist, there is nothing inevitable about poverty in Bangladesh. Rather, it is a symptom of a tragically corrupt and dysfunctional political system. Three decades of abysmal leadership and a kind of brutal pettiness that keeps the two main parties at each other’s throats have retarded progress and warped development. That conflict is rooted deeply in the nation’s short history. Party #1, the Awami League, descends from the secular movement that fought Pakistan for Bangladesh’s independence. Some stalwarts of party #2, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, were aligned with Pakistan during the war, even though the party’s founder fought with the secularists in the liberation struggle.

In theory, Bangladesh has freedom of the press. In practice, news organizations tend to be politically partisan and aligned with power brokers, or simply timid. Successive governments have stifled critical and independent reporting, leaving only a handful of outlets with genuine editorial chutzpah. The media academy’s goal is nothing short of revolutionizing that system.

__________________________________________

I accepted Alam’s offer and joined the core group: Alam, Chakrabarty, Clark, Shameem Ahmed, formerly a prominent news reader in Bangladesh and now a media and management consultant; Erin Hollaway, former managing editor of National Geographic Adventure (and my girlfriend); and two advisers hired by the Goethe-Institut, a potential funder, Dietmar Zimmermann and Ute Mattigkeit. Brewer, head of Media Helping Media, a UK-based group that provides training to media workers in countries where freedom of expression is under threat, participated via email and Skype.

We held a series of meetings over five days, first to get a sense of the media landscape in Bangladesh and then to help shape Alam’s vision. A consensus was reached early on that the academy should be integrated into the well-established structure of the Pathshala photo school rather than starting from scratch. We agreed upon a swift rollout focused on TV journalists because of the immediate need: Licenses for ten stations were recently granted by the government. They are scheduled to begin broadcasting next year. In other words, there’s a market.

It was decided that the academy would strive to respect the division of labor that exists in Bangladesh TV news at this point while also pushing the news media into the future. According to a 2006 AC Nielsen study cited by Chakrabarty, 41 percent of Bangladeshi households have a TV. There are 257 daily newspapers in this country of 150-plus million. But there are also cutting-edge news services such as bdnews24.com, which performs just as its name suggests, providing web content—news, entertainment, stock quotes—in Bangla and English, plus subscription-only reports sent to mobile phones. Hookups with Thomson Reuters, Deutsche Welle, and BBC provide fresh international news.

Four initial modules were hammered out for the media academy: Producing + Content Editing; Camera; Video Editing; Multimedia Reporting. Other modules will be added as the program finds its footing. Print, radio, and investigative reporting are currently on the list of necessary inclusions.

Each module will stress a set of essential functional skills. Camera operators, for instance, will gain proficiency with a range of ENG equipment, broadcast/streaming formats, software packages, and videography and audio techniques. But all modules will incorporate a set of core competencies: storytelling, visual language, media standards and practices, research and reporting, and teamwork.

Zimmermann and Mattigkeit recommended starting small, with an intensive two-week workshop for journalists. But other participants asserted that skills taught in such short sessions seldom stick. Based on his experience setting up training courses across Asia, Clark proposed a program that would extend over 12 weeks but would be full-time for only two, allowing working journalists to participate. Each module will begin with a six-week introductory course designed to bring students up to similar skill levels. A two-week, full-time intensive training will follow, with classroom and hands-on components led by international and local trainers. The course will continue with a four-week practicum during which students produce an actual TV program, either in collaboration across modules or in situ at their organizations. Instruction and guidance from trainers will be provided as needed in personal meetings and/or via email and phone.

Alam is now seeking partners that could offer the academy degree-granting status, he said. Down the road, he may attempt to navigate Bangladesh’s Byzantine educational bureaucracy and apply for such status. The ultimate goal is to offer a three-year master’s program that would incorporate theoretical courses. But the front-end goals are clear: Raise funds for equipment, hire qualified local trainers (they do exist), flesh out the curriculum, and get butts in seats. If all goes according to plan, the first group will start in May or June.

Formal business plans and a more extensive market study are in the works, but Alam (and the core group) have consulted with media execs and practitioners. Some have expressed lukewarm interest. Others have offered tentative buy-in. A few have actually committed to providing students and facilities.

During a five-hour mother of all meetings called by Alam, news media executives, print and TV reporters, NGO representatives, educators, and media consultants floated strategies, ideas, and criticisms, as well as the occasional pointless bloviation. The country’s most prominent TV journalist, Munni Saha, who reported on last year’s bloody mutiny by members of the Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary force, was perhaps the most passionate (and mercifully succinct) about the academy. The country needs such an institution, she told the group, and people will pay—maybe not CEOs at first, who prefer to hire unskilled people because they are dirt cheap, but individuals who recognize both the Pathshala name and the urgent need for rigorous professional training.

Throughout the session, Alam listened, stepping in occasionally with vital bits of information and finally weighing in with a definitive pronouncement. “We need to be predictive and anticipate what’s going to happen,” he declared in a sonorous baritone. “I’m going to do it.” A few participants felt the need to drag on for another 30 minutes, but the rest of us were already dreaming of the buffet.

Negotiations continue, ground has been broken for a new building to house the academy, and trainers are being identified. If the success of Pathshala the photo school is anything to go by, the academy could very well become a major force in news media—in Bangladesh, in South Asia, and beyond.

Shortly after midnight here in Dhaka, five men convicted of Bangladesh’s most notorious murders were executed—34 years after the offense.

“Three hangmen . . . were brought to Dhaka Central Jail from Kashimpur jail for carrying out the executions,” reported New Age, the country’s second largest English-language newspaper. “Five coffins were taken inside the jail about 10:45pm. Five ambulances were also kept ready at the jail gate.”

When news spread that the nation’s Appellate Division had dismissed the condemned men’s pleas to review the verdicts, several hundred Dhakans gathered around the central jail. The government flooded the area with security forces, including men from the feared paramilitary outfit RAB—Rapid Action Battalion—that has been implicated in a number of extrajudicial killings. After the five men had been hanged, their bodies were loaded into ambulances for transport to their home villages.

This morning, I watched footage shot outside the jail after the execution on a Bangla-language TV news station. An ambulance crept through a horde of people—camera-wielding journalists as well as ordinary citizens—before speeding away.

In 1975, a group of Bangladesh Army officers ordered the execution of the president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Sheikh Mujib, as he was (and still is) known, had led the nation to independence from Pakistan after a brutal war, during which the Pakistani Army, whose base was in the west of the country, committed genocide in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Sheikh Mujib’s home base. The army slaughtered between one and three million East Pakistanis. (An essential aside: The Nixon administration secretly sided with the west, feeding arms and aircraft to the Pakistani Army. Nixon apparently liked Pakistan’s military dictator better than Indira Gandhi, who backed East Pakistan with troops and funds.)

Soldiers stormed Sheikh Mujib’s home and murdered him, his wife, brother, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and two security officers. Only two family members survived. The army then seized power. Soon after, the military regime passed an “indemnity ordinance”—a hastily crafted decree that barred any government entity from bringing the killers to justice. This was more a duvet of immunity than your basic blanket.

Bangladeshis still revere Sheikh Mujib, and this decision taken by the army, which subsequent governments let stand, created a festering wound in the body politic. It’s as if Abe Lincoln and his entire clan had been dispatched and John Wilkes Booth left unpunished—and, in fact, allowed to prosper and hold a high-level post in the Federal government.

Two of Sheikh Mujib’s daughters were out of the country at the time of the murders. The eldest, Sheikh Hasina, is now prime minister. According to her spokesman, Hasina offered prayers of gratitude before the executions.

The streets in the Dhanmondi section of Dhaka, where I am now, are traffic-choked and chaotic, but no more so than usual. Bangladeshi journalist colleagues report no major disturbances or celebrations other than last night’s deathwatch. They are slightly perplexed by the lack of public demonstrations and tell me they suspect that the ruling party, Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, instructed its people not to make a ruckus. The opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has issued no statements. This was an absolutely momentous event with very little public drama.

Six other men convicted of the assassinations—and condemned to death—remain in hiding. Perhaps the reaction will be different when they’re tracked down and given the same treatment. Then again, it might be similarly calm. Let’s hope so. Drama in Bangladesh often gets ugly, and military coups sometimes follow.