[Reader-list] Detained in India, arrested in Bangladesh

[A.K. Malik]

Hi,
    The entire episode seems Straight from our Bollywood.Unable to express views whom to blame especially the part where he was called to Indian territory.BSF jawans??

(A.K.MALIK)


--- On Mon, 6/22/09, Harsh Kapoor <aiindex at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Detained in India, arrested in Bangladesh
> To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Date: Monday, June 22, 2009, 4:41 AM
> New Age, 22 June 2009
> 
> Detained in India, arrested in Bangladesh
> 
> Shahidul Alam in an interview with Rahnuma Ahmed
> 
> 
> Please tell us about your project and why you were detained
> by the
> Indian Border Security Force.
> 
>    I started the Brahmaputra project in the
> late 1990s. It’s an
> incredible river that goes from Tibet through Arunachal and
> Assam in
> India, into Bangladesh and all the way into the Bay of
> Bengal. In the
> early part of the project I’d done some video footage in
> Tibet and
> India, but not any in Bangladesh. We at Drik felt that we
> should try
> and produce a film, so my colleagues in the audiovisual
> department,
> Sumeru Mukhopadhyay and Abul Kasem, and I went off to
> Nijhum Deep in
> the south, in the Bay of Bengal on 11th June for 3 days.
> 
>    We returned to Dhaka, then went to
> Rowmari on the 15th to
> photograph the section of the river where it crosses from
> India to
> Bangladesh. We drove up to Chilmari, went by boat to the
> Rowmari side,
> found a guesthouse. It was late afternoon, and we thought
> we should go
> out on a recce. As photographers we had obviously cameras,
> and I had a
> video camera with me.
> 
>    As it often happens in villages,
> distances are not the same as we
> measure it in the city, so whenever we asked people where
> it was,
> they’d say, ‘just out there’, ‘a little bit
> further’, ‘ten more
> minutes...’ We ended up travelling quite a long way, by
> van, a little
> by boat, then we walked through market places, by
> people’s homes, with
> cameras dangling on either side, three strangers, creating
> a lot of
> attention.
> 
>    At one point we were walking across some
> paddy fields, and an
> elderly farmer stopped me and said, this is a difficult way
> to go, why
> don’t you go on to the road which is nearby. This was a
> clay track
> road, very overgrown, not much of a road, but soon after I
> got on to
> this road armed BSF (Indian Border Security Force) people
> from the
> other side of the fence beckoned me. I knew this was a
> dangerous
> situation. I knew that 52 Bangladeshis had been gunned down
> by the BSF
> during the last 6 months. I was possibly only 50 yards away
> – well
> within their shooting range. It wasn’t sensible to do
> anything other
> than comply. So, I walked calmly towards them, making plans
> about how
> I should proceed.
> 
>    As I had sort of expected when I got
> close to the gate, they opened
> the gate, several of them ran out and literally dragged me
> inside. And
> locked the gate. I was well and truly within India.
> 
>    You mean there were no border signposts.
> 
>    No, there was absolutely no sign
> mentioning territory, or that we
> were crossing into restricted zone, whether it was no
> man’s land or
> anything else. These were paddy fields we were walking
> across. When I
> got onto this dirt track, there was still no sign. One
> could see there
> was the Indian border far away, one could certainly see the
> fence. And
> it was soon after I got onto the dirt track that the BSF
> beckoned me.
> But before that, there’d been absolutely no indication
> that we were
> outside anywhere of Bangladesh.
> 
>    But what about BDR soldiers?
> 
>    No, none. Certainly, we’d expected
> there to be BDR jawans and other
> people, or at least some sort of an indication near the
> border, but
> there weren’t any.
> 
>    After the BSF pulled you into their
> gates, what happened? Did they
> assault you?
> 
>    No. They came out and grabbed me, and
> dragged me in. They (how many
> were they?) about 5 or 6, there were more inside, they were
> a bit
> rough in dragging me in but I wouldn’t say I was
> assaulted.
> 
>    As a seasoned photojournalist, how did
> you strategise, to get out
> of this situation?
> 
>    Well, since I was in their firing range
> what was most important was
> to stay alive. Once inside, there was the question of
> avoiding
> physical violence. I felt I would be much safer in the
> hands of senior
> officers than in the hands of jawans, trigger-happy jawans
> in
> particular. Knowing the history between the BSF and
> Bangladeshis, I
> felt that presenting myself as a Bangladeshi was going to
> be suicidal.
> 
>    I made the decision that I was going to
> be a foreign photographer,
> out on an assignment. I decided I would speak only in
> English. I did
> have Bangladeshi identity with me which I didn’t want to
> show. I also
> had a UK driver’s license, so it made sense for me to be
> British. I
> mentioned National Geographic because that was a known name
> and even
> out here the jawans might have heard of it. I also
> calculated that
> bringing in a US component could give me some sort of
> insularity,
> given the power of the US, and the fact that India was its
> close ally.
> As for the National Geographic, I am on their Advisory
> Board. I give a
> lecture there every year, I’m involved in many of their
> seminars so I
> do have a long relationship with the organisation but I
> wasn’t on
> assignment for them.
> 
>    My initial attempt at convincing them
> that I was a foreigner with
> British and US connections was merely power play. I was
> trying to make
> sure the jawans felt I wasn’t some Bangladeshi they could
> beat up and
> kill, but someone from far away, who had better
> connections. And
> frankly, I was using the race and class card.
> 
>    What happened after that?
> 
>    Well, talk of the National Geographic, of
> being British, shook them
> a little bit. Of course, I pretended I didn’t speak
> Bangla or Hindi. I
> heard them talking amongst each other, saying that perhaps
> it wasn’t
> such a good idea to take a foreigner, perhaps they should
> let him go.
> 
>    I decided to push my luck further. I
> said, unless you let me speak
> to my National Geographic colleagues they might report to
> head office.
> Then I rang you, my partner, and I spoke to you in my best
> British
> accent. I remember it took you a little while since we
> don’t speak to
> each other in English, but you quickly twigged. More for
> the audience
> than for anyone else, I fairly loudly told you to inform
> the prime
> minister, the home minister, the BDR people, the BSF head,
> etc. I
> pulled names out of my hat willy-nilly, but making sure
> they were
> important-sounding names, so that that these jawans
> recognised that I
> was a very important person, with important connections.
> 
>    How were you treated by BSF once they
> knew that you were a big-shot
> photographer?
> 
>    Once the officers arrived, I felt, I was
> more in control. They
> wanted to look at my identity card, asked for my address.
> Soon, the
> officer, a Mr PK Roy, a Bengali, was convinced that I was
> not an
> ordinary Bangladeshi but probably an important foreign
> photographer.
> Their attitude began to change. He asked the jawans to get
> me a cup of
> tea.
> 
>    Later, he got a phone call, from
> obviously a senior person on his
> side, who presumably told him that I should be released,
> that I should
> be taken good care of. Now, it was a question of the
> information
> percolating down to the lower levels of command, and
> getting a written
> confirmation from his immediate superiors before he could
> release me.
> 
>    Much later, sweets were bought from the
> market. The tone of the
> conversation, and the dynamics, changed completely. But, as
> it was
> getting dark, they were convinced no handover would take
> place at
> night. I was taken to a guesthouse nearby, into a room,
> with a
> television, a telephone with a handle, a bed, an attached
> bathroom.
> Very clean, very pleasant place, and given dinner. Mr PK
> Roy was very
> concerned that I was made to feel looked after. I spoke to
> his
> commander who was extremely polite, apologised for the
> situation, and
> said that the BDR had been informed. I would be handed over
> to the
> BDR, as soon as communication took place. I thanked him,
> and assured
> him that I was being well looked after. It was a very
> civil
> conversation.
> 
>    What were your concerns then, as a
> photographer?
> 
>    I’d been taking pictures along the way.
> I’d been shooting with a
> wide angle lens. I was pretty certain that my wide angle
> shots, my
> landscape photos etc, would have segments of the space I
> was going
> through, which I now realised was illegal. I didn’t want
> to get caught
> with these pictures, so I worked out how to remove this
> incriminating
> evidence.
> 
>    What happened after you were handed over?
> It was at 11:15, right?
> 
>    Yes, around then. It was pitch dark,
> dense shrubbery, bad roads. We
> came to a point where Mr PK Roy said this is where the sign
> is [Indian
> no man’s land begins]. So I said, well, please show me
> the sign. They
> looked around, but couldn’t find it. They apologised and
> said, please
> believe us, it’s here, we can’t find it right now. Then
> they met the
> BDR people, again, a very civil meeting. The BSF produced a
> document
> for the BDR to sign, when I was handed over.
> 
>    Once the Indians left, the BDR subedar
> got a phone call from his
> commanding officer. He spoke to me then, and initially
> accused me,
> apni lukie gecchen, you sneaked into this place. I strongly
> objected
> because we’d come in broad daylight, three of us, we had
> equipment, we
> had asked people for directions. He then changed his tack.
> He said
> there were some formalities which I had to go through,
> papers I needed
> to sign. Of course, I agreed.
> 
>    And did you learn from the Kurigram BDR,
> how they came to know of
> your detention by the BSF? Was it locally, or from Dhaka?
> 
>    No, I found out later from conversations,
> they’d received the
> information from Dhaka. In fact, the subedar was very
> worried about
> this. When the BDR director general had rung from Dhaka, he
> had
> specific information about where I was. But the local-level
> BDR hadn’t
> a clue.
> 
>    And why do you think those at the
> local-level didn’t know?
> 
>    I was told about this later. I was
> chatting to them and they said,
> we’d normally have known. It wouldn’t have occurred but
> we had some
> VIP guests. We had been busy entertaining the VIPs.
> 
>    And after that...?
> 
>    Initially, we went to the BDR camp, three
> of us on a motorcycle,
> miles away from where this incident took place. They
> offered me food
> which had apparently been prepared for the VIP guests so it
> was good
> food. They kept saying another 5-10 minutes, but after a
> long time, I
> said look, what’s going on here, I want to get back. We
> eventually
> started walking but instead of taking me to the guesthouse,
> they took
> me to the thana. Another long wait, close conversations
> between BDR
> personnel and police. At one stage, I said, I’m very
> appreciative that
> you’ve got me out of India. But I’m now a citizen in my
> own country,
> you have no right to keep me here unless you’re arresting
> me for
> something. I got up to walk away and that’s when I
> realised they
> weren’t going to let me leave the place. By then I learnt
> from local
> people who had come to the thana that the BDR was about to
> file a case
> against me. At this stage I rang you again, this was about
> 2:30/3:00
> in the morning. Shortly after this, they confiscated my
> cameras, and
> my phone. I no longer had direct access to anyone.
> 
>    So, why did the Bangladesh government
> file a case against you?
> 
>    It’s conjecture, of course. The local
> BDR were extremely worried
> about the predicament they were in. The fact that they had
> no
> knowledge of this incident, that the border had been
> completely
> un-manned, that there was no BDR person in sight, that they
> didn’t
> know about it even after the local people had gotten to
> know. It left
> them with egg on their face. And again, the original
> accusation by the
> colonel suggested that there was an attempt to put the
> blame and onus
> upon us, that we had sneaked into this place, which was
> clearly not
> true. So, there was huge negligence on the part of the BDR,
> and I
> suspect they needed some sort of a diversionary tactic to
> cover up for
> their omission.
> 
>    Did your bail application and the court
> proceedings go through smoothly?
> 
>    Yes, everyone was very cooperative. I was
> also granted permission
> to travel abroad. I am scheduled for an exclusive photo
> shoot with
> Nelson Mandela, and there are other important assignments
> that I
> wouldn’t like to miss, yes, things went very well. Most
> Kurigram
> lawyers and journalists were they. They rallied around me.
> 
>    If you were not who you are, what could
> have happened?
> 
>    Possibly, the worst. The BDR men
> themselves told me that I’d done a
> very wise thing by walking up to them, not attempting to
> run, or doing
> anything silly. They said they were scared to go to these
> places.
> That, sometimes, criminals take shelter from the police by
> going to
> these regions because they know that the police are scared
> of
> venturing there. So, by all concerned it was known to be
> dangerous
> territory. That there was a huge amount of harassment, they
> themselves
> felt harassed, and certainly ordinary people were harassed,
> but what
> they kept coming back to every time was, you’d probably
> have been
> dead.
> 
>    You saw the fence built by the Indian
> government at close quarters
> – probably closer than you had planned (laughter,
> audible) – I’d like
> to know what you think of that.
> 
>    I have been to many countries. I have
> seen many borders. I know of
> the Palestinian border, but outside of that this is
> certainly the most
> imposing, dominating, scary, border post that I have come
> across. I’ve
> gone across the Germany-Poland border, where you’ve had
> surveillance
> equipment, you’ve had people with night shooting guns,
> but in none of
> those situations have I seen anything that looks as scary
> as this
> particular fence. The fact that we are neighbouring
> countries, the
> fact that we are meant to have a friendly relationship, is
> no way
> signified by the presence of a physical entity of this
> sort.
> 
>    One of the things that also worries me is
> that there are many
> people who have friends, relatives, very close ones across
> the border,
> they have to travel one day to get to Rajshahi, apply for a
> visa a
> month in advance, the costs, the time, the preparation, all
> of the
> things that need to be done merely to be able to go across
> to visit a
> near one, simply cannot be condoned.
> 
>    Considering that India has played such an
> important role in the
> liberation of Bangladesh, one would have expected a very,
> very
> different relationship between these two countries.
> Considering that
> we call ourselves members of SAARC [South Asian Association
> for
> Regional Cooperation], we’d expect far more cordial
> relations between
> ourselves. The fence, the fact that the BSF is so
> trigger-happy, the
> fact that 52 Bangladeshis have been gunned down in the last
> 6 months,
> the fact that it is a zone of terror for local people and
> for our BDR,
> speaks volumes of what it should not be about.
> 
>    How high is the fence?
> 
>    The gate itself, I’m trying to remember
> now, large black gates,
> double gates, about ten feet tall, 20 feet wide, I think.
> But the
> fence, the barbed wire extends above that, [what, it
> extends above the
> gate?] well, not above the gate itself, but it’s higher
> than the gate,
> stretching on both sides, as far as the eye can see.
> 
>    It’s still quite early, but how do you
> look back at the incident?
> 
>    That’s a big question. My first concern
> is that I have to finish my
> story so I have to work. The story is incomplete, it needs
> to be told,
> not only the Brahmaputra story, but given this situation,
> the border
> story. I think it becomes even more important today,
> knowing what I do
> now, that we question the structures that makes such a
> situation
> possible. But, before anything else, I need to thank the
> many, many
> people who have done so much for me over this period of
> time.
> 
>    And again, I reflect upon this in a
> different way. Obviously, I am
> happy that I am out of danger. But I also reflect upon two
> issues,
> one, the fact that while I was detained and later released
> by India, I
> have actually been arrested by my own country in the course
> of doing
> what happens to be my duty, what is in the public interest.
> I also
> think it is important to reflect on the fact that at a
> political
> level, at an official level, there are these huge
> differences between
> our nations, but at a human level, at a personal level,
> there exists
> huge camaraderie.
> 
>    Some of the people who did the most in
> getting me released were my
> colleagues, my journalist friends across the border in
> India, and of
> course, Mahasweta Devi. She had, as you know, inaugurated
> CchobiMela
> V, so, in a way this reflects how we as professionals, as
> artists, as
> individuals, have this camaraderie, have this openness,
> have this
> mutual respect, have this pull toward each other, which
> does not seem
> to be reflected by the people who govern our nations.
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