Bangladesh
is in an extremely sensitive pre-electoral situation. I arrived today to Dhaka
and despite the impressive reports we receive every day in our countries, they
are not being completely able to picture how the climate is tense over here.
People are afraid. The Police and the Military are on the streets. National
strikes are being organized by the opposition parties. In the streets of Dhaka
small bombs and explosives like “cocktail molotov” are being dropped. Different
neighborhoods of the city are being affected and from while to while we can
hear gun shots in places that used to be safe and secure.
In
2012 I was in Bangladesh for 11 days and now this is my 2nd time here.
Since I arrived I noticed that some things have changed. Some infrastructures are
new since then and many roads and buildings are being built. In what concerns
to construction we can see real progress. I first thought that the lack of the
usually omnipresent traffic jams were the consequence of the existence of new
roads, but that was not its main cause: due to an opposition-called 84 hour “hartal”
(strike), many services completely stopped.
 |
| Nowadays it is not safe to travel by train in Bangladesh |
Another
thing I saw was an overwhelming presence of Police and the Military on the
streets, mainly in the intersections between main roads and secondary streets.
This strategic placement is to avoid attacks in the main roads of groups coming
from narrower streets to drop explosives and make more casualties. I was going
by car and within the small distance from the airport up to my hotel, Police forces
stopped the car twice for searching purposes. But as they saw that I was a
foreigner, they quickly let us go. The respect for foreigners is part of this
culture. Each and every road intersection is filled with police forces in
groups of 5 to 10 people, all carrying visible machine guns.
After
I left my luggage in the Hotel I went by rickshaw to visit the Holy Rosary Church,
which is a beautiful catholic temple. You probably know that Dhaka is known for
being the city of rickshaws, with around 4 hundred thousand cycle-rickshaws
driving around every day. Today rickshaw is the safest means of transport in
Dhaka because it is the only which allows us to jump and run at any time. Some
buses, CNG’s and cars were attacked during last days. So we went through Tejgaon,
where the Prime-Minister’s office is, and 10 minutes after we heard an
explosion noise and gun shots nearby. The security guard of the church told me
to come inside the Church gates and then locked the entrance. After a while,
everything was back to “normal”.
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| Dhaka - Entrance gates of the Holy Rosary Church |
People
are afraid and tense; we can see that in almost everybody’s eyes. The Bangladeshis
are worried about what may happen next days, before and during and after
elections. In 2012 I told all my friends that I never saw a city with so much
life and movement as Dhaka. Many times I even complained that I could not sleep
with so much honking in the street, 24 hours per day in a non-stop mode. And
trust me, I am a heavy sleeper. But now, as I am writing this night, I cannot
see one single person in this main avenue. Nobody dares to be out there in this
megacity of 15 million people which used to be one of those that never sleeps. It
seems that fear is reigning in Dhaka.
This
is all for today.
António Vieira da Cruz
SADF reporting from Bangladesh
Dhaka,
the 11th of November 2013
