-An email from one of my students to start off my Tuesday morning. So I get to school and I ask my Grade 7 boys to explain to me, who is this person that they want executed? Why does it make the city more dangerous? And they tell me his name is Abdul Kader Mullah, which means nothing to me. Then one boy says, "Apparently in war there are rules, and he broke the rules during the war of independence with Pakistan in 1971."
"Oh, he's guilty of war crimes?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"So why are they hanging him now?"
"Because our legal system is so corrupt. They tried to put him in prison but he kept getting out then he was given a life sentence but the people thought that was too light a sentence because he's guilty of...what's that word when you purposefully kill a lot of people? Like what Hitler did?"
"A genocide?"
"Yeah, some people call it a genocide what he did because he was killing all the intellectuals in the country. He was on the side of Pakistan...like a Loyalist in British North America." (Huh, I guess I am teaching him something in Social Studies, nice.)
"So they are going to hang him today?"
Other student pipes in, "He's so old, they could just push him down the stairs and be done with it."
"Well, it doesn't quite work that way...Why would his execution make it dangerous in the city today?"
"Because he's a political leader of the opposition party, the people who are doing all the hartals, and they will be mad and probably have more hartals."
"Is that any different than right now? We've had hartals practically every day for the past two months."
"No, it won't be that different, just more cars being burned, and bombs going off, but you live in Banani so you're fine."
Yes, I am fine. I have yet to see a burning car or hear a bomb going off anywhere close to me. But I went to the public hospital on Saturday and visited the children's ward in the burn victim unit. Many of these children were on a bus that got torched, or were crossing the street when a bomb went off. They are not fine. They have terrible burns, they are in severe pain, they have remedial medical attention. The conditions of the hospital are appalling. If you ever watch the movie, "The Impossible" about the Tsunami in Thailand, you will get a sense of what public hospitals in this part of the world look like. There are not enough beds, patients with open wounds are lying on the floor in the hallways on blankets. The most they can do for the burns is bandage them up. We came to deliver little care packages, one for each child. It's a kind gesture, but it doesn't solve the issue. It doesn't change the fact that these families can't afford better health care for their children. It doesn't stop the violence from happening to the most vulnerable people in society. I did however, see a lot of faces light up as we handed out the little bags of treats and school supplies. And putting a smile on the face of a child who has been through that much is definitely worth something...but it left me wishing I could do more.
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| 90 packages, ready for delivery |
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| Dhaka Medical College: Public Hospital |
http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/newspaper/
Or the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25356034
Let's pray for peace.
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