#moazzem hossain

[indizombie]

In the week leading up to 10 November 1987, the city of Dhaka was tense. President Hussain Muhammad Ershad had cut off the Bangladeshi capital from the rest of the country, severing virtually all communication channels. Schools, colleges, and universities had been shut and students ordered to vacate halls. Political protests and rallies had been banned, and Ershad, a military dictator, was using emergency powers to detain hundreds of pro-democracy activists. But opposition political forces were mobilising thousands of supporters to press for the president's resignation. On the morning of 10 November, I was among the thousands of activists heading for the protest. We never made it. At about 9am, me and several other protesters were picked up by riot police. We were beaten mercilessly, bundled into a lorry and taken to the police station. As the day wore on, more political prisoners were brought in. There were running battles all over Dhaka. Some of the protesters brought in had bullet wounds. Among the bodies one stood out - it had a slogan painted on the bare chest. The words, in bright white paint against the man's lifeless brown skin, electrified us. "Sairachar nipat jak" - "Down with autocracy". The body belonged to a man named Noor Hossain. We didn't know who he was then. We didn't know that the spot where he was gunned down would be named after him. We didn't know he would go on to become famous - his sacrifice immortalised in books and films, in poems and on postage stamps. We didn't know that a photograph of him taken moments before he died would become a symbol of our generation's long and bloody struggle for democracy. The day after Noor died, aged 26, pictures of him appeared on the front pages of newspapers around Bangladesh, shocking the government and inspiring millions. The protests he and I were involved in in 1987 were violently put down, but three years later another protest movement succeeded in toppling President Ershad, and many of those protesters were inspired by the image of Noor Hossain.

Moazzem Hossain, ‘Noor Hossain and the image that helped bring down a dictator’, BBC

[indizombie]

Ershad's nine-year rule came to an end in 1990, when he was forced to resign in the face of a mass uprising. Days later he was imprisoned. Thousands of people were marching, singing, dancing on the streets of Dhaka. I can still remember the jubilation of that day. The country had not seen anything like it since independence in 1971. It felt like a new dawn, a fresh start for Bangladesh. But it was short lived. The two main parties, the Awami League and the BNP, were soon locked in a bitter fight for power. In the coming decades they took turns to rule the country, deploying the very same authoritarian tactics used by the old regime. Bangladesh's descent back into authoritarianism pains the activists who suffered in their long fight for freedom against General Ershad. "We sacrificed our youth, the best part of our life, to fight for democracy," said Nasir-ud-doza, a veteran of the 1990 uprising who I first met in a police lorry in 1987, where he was being kicked repeatedly as the lorry rumbled along the road to the station. "I will never be able to forgive those politicians who killed our dream for their petty personal or party interests," he said. Bangladesh had briefly enjoyed democracy "in its full flourish", Ikram Hossain recalled, "like a bright full moon in the night sky". "Where is that democracy now?" he said.

Moazzem Hossain, ‘Noor Hossain and the image that helped bring down a dictator’, BBC

[indizombie]

The general, who died last year, had an easy-going, charming personality, but he had many faces. He came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1982, following the same script used by military rulers all over the world - pledging to fight corruption, reform the government and clean up politics. He made Islam the state religion of Bangladesh, fundamentally changing the secular constitution, to please religious conservatives. His electoral victory in 1986 was marred by charges of voter fraud, and while in office Ershad suspended the country's constitution and parliament and cracked down on political opponents. And he presided over the violent putting down of the 1987 protests that landed me in a prison cell and cost Noor Hossain his life. General Ershad was also vain. He had his poems - rumoured to be written by ghostwriters - published on the front page of national newspapers, while heavily censoring the papers' news reports.

Moazzem Hossain, ‘Noor Hossain and the image that helped bring down a dictator’, BBC

[mknewsmedia]

Adieu, the Editor