Dhaka Tribune correspondent Jebun Nesa Alo faced quite an ordeal at Ideal College on election duty.
All this began when she saw two young men, barely in their 30s, had gathered about 30 adolescents and lined them up for voting. “But they were obviously not yet 18.”
A reporter for about six years now, Alo covers finance and economy for the Tribune and commutes on her bike. She is used to the occasional hassles of a working woman who has to pound the streets day in and day out.
“But this was something I had never imagined might happen, that too at a college in the heart of Dhaka.”
Fearing bodily harm and assault, Alo had to leave the centre within about 45 minutes as election officials stood by and police were absent.
She was walking the corridors of the virtually empty centre when Alo saw the young children lining up to vote, and took a few pictures on her mobile phone. “At that point, one of the two men who were calling the shots snatched away my mobile phone.”
One of those men, who identified himself later as Babu, said that photographing was not allowed inside the polling centres and deleted all the pictures. Alo told him she was a journalist on election duty. But all the young man said was that he was an agent for "fish" (ruling Awami League-backed Sayeed Khokon’s symbol).
At this point, Alo was surrounded by 15-20 polling agents of Sayeed Khokon who taunted her and made lewd comments while Alo looked for the presiding officer.
“The police or the election officials were nowhere to be seen, although I had spoken to the presiding officer just a while back,” said Alo.
When she did manage to speak to the presiding officer, the man, visibly scared, said he could not comment on the matter and asked her to go upstairs to see for herself what was going on.
Alo went up and found there were no polling agents for "mug" (BNP-backed Mirza Abbas’ symbol). She was surrounded by even more of the polling agents a second time, and the taunts and lewd comments went up a few notches this time. Her phone was snatched away by the same Babu a second time.
The smart young man clearly threatened her and said she was getting into trouble. She got back her cell phone on the condition that she would leave immediately.
“I was so scared that my hands were shaking,” said Alo back at the Dhaka Tribune office. “I did not take out the other cell phone, afraid that they would see my hands were shaking and realise that I was very scared.”
(Buy tomorrow’s paper to read a detailed account in Alo’s own words.)