On the evening of May 25, I attended a function at a local hotel to celebrate the 96th birthday and the platinum jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Also being celebrated were the 50 years of diplomatic relations between Bangladesh and the United Kingdom.
The gathering was addressed by both British High Commissioner Robert Chatterton-Dickson and the chief guest, Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury. The high commissioner highlighted that the theme of the celebration event was “Empowering Girls to Change the World.”
The high commissioner recalled Bangabandhu’s arrival in London from captivity in Pakistan on January 8, 1972 and his arrival, to a tremendous welcome, in Dhaka on January 10, 1972. With a considerable emotional feeling, I was able to remember my meeting with Bangabandhu, only two weeks later, on January 24, 1972 during which he guided me, as Oxfam UK’s representative, about what Oxfam might be able to do in the fields of relief and rehabilitation.
On the big screens at the event, film of the 1953 coronation and scenes through the queen’s reign, were being shown. I was able to remember where I was at the time of the Queen’s coronation in June 1953. At the age of eight years, I was lying down on the floor, on a woollen rug at an uncle and aunt’s farm home in South Australia. In the middle of an Australian night, I was listening to the radio which was describing everything that was going on in London.
We had also received the news that wartime (WWII) rationing had ended so that people could celebrate the queen’s coronation. That was very good news for my sisters and me because until then, we could only get chocolate for birthdays and Christmas.
Travelling to the 5-star hotel which is on the Airport Road and during “rush hour,” I was reminded again how many drivers drive in reckless ways and how many pedestrians risk their own lives trying to cross a very busy dual carriageway road even when there is a footbridge not many metres away.
Everyone -- parents, teachers, police, and politicians -- needs to wake up. Children need to be taught about road safety from a very early age. It is important to start teaching in pre-primary classes. I remember being taught, in the UK, the “Green Cross Code,” how to safely cross the road. It was, in some ways, difficult at that time to learn because in the 1950s in the UK there were not so many cars and sometimes we had to wait for a car to appear. Not a problem here in Dhaka!
Of course, road safety in Bangladesh will not improve until corruption is dramatically and comprehensively tackled in the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority and the police. Driving licences can be “managed” for a handsome fee as can the traffic police.
So, there are lakhs of drivers driving who have never been taught how to drive and what the rules are. Few take a driving test, and there are countless vehicles, particularly buses and trucks, who buy their way through “fitness tests” for their vehicles. I call these vehicles “Death on Wheels.”
There is another menace. Two days ago I was walking from Gulshan 2 crossing to Banani. I was walking past the big police station and motorbikes were driving on the pavement. The police were doing nothing. At one point I blocked the way for motorbikes on the pavement and the conversation in Bangla and English went like this:
Me: “This is not for motorbikes.”
Answer: “Sorry sir, this is Bangladesh. Everyone does it”
Me: “There are laws and you are breaking the law in a dangerous way.”
Answer: “You are a bideshi, you do not understand how things are done here.”
I then showed them my Bangladesh National ID Card and one of the riders got off his bike and touched my feet and asked for forgiveness.
What more to say?
Julian Francis has been associated with relief and development activities of Bangladesh since the War of Liberation. In 2012, the Government of Bangladesh awarded him the ‘Friends of Liberation War Honour’ in recognition of his work among the refugees in India in 1971 and in 2018 honoured him with full Bangladesh citizenship.