The dead awaken from the Rana Plaza collapse and utter these words: “Nobody has murdered me.” It is a line from a street play based on the Rana Plaza collapse, Jotugriho written by Samina Luthfa.
It has been two years since Rana Plaza collapsed. The above line – “Aamarey keo khun korey nai” -- sung and chanted by a young garment worker, is haunting.
Many other issues were raised in the play, shaking the audience awake from the stupor of everyday living. The questions raised time and again are on the issue of compensating the families of the dead. When the dead awaken, they are above the physical pain of their bodies being burned or the limbs being broken to pieces.
Sameena Luthfa, the playwright, uses her mighty pen to ask the tough questions: If one jumps from the third floor and drops dead, does she receive any compensation?
And, suppose both the husband and the wife are dead, who gets the compensation then?
The characters are all adorned in a plastic-like body-bag material to indicate that they are dead, and all of them are curled up in a three-wheeler van.
Nabi, the driver of the van, speaks to the audience and the dead.
On Friday, April 24, Raju Bhashkorjo island on the TSC crossroad (in front of the infamous Suhrawardy gate) was abuzz with programs and protests.
The protests were about the planned molestation of women on Pohela Boishakh, the Rana Plaza tragedy, and in Dhanmondi, the tragic and mysterious death of Nasreen Pervin Huq nine years ago.
One can feel the camaraderie in such a place. One feels that, though this very spot has been the witness to so many tragic incidents, the powerful street plays and the protests make one feel that not all has been lost, that all is not in vain.
Now, other issues have come to the fore, the incident of the molestation during Pohela Boishakh and the Rana Plaza collapse taking a backseat.
The natural disaster -- an earthquake that has taken close to 10,000 lives in Nepal. The man-made disaster -- a chaotic election (where one party tries to outsmart the other) is still fresh on everybody’s mind.
In this country, whenever people feel the need to look towards a Bangladesh full of positivity, the ceaseless crises make it difficult to do so.
Bangladesh is a country of both disasters and possibilities. When disaster strikes, all hope is lost. Issues that were relevant and immediate only a week ago become irrelevant and insignificant, and impunity from all kinds of heinous acts is the order of the day.
Whether it is stuffing the ballot box with false votes, parties withdrawing from election in the early hours of election day, constructing a building for a garment factory that can be collapsed by merely shaking its pillars, leaving thousands dead, or how we take eve teasing for granted as everyday entertainment on the part of hooligans, then of course there is the fact that our city was planned without taking any preparations for earthquakes -- and all of these fall within impunity.
Starting from today, let’s put this culture of impunity behind us. Not only at the social level, but at the personal level too, we are witness to corruption and sexual violence and choose to silently bear it.
And we do so to safeguard the family honour.
We put our highest priority on the pain that we may cause our families and our next of kin, and in the process, we expect the victim to understand the issue. But are we right in doing so?
If the culture of impunity is not rooted out from our personal spheres, can we ever expect to root it out from our social and political ones?
I would like to end with a writing by Zara Jabeen Mahbub, an optimist and an agent of change:
Hey you
Hey you … yes you,
You have no right to play with my present.
You have no right to play with my future.
You have no right to take away my child.
You have no right to subject me to torture.
Hey you … yes you,
You have no right to cast my vote.
You have no right to burn my car.
You have no right to make my choices.
You have no right to fight my war.
Hey you … yes you,
You have no right to touch me.
You have no right to make me ashamed.
You have no right to put me in a box.
You have no right to give me names.
Hey you … yes you,
You have no right to call me a nationalist.
You have no right to call me an atheist.
You have no right to call me a mullah.
You have no right to call me a fundamentalist.
Hey you … yes you,
You have no right to tie my feet.
You have no right to silence me.
You have no right to take away my freedom.
You have the right to just let me be.
