Editor’s note: This is the second in a five-part series on the price of freedom, by exploring the work and experience of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh. Deseret News Opinion Editor Jay Evensen has known Yunus since 1997, when the world leader first visited Utah. Evensen traveled to Dhaka to speak again with Yunus, entrepreneurs, politicians in the country, and even revolutionaries seeking change, to understand the risks Yunus is enduring and why peace and opportunity in Bangladesh are so important to the United States.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH — As I sit across the desk from Aparna Roy Das, the 49-year-old whose political career, like that of her father, has been marred by broken bones, torture and harassment, the question seems so obvious it practically leaps from the walls.
Why do you choose to be a politician when there are such dangers?
Just a few minutes later, as we discuss whether rival parties and factions might disrupt upcoming elections with more violence, the chants of protesters begin to grow outside the window behind where Das sits at her desk, a window covered in blinds, here in the capital city of Bangladesh.
These chants quickly become loud enough to interrupt our discussion. I feel compelled to ask my interpreter, Tathira Baatul, a young research assistant and aspiring journalist, “Is that a good protest?”
“I’m not sure,” she answers.
Such is the rough-and-tumble world of politics in Bangladesh. At the time of this interview, the party to which Das belongs, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, was supportive of interim leader Muhammad Yunus’ efforts to reform the nation before holding elections. Today, the BNP is restless, urging Yunus to hold elections quickly, ostensibly because it is expected to win popular support.
But as the chants rise during our interview in February, Das has just described for us how, for 15 years, she could not use this office because police, presumably operating under Hasina’s orders, had destroyed its contents. She also had been tortured.
“Both of my knees were broken by the police during the first strike in 2010,” she said, according to a transcript of our interview, translated and provided to me by Baatul after the meeting. “And since then, I have been tortured multiple times in police custody and in court. They tortured me from my legs to my head.
“Even now, because of that torture, I am physically unwell, though in terms of mental strength, I remain resilient. I was never able to go abroad for treatment.”
A family acquainted with torture
She wasn’t the first in her family to endure such punishment for political activism. Her mother died last Dec. 29, she tells me, “because of 17 years of oppression.”
“She spent those years alone, visiting prisons, as someone from our family was always behind bars. She fought against the administration by herself, and after enduring so much, she suffered a stroke.”
On the many times her father was arrested, she used to pray he was in jail, because if not, it might mean he had been made to disappear, as too many were during those years.
“He is a freedom fighter, but the kind of brutality he faced was unimaginable,” she said. “He had even said, holding his chest like Abu Sayed, ‘If they are to kill my people, kill me first.‘”
Sayed was a well-known student activist who was among the first to die during the uprising last summer that resulted in a full-scale revolution in Bangladesh. That resulted in Hasina fleeing to India, after which the students convinced Yunus, Nobel laureate and “banker to the poor,” to head an interim government.
He leads it to this day, despite mounting pressures from political parties and the military.
And Das now serves as assistant secretary for marginal manpower development affairs within the BNP.
But the question remains. After watching both parents suffer physically and mentally for so many years; after seeing former prime minister and Bangladesh’s “Mother of Democracy,” Begum Khaleda Zia, endure torture; and after having her own bones broken by the blows of state police, is it worth it to continue?
Why not pick a safer profession?
First, she was born into a political family, Das said. Her father, Gayeshwar Chandra Ray, is a standing committee member of the BNP.
“I have witnessed these things from a young age, as I have seen my parents engaged in politics. Therefore, it was never a question of whether I would join or not,” she said.
Later, she grows a bit more thoughtful.
“There is democracy and the right to speak, but this was not the case in our country,” Das said. “My father endured so much torture, and after he was injured, we didn’t know where the police had kept him. It was an extremely frightening day for me because three members of my family were in the hospital, and I couldn’t find my father.
“Many people told me not to look for him, because they would arrest me too and torture me, but I wasn’t afraid. I was always in the streets. Now, even if I see any injustice in the country, especially from those who want to take everything from Bangladesh, I will protest against them in any way, shape or form that I can.
“If the torture had not happened to my father, but to someone else, I would have done the same thing.”
Pericles is quoted as saying, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Bangladesh improvements
That is especially true for many in Bangladesh, a nation of 171.5 million people that fills a geographical area about the size of Iowa. Since it won independence from Pakistan in 1971, it has struggled to establish democratic traditions, suffering assassinations, coups and despotism. To much of the world, it seems remote and inconsequential.
Yet hope flickers strong in politicians such as Das and others who seem strengthened through trials. It is a hope from which the world could learn. It is a hope reflected in the easy smiles I encountered in villages outside Dhaka. It is a hope bolstered by belief, and it is one that has me reflecting on the fragility of freedom.
The Bangladeshi economy has grown, despite hardships. The World Bank said Bangladesh had reached “lower-middle income status” by 2015. GDP grew by 6.4% between 2010 and 2023, and the poverty rate fell from 11.8% to 5% during roughly the same period. Still, that’s an international poverty level based on only $2.15 per day. The moderate poverty rate, measured at $3.65 per day in 2017 dollars, is at 30%.
Even with rising prosperity, hunger and low wages can bring politics close to everyone. When elections come again, the nation will learn much about itself and how far it has come. It will learn whether the Awami League, the political party allied with now-deposed former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, intends to be disruptive, or even violent. The party has been outlawed while investigations proceed into violence committed during student protests last summer.
Das, who believes interim government leader Yunus has done much to reinstate basic freedoms, answers easily as I ask her what she hopes Bangladesh will be like in 10 or 20 years.
“I want Bangladesh to be a place where everyone can eat, vote and sleep peacefully,” she says. “I want our daughters to be able to go outside without fear. I dream of a beautiful, just Bangladesh, one where we don’t have to live at the cost of others’ blood.
“This Bangladesh, which we gained through the sacrifices of millions, must rise again. I want justice for the massacre that occurred at the border between India and Bangladesh. My neighbor should be my friend, but our neighbor harms us. We seek freedom from that harm.
“Above all conspiracies, I want a beautiful Bangladesh.”
This is the real answer to the question. This is why she serves.
And if that day comes, no one could say people like Das haven’t paid the price for it.
It takes only minutes for Das and her colleagues in the room to determine that the protests we hear on the street outside are from her supporters. We are in no danger.
And yet, I am left pondering how I felt for the brief moment when I didn’t know. How would it feel to know they were, indeed, hostile, as Das has had to face so often in her life?
