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THE VERTICAL
Opinion
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Dhaka
The Awami League’s think tank, the Center for Research Information, had a “flagship publication”: WhiteBoard magazine. Projecting a modern, Anglophone, elite identity, WhiteBoard was part of a small media ecosystem that helped to whitewash a despotic power, with youthful figures deploying their credentials in international academic and publishing circles. What to make of WhiteBoard’s advisory board members who distance themselves from the Awami League now?

Untitled (2024), digital collage by Kamil Ahsan

The WhiteBoard Board

It’s been three weeks since the mass uprising in Bangladesh ousted the Awami League regime of Sheikh Hasina, and I remain glued to social media. Morning, noon, and night.


One morning, eyes barely open, I wake up to several Facebook posts up in arms over an article in the Dhaka newspaper Bonik Barta, titled “CRI and WhiteBoard: Radwan Mujib Siddiq Bobby and his advisory board.” I see a screenshot from Bonik Barta with the faces of ten people. I recognize five. A few of them I have called my friends in the past, although distance crept in during the final years of the Hasina regime. Two have now shared Facebook posts denying they were ever a part of the advisory board of the Center for Research and Information (CRI). They say they had only been members of the editorial advisory board for CRI’s magazine, WhiteBoard, and had no association with CRI.

Radwan Mujib Siddiq is the Editor-in-Chief of WhiteBoard and a trustee of CRI. He happens to be Sheikh Hasina’s nephew, the son of Sheikh Rehana, sometimes mentioned as Hasina’s successor. The CRI was the Awami League’s think tank, the creator of projects such as the Sheikh Mujib comic book series, a volume of quotations from Sheikh Mujib, and, of course, WhiteBoard magazine. 


Earlier this year, the CRI came under scrutiny when news reports published some alarming information about the organization's activities. Meta had just published, in its Adversarial Threat Report for the first quarter of 2024, a section on Bangladesh that mentioned they had removed 50 Facebook accounts and 98 pages related to the Awami League (AL) and the CRI for “violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior”: specifically the use of fake pages masquerading as real news outlets that spread pro-government propaganda.


I am not surprised by the board members’ objections and disavowals. We are prone to compiling lists of “traitors” to be shunned and there’s a whiff of guilt by association. But the defensive explanations hardly seem adequate either.


The websites for the CRI and  WhiteBoard are no longer available. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I’m able to read archived articles. I find some old press coverage of their activities from Netra News. It’s plainly stated that the CRI was considered the “research wing” of the AL, and WhiteBoard proudly declared itself as the CRI’s “flagship publication.” 


From the names of the editorial advisory board and other contributors, it’s clear they tried to rope in academic and civil society personalities. They also claim that WhiteBoard was “the first policy magazine in Bangladesh.” I doubt that. The AL has long tended to deny achievements in Bangladesh’s history not directly spearheaded by them.


I read some of WhiteBoard’'s old articles. They generally avoided issues of power and politics. I find two notable exceptions, however, that sing the glories of BaKSAL, the Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League, the “one” party spearheaded by Sheikh Mujib when he established a one-party state in 1974, banning all opposition, and silencing all but four newspapers. One of the articles by Syed Badrul Ahsan, a well-known apologist for the AL, contains this delightful sentence: 


“When BaKSAL came in, the government approved four newspapers, two Bengali and two English. It would be simplistic to suggest that this was a measure to curb dissent. No, I would say it was a measure to bring about discipline in journalism.” 


Remember that the next time someone bans freedom of expression. It’s not meant to silence speech. Just to bring about some discipline


Of course, BaKSAL has long had a sordid reputation in Bangladesh, but during its latest rule, the AL—in creating the second edition of its authoritarian rule—was eager to rehabilitate its legacy, and WhiteBoard was eager to join in. Indeed, during the last fifteen years, the Awami League became well-known for crude remarks from its ministers and party leaders and the thuggery of its student and youth wings in the media. This was often embarrassing to the more suave apologists of the regime. I get the impression that WhiteBoard was aimed at projecting a smart, youthful, modern, and Westernized look for the AL regime. It was published in English. The board’s membership, dominated by people from the English-fluent posh neighborhoods of Dhaka, seemed geared towards gathering goodwill from the West and courting a younger elite within Bangladesh. The board includes figures involved in the corporate and tech sectors, private universities, the biggest NGO in the country, and the English-oriented literary and publishing spheres.

 

The CRI was only one arm of the regime’s soft power projection. It also used other platforms managed by WhiteBoard advisors. The board member Kazi Anis Ahmed wears multiple hats, diverting “thousands of dollars…into a years-long covert lobbying effort in Washington DC” on behalf of AL, according to a recent report, which details Ahmed’s shadowy dealings with groups that lobbied for Tulsi Gabbard and conservative think tanks. Ahmed directs a family corporate group, publishes the Dhaka Tribune and Bangla Tribune newspapers, heads up a major private university, and runs the Dhaka Litfest. Through the festival, he cultivated connections in global literary and media circles that helped create goodwill towards the Hasina regime.


He also penned op-eds locally and in the foreign press defending stolen elections. Unlike the Awami League’s central command, which claims that there was no rigging, Ahmed’s editorials took a different line—one for a “sophisticated” global audience. One example: “While their elections have been heavily questioned for their credibility, election interference is hardly unique to the Awami League.” He hammered home the regime’s appeal to India and the West–Hasina was the last line of defense against an Islamist takeover of Bangladesh.


Some on the editorial advisory board are known AL supporters; others don’t have such clear affiliations. The upper class in Bangladesh is entangled in multiple webs of family and social ties. Some on the board joined because of such social connections, others perhaps because after a decade of entrenched power, the idea was simply: “the Awami League regime is the only game going, and if I want to get access to realize  my policy ideas, how else do I get that?” Yet others signed up to get their photos and names in a slick-looking publication with clout. 


But when you put it all together, you can’t avoid the conclusion that no matter why each person joined—their intentions really don’t matter—they became part of a machine to promote the Hasina regime and bolster her cult of personality, as well as that of her father. After all, this was a regime that passed legislation outlawing any criticism of Mujib.


The CRI and WhiteBoard helped provide an intellectual veneer to the Awami League’s rule. They deployed resources to boost Mujib and Hasina’s “thought” in recent years. WhiteBoard articles continually hammered in the theme of “development through political stability,” but they kept silent about the other side of the coin: the regime’s terror-fascistic methods of ruling, the disappearances, torture, extra-judicial executions, secret jails, and censorship. And in perfect nepotistic tradition, the CRI and the WhiteBoard’s leadership teams included four members of the first family.


The Awami League rigged three elections and dreamed of ruling forever. They truly believed that, by birthright, as the party that led the movement for independence, they had the sole right to rule. A regime like Hasina's rested on many legs. You cannot build an authoritarian regime with bullets, digital surveillance, security forces, and goondafied youth alone. You need compliant media and other ways to build up soft power. 


Whenever protests emerged on the streets, the youth squads were sent out to pummel and even shoot protesters. These squads wearing motorcycle helmets became popularly known as the Helmet League. Those intellectuals who supported or justified the AL’s power might claim that their role was different. But then, I recall a distasteful conversation in 2008 with a university professor in Dhaka lecturing me on the importance of a party having peshi shakti, muscle power.


For many intellectuals, the lure of closeness to power and the rewards were seductive. And even for those journalists, NGO wallahs, and academics who wanted to preserve some independence but avoid marginalization, it wasn’t easy. I bet each editor, professor, reporter, talk show host, or NGO director who agreed to join the conveyor belts of the ruling power has a story to tell.


Most won’t. But might some? Like those who wrote the Facebook posts claiming distance from the CRI and WhiteBoard? Bring out the details, I say. At a time when much is being revealed about how this regime functioned, I wish some would be brave enough to spell out how the daily cultural and academic life worked under the now-departed regime. It would be far more enlightening than weak justifications about why we only did this much and not more. 


Open air, too, can be a robust disinfectant.

SUB-HEAD

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Opinion
Dhaka
Bangladesh
Awami League
WhiteBoard
CRI
Sheikh Hasina
Bonik Bharta
Center for Research and Information
Association
Complicity
Radwan Mujib Siddiq
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Student Protests
Fascism
Police Action
Police Brutality
Mass Protests
Torture
Enforced Disappearances
Extrajudicial Killings
Despotism
Clientelism
Chhatra League
Dissent
Bengali Nationalism
Adversarial Threat Report
Think Tank
Meta
Flagship Publication
State & Media
Bangladesh Krishak Sramik Awami League
BaKSAL
Media Crackdown
Newspapers
Board of Directors
Free Speech
Censorship
One-Party State
Authoritarianism
Postcolonialism
Postcolonial State
1971 Liberation of Bangladesh
State Modernization Narratives
Corporate Power
Corporate Media
Kazi Anis Ahmed
Bengali
Dhaka Tribune
Bangla Tribune
Dhaka Litfest
Bonik Barta
Netra News
Modernization
Islamism
Cult of Personality
Dynastic Politics
Career Politicians
Cosmopolitanism
Electioneering
Rigging
Elections
Secret Prisons
Surveillance
Nepotism
NGOs
Literary Activism
Literary Spheres
Publishing
Literary Complicity
NY Times
Peshi Shakti
Youth Squads
Movements
The Guise of Democracy
BSF
Surveillance Regimes
Quota Movement
Student-People's Uprising
July Revolution

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20th
Oct
2024

AUTHOR

· AUTHOR

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On That Note:

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