Bangladesh police is in a poor shape, says the International Crisis Group (ICG). It (the police force) is overstretched underpaid and outmatched by criminal elements. It is unable to cope with increasing demands of a modern democratic society, the ICG says and adds ‘it lacks sufficient ethical and professional standards and often flouts the law it is supposed to uphold’. So the prescription: make a thorough overhaul lest military will have to step in.
In a report titled, ‘Bangladesh: Getting Police Reform on Track’, Brussels based ICG says: The Bangladesh government should take major steps to overhaul a dysfunctional policing system that facilitates corruption and human rights abuses to limit the role of the military in politics. In its view there are however ‘significant’ obstacles in the way. And lists these obstacles as absence of ‘political will’ and a ‘vision of the police as something other than a tool to line the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen’.
The report examines the current police reform process led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Its verdict is that donor efforts to improve police functioning are having only a marginal impact.
A silver lining, according to ICG, is the demand of the police themselves for deeper reforms.
‘The police themselves recognise that they are not up to job and are urging the government to commit to a deeper reform process”, says Michael Shaikh, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst. ‘If the Awami League does not listen, the army could step into fill the security gap as it has in the past causing the democratic transition to falter’, he cautions.
The urgency of the police reforms is underscored by the Feb 2009 mutiny in the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), which left over 75 dead. The conditions that led to the rebellion – mistrust between high and low ranking officers, scant promotion possibilities for lower ranks, mandatory overtime without compensation, salaries not in synch with the rising costs of living – also prevail within police force.
The UNDP Police Reform Programme (PRP) has tried to address some of these issues but poor management and undefined goals have prevented it from having more impact. Mostly due to the government’s lack of political will, the PRP does not address the most dire structural problems that enable abuse, corruption, vigilantism and extremism, the ICG report points out.
Without the National Assembly passing a new police law, any progress on reform, however marginal, is subject to rapid reversal. So, ICG recommends that Bangladesh should scrap the current police law, the Police Act of 1861.
Designed primarily to keep imperial India’s subjects in line, the colonial-era legal hangover makes the police more accountable to politicians than the public. In fact, the broad powers the law gives the government have made control of police one of the spoils of a winning in an election in Bangladesh.
‘For a country that has done so much to unshackle itself from colonialism, it is surprising that a British Raj era law is still on the books, particularly one that is so bad’, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. ‘If the law sticks, and the police continue to be political pawns, the force may be damaged beyond repair at a great cost not only to Bangladeshis but also to the current and future elected governments’.
