News & Comment
Havoc in Bangladeshi Swamplands due to Uranium-mixed Flood Water from India; Bangladesh Needs Courageous Leadership of the Khilafah "Caliphate" to stop such Indian Audacity

News

An extremely serious environmental disaster has taken place in a vast tract of swampland (haor) in Sunamganj district and a few other northeastern regions of Bangladesh after gushing flood water coming from the upstream across Indian border has devastated the areas. After acres of paddy lands’ damage due to incessant rain and flash floods just weeks ahead of the farmers’ annual harvest season, fishes, ducks, aquatic animals, buffaloes and cows have also begun to die after the wetland water got contaminated. Flash flood is not something new for the people over there but every year they survive with the fish in the haor. But this unprecedented contamination of haor water is suspected to be related to the open-pit uranium mines of Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) in the Indian state of Meghalaya which are only 3 km away from Bangladesh border.

Comment

Flash-floods caused by heavy rainfall and onrush of water coming from upstream Meghalaya hills in India has damaged harvest of 371,381 hectares of land. Around 300,000 farmers in these low-lying seven haor districts were affected as their livelihood depends on paddy and fish farming, causing them a loss of at least Taka 5,081 crore worth of rice, fish and fodder. Right now, over nine million people in the affected areas are suffering from scarcity of food. Moreover, due to the acute shortage of foods for livestock, poor farmers are selling off their farm animals at cheap prices. The enormity of the disaster is such that it would take at least five years to recover from the losses.

Despite the disaster, Hasina government has not declared the areas as a national catastrophe zone yet. Government aid and support over there are good on paper, but the ground reality is quite the opposite. Government officials and ruling party backed politicians are making profits from government aids and reliefs. The government’s unwillingness to sincerely look after peoples’ misery is making the post-flood situation even worse. It is already in the news that people living in the remote villages are not receiving any government aid at all whereas local shops and restaurants are selling government allotted rice for the flood affected people that came from Open Market Sale (OMS). Lack of political will from government’s side to elevate people from misery is not something that surprises us; rather it is quite expected from the capitalist politicians of the man-made democracy. In time of national crisis, all the previous corrupt regimes in our country have failed poor and general people by leaving them in the hands of fate.

But Sheikh Hasina’s reaction regarding the connections of uranium-mixed water coming down from Indian hills has left everyone thinking that something really went wrong from the Indian side which she wants to hide forcefully.

It is known to everyone that Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) has continued large scale explorations and test mining at ‘West Khasi Hills’, 3 km away from Bangladeshi border, against which even the Indian Khasi Students Union and local residents have been protesting; they have been reporting mysterious color changes in their local rivers and death of aquatic life. And after the water contamination of Bangladeshi haors, major mainstream news media in Bangladesh also published reports about likely link of India’s exposing open pits of uranium to our river system. But Hasina immediately has chastised those media outlets for publishing misleading news about India as she does not want any negative sentiment to shore up against her master.

Already she is finding it hard to tackle strong anti-Indian sentiment among people for her latest anti-state military treaties with India. Now the strong link of Indian caused uranium-mixed flood water with the ongoing catastrophe would make her political life more difficult. Fearing that, Hasina has even gone one step further - she is now in an outright denial mode about the magnitude of havoc in Haor areas. Claiming that media is simply making a mountain out of a mole hill about the damage, she strongly criticized them for being over-reactive with ‘unreliable’ news. So at this moment we are observing a total mainstream media black-out on the very likely Indian connection with the havoc in the country’s back swamps.

Due to such spineless nation-state leaders, who have regularly been superimposed on us against our will after the destruction of the Khilafah "Caliphate", a coward belligerent state like India could make Bangladesh a dumping zone for their experiment and chemical wastes. Considering the adverse and irreversible effect on the nature and ecology, when India has abandoned establishing coal-based power plant at their side of Sundarban, the same Indian company has established the said plant at our side of Sundarban to bring mayhem in our country’s ecology.

Bangladesh again needs a brave leader like Ikhtiyar Uddin Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji who will liberate the people of Bengal from the cronies of India. This blessed land of the Muslims once again needs to be under the sincere and courageous leadership of the righteous Khilafah "Caliphate" which will ensure that Bangladesh turns into a regional military power in no time from where the army of the Khilafah "Caliphate" will march towards India to stop its audacity with the neighboring Muslim and non-Muslim countries.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Imadul Amin
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Bangladesh