The depths of debt

SALEEM SAMAD

Developing countries such as Bangladesh are struggling to balance fighting Covid-19 and keep up with their growing public debt

The global leaders have realized that the coronavirus crisis has jolted the world from a slumber, to understand that the crisis has unveiled the spectre of a larger global crisis.

The health care crisis and its cascading economic consequences are predicted to further plunge many countries in the developing world into an unprecedented crisis, further pushing millions of people into poverty and starvation.

These conditions shine a strong light on the continuing debt problem that stands in the way of people’s survival -- the fight against inequality, the realization of their human rights, sovereignty and the self-determination of people, economic, gender, and ecological justice, and the pursuit of a dignified life.

Hundreds of international, regional, and civil society organizations (CSOs) including Action Aid, CADTM International, Oxfam, Third World Network, joined by 120 Bangladesh NGOs led by Coast Trust, are demanding to suspend the realization of debt instalments for all public debts of developing countries combating the Covid-19 pandemic so that the ongoing coronavirus crisis is not aggravated.

They call upon world leaders, national governments, and financial institutions both public and private, to take urgent action in compliance with their obligations and responsibilities, and commit to unconditional cancellation of public external debt payments.

The CSOs demanded the suspension of all instalments of public debt for at least the financial year 2020-2021 so that countries can develop the capacity to combat the pandemic and overcome the impact of this disaster on its citizens’ health, food, and economic vulnerabilities.

An international statement issued during Global Week (October 10-17) of action for debt cancellation sought the decisive and full solution to the debt problem as part of the profound transformation of economic and financial systems that the present crises so urgently demand.

Meanwhile, the CSO network appealed to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and other bilateral, regional, and multilateral development financiers of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s economy is severely under stress due to the additional burden of pandemic management, while the country has a budget deficit of $17.65 billion in the current financial year.

The CSOs in Bangladesh are trying to urgently bring to global attention that the government of Bangladesh for the current financial year is being forced to allocate $6.20bn for servicing external debts to international financial institutions.

They are urging the multilateral, regional, and bilateral financial institutions to strictly follow the suggestions made by the World Bank and IMF and suspend the servicing of the public debts for 2020, so that the government can use its resources to fund initiatives to help the people in overcoming the Covid-19 challenge.

On the other hand, the G-20 governments announced the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) -- not a cancelation but merely an eight-month delay of up to $12bn worth of payments for public debts.

Much of this debt is illegitimate, the CSO network argues. The international creditors lend irresponsibly and unfairly, driven by predatory lending. The money is used to finance harmful projects and policies, failing to comply with legal and democratic requirements, is saddled with onerous and unjust terms, and incurred by private corporations but assumed by governments or incurred through public guarantees of private profits.

The conditional loans, including cuts in public services and social protection, and severe austerity programs, have also caused as great if not greater harm than debt servicing, especially on women and girls, indigenous people, and the most impoverished and vulnerable people and communities.

CSOs argue that the demand is much more than “debt relief,” but also for “debt justice.”

First published in the Dhaka Tribune on 24 November 2020

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Shahbagh today-Remembering and Linking History

JULIAN FRANCIS

Yesterday afternoon I went down to Shahbagh to absorb some of the atmosphere of the protests related to the War Crimes judgement in the case of Quader Mollah. I talked to some old friends and made some new ones and my mind went back to early December 1990 when, at midnight, I joined young and old on Mirpur Road, Dhanmondi, and we hugged each other on the occasion of the ‘return of democracy’ to Bangladesh. The emotions in the air on the two occasions were somewhat similar.

After running Oxfam’s Refugee Relief Programme in India assisting 600,000 refugees, I was in Dhaka in January 1972 to assist in the assessment of the rehabilitation needs of Bangladesh after months of destruction by the Pakistan Army and those collaborators who had made the work of the army much easier. I was in Dhaka on January 24^th 1972 when, as I remember, an order was issued to put on trial those who had collaborated with the Pakistan Army. I remember having animated discussions then with excited Bangladeshis about what might happen next and talking with them about the Nuremberg war crime trials which took place after the Second World War (1939-45).

I was not, of course, a witness to any of the atrocities which are related to the War Crimes trial. I did however meet many people who came to India as refugees who had been wounded and/or raped by people who had been their neighbours but who had in 1971 suddenly become collaborators of the Pakistan Army. Two incidents remain clearly in my memory.

One day in early July 1971, I was at the Bongaon/Benapol border crossing where our medical teams were providing all refugees with cholera vaccine, first aid, food and water as they streamed across the border into India in their thousands. I noticed one family carrying a dead man. I asked why they had not organized the burial earlier. I was told, “Father was killed by a Razakar, a man who had been my father’s friend and neighbour for many years. We were so shocked that, as we live close to the border, we decided to bring father’s body to India where we can bury him with a more peaceful frame of mind.”

On another occasion, I was visiting one of the refugee camps in Barasat, West Bengal, and came across a man who had a bayonet wound which had turned septic. As a result of the high fever he had, he was delirious and kept repeating that it was not an Army person who had attacked him, but a Bengali Razakar.

In addition, when I came in January 1972, I visited Shakhari Bazaar, Rayer Bazaar and, later, Jalladh Khana and learnt about the respective slaughtering that that happened at those places.

When I lived in Bangladesh in the late 1980s, people did not talk so readily about the history of the Liberation War and I have found that some of the generation that were born after Liberation did not learn so much about 1971 unless there were family members who had been Freedom Fighters who could teach them the true facts. It was therefore a very positive aspect of the gathering at Shahbagh that I saw so many people there were clearly born after 1971.

In March 2012, at the time of receiving the ‘Friends of Liberation War Honour’ from the Government of Bangladesh, the media frequently asked me for my opinion about the War Crimes trial and if I felt it was too late. My reply was that it is never too late to set the record straight and bring people to justice. I pointed out that even more than 60 years after the Second World War, Nazi criminals were still being tried and that the trials following the wars in Cambodia and Bosnia were taking place many years later too. In 2007, the leaders of the Jamaat, who are now being tried, made statements that there were no anti-liberation collaborators of the Pakistan Army. It is to the great credit of the Sector Commanders that their pressure resulted in the War Crimes Trial being re-started. However, what about those who had been tried and sentenced prior to 1975? What has happened to them? What about the thousands who were awaiting trial but who were released after 1975? The masses, the patriotic thousands, who are gathering in most district towns of Bangladesh and Shahbagh as I write, want some clear answers very soon.

Julian Francis, who has had an association with Bangladesh since 1971, was honoured in 2012 as a foreign friend of Bangladesh for his role in the country's War of Liberation in 1971