Nurul Islam: Searching for Truth

THE walls are scorched black, a thin film of soot covers the burnt out wreckage inside the living room of Nurul Islam's former flat. A thick smell of burnt plastic hangs in the air. On the corner of the dining room table, a packet of cigarettes stubbornly sits in pristine condition, and books arranged on nearby shelves are in a near perfect state. It's a bright Thursday morning and the light is good. It pours in through the windows, bringing a strange glow to the otherwise pitch-black former family home.
It's six months on from the fire, which killed Nurul Islam, a freedom fighter, Ganotantri Party president and the president of the Trade Union Kendro (TUC) in Bangladesh. The veteran left wing politician was found gasping for his life minutes after the fire broke out during the early hours of December 3 last year, his only son, Tamohar, killed before he could reach the front door.
Moutushi Islam, Nurul Islam's only daughter, is back in Dhaka on a brief visit from the States where she works. Time is short, but I wanted to meet her and her mother, Ruby Rahman, since elected as an MP, to talk about the horrific events, to talk about how they are able to carry on afterwards, and find out why they suspect Nurul Islam, the country's foremost trade union leader, was the target of a politically motivated killing and not the victim of an 'accident' as ruled in a report.
The first thing that strikes me is that time has healed no wounds for Moutushi. Standing among the charred debris of the fourth floor flat, she still cannot say they are dead. "I refuse to accept this fact," she says, "I can't say that they 'died'. I say 'ora ekhane ar nai' -- they are no longer here."
Her description reminds me of the 'disappeared', in Bangladesh, but also historically in South America. The Argentinian photographer Marcelo Brodsky has spent the last 10 years working on the 'disappearances' of the dictatorship during the 1970s in the country's Dirty War. He describes how they refer to victims as 'missing' -- always in the present tense, because their situation has never been resolved, they still don't know what happened.
For Moutushi it is a clear-cut case of the kind of political violence that reportedly claimed at least 1,300 lives in Bangladesh between 2001 to 2006 -- the death of a popular political activist in mysterious circumstances in the run up to the election. The following attempt to record the death as 'accident' and subsequent attempts to hush up further investigation, to ensure the initial report is the only verdict, urging people to 'forget' and move on.
The nation was in shock when news of the fire first broke. Suspicions ran wild that Tamohar and Nurul Islam, due to stand on an Awami League ticket in the 14-party alliance, were the victims of sabotage. Using his final few breaths, Nurul Islam told television channels he was being threatened -- since confirmed by party and trade union colleagues -- by people urging him to "come to the path of Allah". In a series of heartbreaking interviews, he used his last available strength to loudly say: "It is a conspiracy to kill me. They have been threatening me for a long time so I can't stand for election. They won't let me live."
For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on Monday, June 1.
Fariha Karim is a freelance journalist and photographer.