October 11, 2011
by

Reading Time: 3 minutes

In the early hours of 24 August, after several futile attempts to sleep, I found myself doing the opposite of what sleep experts recommend – reading the news. I was scrolling down the online edition BDNews. It’s a good thing I did what I did then, because within a few seconds one news item got me fully awake. It stated that a few hours before a new law on vagrants had been tabled and passed in Parliament! The report stated that this law “Vagrants and Shelterless Persons Act 2011” now permits, amongst other things, forcibly instituting the poor, the shelterless, beggars and vagrants into “shelter homes” through arrests, and would make it a punishable offence with imposition of jail term and fine for attempts to leave the shelter homes.

Faustina Pereira,
Director, BRAC Human Rights and Legal Aid Services

In the early hours of 24 August, after several futile attempts to sleep, I found myself doing the opposite of what sleep experts recommend – reading the news. I was scrolling down the online edition BDNews. It’s a good thing I did what I did then, because within a few seconds one news item got me fully awake. It stated that a few hours before a new law on vagrants had been tabled and passed in Parliament! The report stated that this law “Vagrants and Shelterless Persons Act 2011” now permits, amongst other things, forcibly instituting the poor, the shelterless, beggars and vagrants into “shelter homes” through arrests, and would make it a punishable offence with imposition of jail term and fine for attempts to leave the shelter homes. This defied belief!The original law on vagrancy was passed in 1943, and human rights organizations have been decrying the utter oppressiveness of this law for decades and have been calling for its repeal. And now, not only do we find this draconian law not scrapped, we see it resurrected with even more horrendous provisions, and that too passed in a late night session of Parliament without even a semblance of debate, analysis or taking into account citizen’s and civil society concerns. Had no one noted the significance of the year 1943, the year when anti-poor, anti-begging laws came about – on the heels of the Bengal Famine of 1943 and the precursor years of the Swadeshi Movement that brought the fall of the British Empire in India? Removing the “scourge” of the poor, the weak and the helpless from the imperial streets of British India may have been a poorly masked and unapologetic Colonial agenda. But to have a democratically elected Government six decades later take that agenda even futher, all in the name of poverty eradication – this is unacceptable! Is this then the formula for us to achieve our Millenium Development Goals – exterminate the poor in order to eradicate poverty!

What further defied belief was the almost non-existent news coverage of the issue in the media, as if it was not as news worthy as the latest squabbles of political leaders, or new natural cosmetic and electronic products being launched that day. As soon as I saw the news item on BDNews, I circulated a message to friends with the comment “Old wine in new bottle, let’s meet in the morning, we need to act fast.”  But by 9 that morning colleagues started to ask whether I had in fact dreamt up the story because they could not find anything on the issue of vagrants, either on BDNews or other news sites. True enough, I checked again, and I too couldn’t find the news on the website anymore! For a while I started second guessing myself, but in fact the news was removed. It took us another couple of days to track the news item from BSS (Bangladesh news agency) and a whole week to get a copy of the law and any information on its status. Finally through a contact in the ministry of social welfare, we were confirmed that such a law had indeed been passed and was awaiting the President’s assent and signature. Not a word about consultation or debate or citizen’s participation. Not a word about how such a law came about in the first place.


On September 17, 2011 BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Aid Services Programme together with other leading rights based organisations such as Ain o Shalish Kendra(ASK), Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust (BLAST), and Action on Disability and Development (ADD) and Nijera Kori organized a roundtable- our first initiative to protest the law- titled “Vagrants and Shelterless Persons (Rehabilitation) Act 2011: Protest and Assessment,” in which the Chairman of the Bangladesh Human Rights Commission, Dr. Mizanur Rahman was present as the chief guest. He was as indignant as we were. He also offered to raise our concerns with the Government and visit the vagrant homes himself.


In calling about this protest, through this round table, it is not only that we are critiquing the law; we are also critiquing the way in which this law came about. It came about in a highly questionable and non-transparent manner. If there were any steps taken to include the voice of the people most affected by this law, we are yet to discover them. We find this law to be highly discriminatory, hostile and humiliating towards poor citizens. We protest the law, its process and the perverse mind- set that brought it about.

Click here for more details about the round table discussion.

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Musavvir Ahmed
12 years ago

… reminds you of the parish workhouses from nineteenth century UK.

Seriously, why haven’t we heard about this from anywhere else before? And does this government really represent the people?

Ishtiaque Hussain
Ishtiaque Hussain
12 years ago

@ Musawir Ahmed: I’m afraid it does…