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Saturday, January 31, 2009

[chottala.com] Enemy property Act : Awami Leaguers are the greatest beneficiaries !

Enemy property Act : Awami Leaguers are the greatest beneficiaries !
 
Many Awami Leaguers are also the beneficiaries of the "Enemy property Act".
As a matter of fact The Awami League general secretary and Mercantile Bank
Limited chairman Mr. Abdul Jalil is one of them.
Mr. Jalil's father was an employee of a Marwari Hindu-owned warehousing
business in Naogaon. During communal disturbances in Bangladesh  that
followed 1965 Indo-Pak war the Hindu business owners of Naogaon were forced
to leave and their properties declared enemy property. Consequently, Jalil's father
became the custodian (de facto owner) of that business. Mr. Jalil's  fortunes stems
out of this vested property abandoned by a Hindu business owner for the fear of life.
He now owns a bank called Mercantile Bank Limited without ever pursuing a
legitimate business or job.
 
This not an unique situation. There are many, many cases like this
in Bangladesh, where some specially advantaged people from all wake of
the country became the beneficiary of  the "Enemy property Act".
 
The act was renamed as the Vested Property Act in 1974, the law still retains
the fundamental ability to deprive a Bangladeshi citizen of his/her property simply
by declaration of that person as an enemy of the state. Leaving the country through
abandonment is cited as the most common reason for this, and it is frequently the
case that Hindu families who have one or several members leaving the country
(for economic as well as political reasons) have their entire property confiscated
due to labeling as enemy.
 
A seminal work was published in 1997 by Professor Abul Barkat of Dhaka University,
'Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in
Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act'. This demonstrated that 925,050 Hindu
households (40% of Hindu families in Bangladesh) have been affected by the Enemy
Property Act. This included 748,850 families dispossessed of agricultural land. The total
amount of land lost by Hindu households as a result of this discriminatory act was
estimated at 1.64 million acres, which is equivalent to 53 per cent of the total land owned by
he Hindu community and 5.3 per cent of the total land area of Bangladesh.
 
The survey also showed that the beneficiaries of the land grab through the act cut across all
party lines. The political affiliation of direct beneficiaries of appropriated property was:
 
The greatest appropriation of Hindu property took place immediately after
independence during the first Awami League government (1972-75) and during the
first period of rule of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (1976-1980). Dr Barkat's work
also showed that since 1948, 75% of the land of religious minorities in East Pakistan and
subsequent Bangladesh had  been confiscated through provisions of the act.
Dr Barkat also emphasized that less than 0.4% of the population of Bangladesh has
benefited from the Enemy Property Act, demonstrating that this law has been abused by
those in power through corruption, with no demonstrated sanction by the population
 
India also has similar laws, which allows confiscation of "abandoned" property.
The Custodian for Enemy Property for India is an Indian government department
That is empowered to appropriate property in India owned by Pakistani nationals.
After the  Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, the Enemy Property Act was promulgated
in 1968. Since Pre-independence Bangladeshis were (East) Pakistanis, few
Bangladeshis  Who were property owners in India  or had non-resident accounts in
Indian Banks became losers by the Enemy Property for India .
 
Syed Aslam
 
Related:
 "Instead, politically powerful people grabbed most of the
land during the reign of the BNP-led alliance government
 between 2001 and 2006
 Forty-five per cent of the land grabbers were
affiliated with the BNP, 31 per cent with the
Awami League"
 
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