ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
May 2, 2016
Bangladesh closing notorious 18th-century prison in Dhaka
By Julhas Alam
The Associated Press
HAKA, Bangladesh — Bangla-
desh is closing its notorious 18th-
century prison where sensational
political killings over decades have tar-
geted people on both sides of the South
Asian country’s 1971 war for indepen-
dence from Pakistan.
The government wants to reopen the old,
dilapidated Dhaka Central Jail as a
museum to its tumultuous past, while
giving its inmates better accommodations
on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital. The
new jail will have an uninterrupted power
supply, a 200-bed hospital, and a job
training center.
“Such initiatives will help criminals
change their way of living and their
thinking as well as motivate them to
return to normal life,” Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina said as she opened the new
jailhouse on the capital’s outskirts.
The Dhaka Central Jail, with
architectural marks that reflect Mughal
and British histories, has been chronically
overcrowded. It’s been housing about
8,000 inmates, though it was built to
accommodate just 2,600. Inmates live in
cramped, unsanitary conditions.
Authorities have been moving the
inmates to the new facility since April. “We
will do it slowly, as security is an issue that
needs to be taken care of very carefully,”
said Col. Fazlul Kabir, additional
inspector general of police (prisons).
Bangladesh was born in 1971 through a
bloody nine-month war. The war broke out
after military rulers in Pakistan, then
West Pakistan, refused to hand over power
to majority Bengali politicians led by
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father,
after his party won the most seats in a
1970 election.
Rahman was confined to the Dhaka
Central Jail numerous times before he
became Bangladesh’s founding leader.
Many Communist politicians were also
jailed, as were intellectuals who were
involved in the nationalist movement.
“During the long political career of
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,
D
this central jail was his second home,”
Forman Ali, a former jail superintendent,
wrote in a newspaper article. Banga-
bandhu is an honorary title meaning
“Friend of Bengal” given to him in a
massive rally in Dhaka following his
release from jail in 1969 in a politically
motivated sedition case.
Rahman was assassinated in 1975 —
killed along with most of his family
members in a military coup. Killed in
Dhaka Central Jail that year were four
close associates of Rahman who were the
architects of the country’s independence
war and advocates of secular Bangladesh.
Following the killings, military dictators
PRISON NO MORE. People commute (top
photo) on a road next to the Dhaka Central Jail
(bottom photo) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Bangladesh
is closing its notorious 18th-century prison where
sensational political killings over decades have tar-
geted people on both sides of the South Asian coun-
try’s 1971 war for independence from Pakistan. The
government wants to reopen the old, dilapidated jail
as a museum to its tumultuous past, while giving its
inmates better accommodations on the outskirts of
Dhaka, the capital. The new jail will have an uninter-
rupted power supply, a 200-bed hospital, and a job
training center. (AP Photos/A.M. Ahad)
amended the secular constitution,
changing the country’s course by creating
more opportunity for politics based on
religion. A banned Islamist party,
Jamaat-e-Islami, was reborn, and its top
politicians returned from exile in
Pakistan. The party openly campaigned
against Bangladesh’s independence and
collaborated with Pakistani military.
When dictator H.M. Ershad ruled from
1981 to 1990, dozens of prominent student
leaders were jailed, both from Hasina’s
Awami League party and the Bangladesh
Nationalist Party of her archrival, former
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
More recently, the military-backed
caretaker government that ruled from
2006 to 2008 arrested many top politicians
from both parties and held them in the
central jail before Hasina won elections in
late 2008.
Hasina established special tribunals to
prosecute war crimes committed during
the 1971 fight for independence. Authori-
ties say Pakistani soldiers aided by local
collaborators killed 3 million people and
raped 200,000 women that year.
At least four politicians have been
hanged for 1971 war crimes inside the
central jail. Six top leaders of a banned
Islamist group that wants to introduce
Sharia law in Muslim-majority Bangla-
desh also were hanged there.
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DIGITAL DANCE. Tomoaki Ishizuka, left, and Yurika Yonekura, right, watch the hologram of Japanese
skater Yuzuru Hanyu, center, with ballet dancers with their scanned faces attached at the newly opened Hologram
Dance Theater at Madame Tussauds in Tokyo. Madame Tussauds in Tokyo has launched an event allowing visi-
tors to virtually join a 3-D world to dance with holograms of celebrities such as Hanyu, Brad Pitt, Leonardo
DiCaprio, and Lady Gaga. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Waltz with Leo, Brad, or Beyonce —
or their holograms anyway
TOKYO (AP) — You can waltz with Leo,
pirouette to Swan Lake, or join Beyonce on
the disco floor. Well, your holograms can,
at Tokyo’s Madame Tussauds wax
museum.
The Tokyo location of the museums
known for their life-sized celebrity figures
in wax have opened a dancing hologram
attraction.
Visitors can waltz and disco with
Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga,
Beyonce, and Marilyn Monroe, or pirou-
ette in a Swan Lake ballet with Olympics
figure-skating champion Yuzuru Hanyu.
Mizuho Shinden had a dream-come-true
experience with two of her favorite
celebrities, Monroe and Lady Gaga.
“It looks as though I’m really there, so
that’s a strange feeling. But I thought,
wow, it’s like a dream to be able to
dance with such amazing people,” Shinden
said.
It was more unsettling for Tomoaki
Ishizuka, who found himself dressed in a
ballet leotard alongside Hanyu. “I saw
myself dancing with other ballerinas, so
that was disgusting — but it was
disgusting because it looked so real,” said
Ishizuka.
Participants get a 3-D face scan, which is
transposed onto a hologram dancer for the
90-second presentation.
The attraction is one of the ways the
centuries-old museum is exploring
interaction with celebrities in a digital age.
Museum general manager Toshi Endo
said the current roster of three dances and
six celebrities will expand by midyear.