Revisiting Syeda Ratna's heroic endeavour to save Tetultala playground

A group of small children were playing football on a small playground - one bigha in size - in Kalabagan. 

The place looked rundown. Bricks from a half-demolished wall lay on the ground on the north side. The east and south sides are surrounded by high-rise buildings. There is a water pump on the west. On the east, neck-deep piles of trash lay unattended for months. 

This is Kalabagan's Tetultola playground where small children play football and cricket in the afternoon.   

The playground, however, has an interesting backstory. At the start of last year, police put up barbed wire encircling the playground to construct the Kalabagan police station. Locals resisted. Different civil society groups formed human chains and staged demonstrations to protest the construction. To rein in the movement, police picked up the main organiser Syeda Ratna and her son. They were released from police custody 13 hours later.

The incident made headlines. 

In a short time, the Prime Minister announced that the playground would remain a playground. The police left their posts but the debris of the under-construction walls remained.         

Nearly a year after the incident, Syeda Ratna, the organiser who spearheaded the movement to protect the playground, is unhappy. The playground is yet to be officially recognised and handed over to relevant authorities, to be made suitable for children to play.  

"Still, no elected official has come to the playground. It remains the way the police left it. Bricks lay on the playground. In spite of that, the children play football and cricket there, because there is no other place for them to play," said Ratna, sitting at her home. 

She has been living in Kalabagan since the 1960s and has fond memories from her childhood associated with the playground, from playing to arranging picnics in the playground. 

"We were so small; we played hide and seek in the field," said Ratna. The one-bigha land belonged to a Bihari man who never came back after the war of independence in 1971.  

Ratna's children also played at the playground.
 

How Ratna organised the movement

In 2018, Ratna started hearing that two different authorities were talking about turning the playground into either a police station or a mosque. "Since 2018, I have been writing about it on Facebook, advocating that it be kept as a playground," said Ratna. 

In 2020, Ratna said, a notice was hung stating that the playground would be used to build the Kalabagan police station. She made a social media video demanding that it be retained as a children's playground. 

"No one in the area responded to the video. No one supported me, no one even liked the video," said Syeda Ratna. 

"One local, Zamir, reached out to me on messenger and told me to do something to protect the playground. He was crying," recalled Ratna, adding, "Then we opened a Facebook group to launch a campaign." 

She made videos one after another and kept posting them on different Facebook groups, which are geared towards launching a social movement and drawing the attention of rights groups. She started to invite all her Facebook friends to the Facebook group. 

At one point, civil society groups like Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon, Green Voice and Kalabagan Welfare Society came forward. The political leaders, individually, came too, said Ratna.  

"I was always cautious that no one can politicise the issue," said Syeda Ratna. The demand is a unpolitical one. 

In 2021, during the pandemic, they collected signatures in Kalabagan in support of keeping Kalabagan's Tetultola playground as a playground. Some homes did not allow them to enter. In those instances, they sent the paper through the gatemen. This way, they collected around 1,500 signatures. 

In the meantime, Ratna kept writing to different government agencies, including the Prime Minister's Office, the Local Member of Parliament and the Dhaka South City Corporation Office, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Ministry of Home Affairs and attached the 1,500 signatures with the letters. 

Ratna said that Masud Karim of Kalabagan Welfare Society helped her in writing letters to government officials, including the Prime Minister's Office. "There is a style of writing to government offices, you know," said Syeda Ratna. "He wrote all the letters."

The turning point 

On 31 January 2022, Ratna and the group noticed that the playground was suddenly cordoned off with barbed wire. The police were deployed so that no one could enter. 

Ratna went and asked the police about their actions. The police said they were acting on the deputy commissioner's orders. Ratna then asked them to show papers of approval. 

"As I was asking questions, I was recording a video with their [police's] consent," said Syeda Ratna, adding, "Then I went live on Facebook." 

The video captured the police shouting at the children and making them squat while holding their ears, paying no heed to Ratna asking them not to do it. 

That video went viral on Facebook. 

Ratna and her allies held a human chain the following Friday, reaching out to rights bodies and other civil society groups. The Friday after, they formed a human chain and announced they would continue to protest until the barb wires were removed. 

In all of this, the children played a vital role in supporting the movement to protect their playground, according to Ratna.  

Why did you launch the movement? "I have a social responsibility. What is human life [anyway]? There is a purpose. You will have to protest against any injustice," replied Ratna, a member of Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigosthi. 

Syeda Ratna has a daughter who works as a voice assistant director at Duronto TV and a son who sat for a higher secondary school certificate last year. Ratna's grandfather started living in the area in the 1960s. 

"I did not get involved for my children; they are adults now. I got involved so that small children in my area can play in the playground," said Ratna. 

Ratna said she does not still know why the authorities took a hardline on the playground but is happy that the foreign minister Abdul Momen wrote her a letter and thanked her for launching the movement to protect the playground. 

Behind the headlines 

When the Prime Minister announced that the playground will remain the playground, Ratna felt the happiest. "I think most people in a society are positive. What is needed is a spark," said Ratna. 

Before our success with the Tetultala playground, people were scared. Now people may feel emboldened to come forward to protect other playgrounds. She believes many playgrounds in Dhaka city have disappeared because no one came forward to protect them from fear of land grabbers. 

During the movement, Ratna also felt scared of influential people or law enforcement agency members.  

"The police picked up me, which was an illegal act, but I was confident that if they do something legally, they will fail," said Ratna. "I never imagined they would go so far."

Ratna said the police's treatment of her was disheartening. "When I was told to enter Kalabagan police station lock-up, one policewoman remarked that the lock-up was cleaned up for me in a way they have never done before," said Ratna. "They laughed at me so heartlessly." 

"When I was released, I cried and asked myself, is this my country? I did nothing wrong and the police picked me up," recalled Ratna, "[And] still, whenever I see the Kalabagan police van after dark, the memory traumatises me."

A city without playgrounds 

Civil society groups, environmentalists and urban planners have long been demanding more playgrounds and open spaces in the city so that children can have a chance to play in the open area. 

The absence of adequate playgrounds affects the mental and physical development of children," said Professor Adil Mohammad Khan, former general secretary of Bangladesh Institute of Planners, adding, "playgrounds are not only for children, a playground benefits people of all ages." Currently, Khan is the Executive Director of the Institute for Planning and Development.

According to a Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) survey, 37 out of 129 wards in the two city corporations of the capital have no playgrounds or parks for children, which amounts to about 40% of the total population of the metropolitan area.

The number of playgrounds in Dhaka has come down from 150 to only 24 over the last 22 years. 

According to the World Health Organisation, every city needs about nine square meters of open space per person and this open space should be a park or playground. The detailed area plan (DAP) of Dhaka also proposed to have one 2-acre playground for every 12,500 people in the city.

Not everything is without hope however. The two city corporations have renovated 49 parks and playgrounds under two separate projects and opened them to the public. Two such playgrounds and parks include Dhaka North City Corporation's President Justice Shahabuddin Ahmed Park in Gulshan 2 and Dhaka South City Corporation's Shaheed Sheikh Russell Children's Park in Kalabagan, the latter not far from the Tetultola playground.