When defending a playground becomes a ‘crime’

At a time when people keep whining about today's children being too much into digital devices, Kalabagan police have done the unthinkable: they detained a 17-year-old boy and his mother, and kept them in the lockup for 13 hours, for trying to protect a playground!

But the detention is not the first 'unthinkable' thing that the police did. In 2020, Kalabagan police put up a signboard in a piece of vacant land in Kalabagan, demarcating it for the construction of a police station building.

The land, marked as 'fallow land' and allocated as such by the government, has actually been used for decades as a children's playground, as well as a number of other social and religious uses of the community, such as funerals. 

Residents immediately protested the move, removed the signboard and continued using the space as before.

When Ratna and her son were livestreaming at Tentultala Math (pictured) on Facebook, they were practising their constitutional right to protest. Both were detained by the police and later released.

When Dhaka district administration last year issued a notice making the intent of the government clear to use the land for the construction of the thana building, the residents of Kalabagan, environmentalists, different social, cultural and development activists, as well as youths, started a movement protesting the proposed construction.

Latest, construction materials were brought on the spot on Sunday when Syeda Ratna, one of the leading activists of the "Save Tentultala Playground" movement, appeared on Facebook live protesting the construction. Policemen guarding the area forced her to stop the livestream and took her and her 17-year-old son to the Kalabagan police station. 

There, the mother-son duo were kept in separate lockups, and the police had reportedly prepared to file a case against Ratna for "obstructing police from discharging their duties." However, as the news of the detention broke, people on social media started protesting the police action. After a 13-hour long detention, the duo was released upon signing a bond that she wouldn't obstruct government work in future.

The police, in so doing, actually violated a number of rights of the citizens.

Firstly, when Ratna and her son were livestreaming on Facebook on the situation at Tentultala Math, they were simply practising their constitutional right to protest, they were not physically obstructing any government official from discharging their duty. 

Later, when prominent lawyers, cultural activists and environmentalists – among them chief executive of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) Syeda Rizwana Hasan, rights activist Khushi Kabir, secretary of Dhaka city Udichi Arif Nur – went to the police station, they were not allowed to visit Ratna, which is another violation, because the detainees have a right to see their lawyer.

Also, the detention of the 17-year-old boy who did not commit any juvenile crime, or any crime for that matter, is outrageous.

Clearly, police wanted to teach the protesters a lesson so no one would have the courage to open their mouth against the proposed construction project. Because, at the time of this piece being written, the construction work was going on in full swing, and reports said that the police members deployed in the playground outnumbered the workers.

While the excesses of police action deserve condemnation, it is also worth looking at the government's decision to acquire the playground to build a police station.

A Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) survey reveals that 37 out of 129 wards in Dhaka's two city corporations have no playgrounds or parks. Considering the area of Dhaka, parks and playgrounds should account for 1,137 acres and 1,876 acres of area, but there are parks on only 271 acres of area, and playgrounds on 294 acres.

The pressure of urbanisation has led to drastic reduction of playgrounds in the capital. Even most of the available parks and playgrounds remain in a sorry state, and often off-limits to the youth. 

And here is an interesting aspect of our planners' and policymakers' psyche. 

Shahid Alim Uddin playground at Dhakeswari in Old Dhaka, popularly known as the Lalbagh Eidgah Ground, had been host to a garbage dump, illegal parking space and shanties. Later, under a modernisation project styled "Jol-Sobuje Dhaka," implemented by Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), the field was turned into a beautiful, grassy playground.

Ironically, although the playground had been open for local youth to play before the improvement project was undertaken, it became off-limits to local children and youngsters afterwards. Only a certain number of teenagers and youths of a cricket academy use it now, and the main playground remains closed most of the time.

Psychologists warn that the inadequate playgrounds and subsequent absence of physical activity is negatively impacting children's physical and mental development.

At a time when the Coronavirus pandemic and the prolonged shut-downs have devastated children's (as well as adults') lives in so many ways, playgrounds, parks and open places could play a vital role in keeping them happy, active, and energetic.

Such places should remain accessible to the public, but unscrupulous groups have always been trying and grabbing them for their own financial gains. The government is hardly seen doing anything meaningful to prevent such illegal encroachments.

Now that a government agency like the police is trying to get their hands on a children's playground in the centre of the city, that too by intimidating the protesters, the citizens have valid reasons to worry about their future and the future of their children.