Columns

Former Peradeniya University contemporary and Lake House colleague Thalif Deen did a fascinating piece that appeared in this newspaper last Sunday if the killing of political leaders who themselves have done quite a lot of butchering in their day does provide fascination. At least to those with ghoulish tendencies and psychological quirks, it seems to.

Even if such revival of political executions and the attempts to flee what seemed their nemesis do recall Shakespeare’s words from Julius Caesar centuries ago—“Oh, judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts…,” one can be certain Dino (as we called him from those halcyon days) did not intend to arouse multiple reactions but to record political history for posterity.

For that is what he has been doing for the past 40 years or more since we parted company and he sought refuge in the world’s largest international body, where the perennial pastime of talking baloney has provided news-hungry journalists like Thalif Deen so much grist to the mill and copy for his humorous writings out of the United Nations chamber or its numerous byways, including its rows of toilets meant also for national delegates who find a convenient escape route at voting time.

Though Dino’s research into the treacherous conduct of desert despots and military pisspots played out on the sands of time might add much-needed truth to the tales of a “Thousand and One Nights,” it misses one shocking story that made a gambling-crazy Hong Kong throw the race sheets to the winds one morning and even ignore the stock market deals, what with thousands of South Asians resident there and making big money.

That was my encounter—not once, not twice, but many times—with the assassin of an Asian political leader who helped give birth to a new nation at the beginning of the 1970s, and I fell upon by chance almost 25 years later.

There he was in the midst of Hong Kong society mingling with the high and mighty, the rich and the nouveau riche, in this British-administered territory of the day with hardly anybody knowing the dark secret.

Why not? After all, he was representing his country as a diplomat in this colony, which was to change hands in a couple of years when China would regain sovereignty, with what consequences was very much the concern of the time.

I had taken refuge like some of the world leaders that figure in Thalif’s story, though not in the same cinematic way, after the then military arm of the JVP called the Deshapreme Janatha Viyaparaya (Patriotic Peoples Movement) threatened to kill me and did announce prematurely they had done so. That was somewhere in July/August 1989, at the height of the armed violence to overthrow the government.

Strangely enough, that night I was having a dinner for a couple of ministers, high-ranking diplomats, officials, and friends when the news of my death spread to the dining room.

But that’s another story. Unknown to the editors of the Hong Kong Standard newspaper, they were offering a job to the dead. I ended up in the British colony on September 14, 1989, and started work the next day as the senior features editor.

During the 10 years I was on the paper before moving on to London, I wore many hats, including diplomatic editor, political columnist, legislative sketch writer, and assistant editor.

But it was as diplomatic editor that I finally ran down the story. In that role I had started a series of articles on interesting Hong Kong-based diplomats I had run into. One of those I interviewed in 1995 was the consul-general of Bangladesh, SHMB Nur Chowdhury, who I had heard was an accomplished artist/painter.

During the interview and the lavish Bengali dinner with my wife Sunetha thereafter, when we shifted to his interest in painting, Nur, as I had come to know him, told me he had served as a Major in the Bengal Tigers and later served as a diplomat in Brazil, Algeria, and Iran before Hong Kong.

The story really began one year later at a reception hosted by the US Consul-General Richard Boucher, if I remember correctly. I was chatting away with a group of diplomats that included, I remember, the Consul-Generals of Thailand Rathakith Manathat, Pakistan’s Tariq Puri and the Malaysian whose name now escapes me.

Later the Bangladesh No. 2 joined us, and I politely asked him whether Nur Chowdhury was present. He said Nur was on leave.

As we were about to break up, Pakistan’s Tariq Puri invited me home for a drink, saying he had something to discuss. When we got to his residence, he told me that the Bangladeshi diplomat had left Hong Kong for a place unknown.

Then the story slowly emerged. Major Nur Chowdhury was the officer who shot and killed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, during a coup that saw the assassination of Mujibur’s extended family, save Sheikh Hasina and her younger sister, who were in Germany then.

Sheikh Hasina herself was recently ousted from power by rioters in Bangladesh and is in exile in India.

When the military took power after the assassination of the “Father of Bangladesh,” four military officers said to be guilty of the killings and leading the coup were granted immunity and posted abroad by the new rulers to get them out of the country. One was Nur Chowdhury.

My information was that Mujibur’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, who had come to power for the first time in June 1996, had recalled the four diplomats to Dhaka for their role in the military coup.

Working on my sources that night, I learnt that Nur had prepared many months ahead for this eventuality of Sheikh Haina coming to power and sent his mother and sometime later his wife from Hong Kong to an unknown destination, which was not really unknown- Canada.

The next morning I discussed my information with the editor and arranged for a colleague to call the Foreign Ministry in Dhaka and squeeze out all available news. Meanwhile I spoke to Hong Kong’s Chief of Protocol, Vivvian Warrington, a former Royal Air Force officer and a friend of mine, about Nur and whether he had turned up to meet him.

He had indeed—two days earlier, to wish goodbye, saying he was returning to Dhaka. It was hard to swallow that story—not unless Nur was willing to commit hara-kiri at the hands of a government determined for revenge as one of those wanted and 14 others discovered shortly before they were executed in Dhaka.

When I scooped the story and it was splashed across the front page that morning, the wide cross-section of congratulations I received from the diplomatic corps, several foreign journalists based in Hong Kong, and the public seemed enough recompense.

But after all these years, I still keep thinking of Nur Chowdhury, how he conducted himself like a seasoned diplomat, made friends, and never for a moment revealed what he was or had been.

He was such a friend; how could I have guessed what he had been? In fact, how could I have even guessed that he pulled the trigger from the bottom of the staircase at the residence of the founder of Bangladesh, eliminating him?

My friend Dino has heard of some running for refuge or to save their lives, assassinations, and perhaps assassins. I have known one and dined with him. Hope to see him in Toronto one day. But it is too late now.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was assistant editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was deputy chief-of-cission in Bangkok and deputy high commissioner in London)