The Prince Claus Fund Network Partners where in Dhaka for a series of work-shops and meetings in Drik.

In that occasion, the exhibition by Shahidul Alam was to be opened. Unfortunately the authorities thought that it was not something to show…

Shahidul Alam is elated – he’s won the battle - if not the war with the authorities.  In Bangladesh, that’s no mean feat.

In mid March, the scheduled opening of his exhibition of photographs called Crossfire at Dhaka’s Drik Gallery was closed down by the police. The photos are a quiet evocation of the legacy of the estimated 1000 extra judicial deaths caused by the country’s Rapid Action Battalion since its conception in 2004.

The photos show no sign of violence; they are devoid of blood, death or even a single individual.  But the images of silent ghost haunted paddy fields and alleyways – the scenes of some of the killings - were so threatening to the authorities that the police were sent to lock out the public.  Shahidul Alam sums up the situation ironically:

“So you’ve got a situation where you can have a government force killing people without legal permission but talking about it suddenly brings about rules of law.”

Crossfire

An Installation by Shahidul Alam on Extra Judicial Killings

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) was set up on 26th March 2004 to curb corruption in Bangladesh. It consists of members of Bangladesh Police, Bangladesh Army, Bangladesh Navy and Bangladesh Air Force. RAB has increasingly been criticized for the extra judicial killings and torture that have taken place of people in custody. Human Rights groups maintain that over 1000 people have been killed by RAB since its inception. All such deaths have been attributed to gunfights between RAB and criminals where the people in RAB custody were caught in crossfire. No member of RAB has yet been killed in crossfire. Recently a high court bench passed a suo moto ruling, asking the secretary of the ministry of home affairs and RAB to explain a particular killing. The Chief Justice dissolved the bench immediately before the date for hearing (9 January 2010) of the government response – apparently for some administrative reasons. “Crossfire” is an exhibition of photographs where Bangladesh’s leading photographer Shahidul Alam, takes an allegorical look at the phenomenon. The constructed images use elements of real case studies to evoke stories that the government has denied.

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The exhibition and Drik’s Media Academy was opened through a joint programme on the 22nd March 2010 by the legendary Indian writer and activist Mahasweta Devi.

Work-shop on curatorial at Drik with the students of Pathshala

Yto Barrada, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, Jorge Villacorta and Davide Quadrio encountered the students of Pathshala (photography department) to analyze matters of displaying and of communication in relationship to the exhibition Crossfire by Shahidul Alam.

The workshop comes at the end of two weeks class held by Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and will develop a series of alternative workshops in the coming year to prepare the students to a show that will be opened in the occasion of Chobi Mela 2011.